Summary: Sixteen years later, with thousands of our troops dead in futile wars, few understand what happened on 9/11/01. It was a dagger at our minds, as are all effective 4GW ops. With a single strike al Qaeda changed America, the most powerful nation that the world has ever seen. Never before have so few changed so many with so little effort. We have crippled al Qaeda. But its leaders saw al Qaeda as the vanguard of the jihadist movement, not its body — and hence as expendable. Since 9/11 the jihadist movement has grown across the world, with no end in sight.
In previous eras decisive battles occurred where thousands fought to determine the fate of nations. 9/11 was a decisive battle of fourth generation warfare, as nineteen men with box cutters attacked our minds — exploiting our weakness and cowardliness to change the course of America. The multiple of force to effect is the greatest in history. Far greater than the nuking of Japan. Al Qaeda succeed not because of what they did — planes crash, buildings burn, life goes on — but because of what we did afterwards. As RJH said in the comments: “The purpose of an action is the reaction.”
Our foreign adventures helped set the Middle East aflame, as we invaded Afghanistan (because of the big lie) and Iraq (more lies), joined the Saudi’s war in Yemen, and helped destabilize other nations (e.g., Libya, Syria). Civil wars still burn in the nations we invaded and occupied and bombed. The more virulent and extreme Islamic State has replaced Al Qaeda. As we destroy that, a new and more virulent Jihadist 3.0 probably will arise somewhere.
At home the cancerous growth of the secret security services eroded away our civil rights (see this ACLU study) and altered our society in ways the Founders would consider abhorrent.
Obama institutionalized Bush Jr.’s policies, foreign and domestic, making them bipartisan policies — and so almost impossible to change. In 2016 Clinton proposed no reforms and continued her cheerleading for the War On Terror. Trump has made no reforms and expanded the war. No amount of national power can overcome failure to learn. We are like France during the Hundred Years War. Despite defeat in three great battles — Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt – the French couldn’t adapt to the new era of war. This might end badly for us.
“People, ideas and hardware, in that order!”
— Said by the late John R. Boyd (Colonel, USAF), quoted in Chet Richard’s Certain to Win. Al Qaeda applied this insight on 9/11. People willing to die to accomplish a brilliantly conceived mission — using our own hardware.
. Al Qaeda applied this insight on 9/11. People willing to die to accomplish a brilliantly conceived mission — using our own hardware.
See America burning on 9-11-01.
Look not at 9-11 but forward, to see what we have become.
“We were attacked on 9/11 by a group of Saudis, Emiratis, and a Lebanese, led by an Egyptian. Which is why we’re at war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.”
— From DuffelBlog, one of America’s few reliable source of insight.
Ahead of the pack (as usual) in seeing this, in 2008 Tom Engelhardt discussed al Qaeda’s triumph in this excerpt from “Kiss American Security Goodbye: 15 Numbers That Add Up to an Age of Insecurity.
“The principle behind Tai Chi stayed with me — that you could multiply the force of an act by giving way before the force of others; that a smaller person could use the strength of a bigger one against him.
“Now, jump to September 11, 2001 and its aftermath — and you know the Tai Chi version of history from there. Think of it as a grim cosmic joke — that the 9/11 attacks, as apocalyptic as they looked, were anything but. The true disasters followed and the wounds were largely self-inflicted, as the most militarily powerful nation on the planet used its own force to disable itself.
“Before that fateful day, the Bush administration had considered terrorism, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda subjects for suckers and wusses. What they were intent on was pouring money into developing an elaborate boondoggle of a missile defense system against future nuclear attacks by rogue states. Those Cold War high frontiersmen (and women) couldn’t get enough of the idea of missiling up. That, after all, was where the money and the fun seemed to be. Nuclear was where the big boys — the nation states — played. ‘Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S. …,’ the CIA told the President that August. Yawn.
“After 9/11, of course, George W. Bush and his top advisors almost instantly launched their crusade against Islam and then their various wars, all under the rubric of the Global War on Terror. (As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pungently put the matter that September, ‘We have a choice — either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way that they live; and we chose the latter.’)
“By then, they were already heading out to “drain the swamp” of evil doers, 60 countries worth of them, if necessary. Meanwhile, they moved quickly to fight the last battle at home, the one just over, by squandering vast sums on an American Maginot Line of security. The porous new Department of Homeland Security, the NSA, the FBI, and other acronymic agencies were to lock down, surveil, and listen in on America. All this to prevent ‘the next 9/11.’
“In the process, they would treat bin Laden’s scattered al-Qaeda network as if it were the Nazi or Soviet war machine (even comically dubbing his followers “Islamofascists”). In the blinking of an eye, and in the rubble of two enormous buildings in downtown Manhattan, bin Laden and his cronies had morphed from nobodies into supermen, a veritable Legion of Doom.
(There was a curious parallel to this transformation in World War II. Before Pearl Harbor, American experts had considered the Japanese — as historian John Dower so vividly documented in his book War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
“When, in October 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act, and an Office of Homeland Security (which, in 2002, became a “department”) was established, it was welcome to the era of homeland insecurity. From then on, every major building, landmark, amusement park, petting zoo, flea market, popcorn stand, and toll booth anywhere in the country would be touted as a potential target for terrorists and in need of protection. Every police department from Arkansas to Ohio would be in desperate need of anti-terror funding. And why not, when the terrorists loomed so monstrously large, were so apocalyptically capable, and wanted so very badly to destroy our way of life?”
Conclusions
9/11 put America on a dark path. None can see its end. But we still control our destiny and can step off this path. We need only open our eyes to see through the propaganda that clouds our eyes. The machinery bequeathed to us by the Founders remains idle but potentially decisive. It requires only our will and effort to empower it.
For ideas about what you can do see Reforming America: steps to new politics.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about bin Laden, about al Qaeda, about jihad, and especially these…
- Lies about 9-11 that justified our invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
- Thoughts about 9-11-01 by Rebecca Solnit — Remember what happened on that day, and imagine what could have followed if we had been wiser.
- The vital things to know about 9-11, painful and so seldom mentioned today.
- About the mysteries of the 9-11 attack — Articles questioning the standard story.
- Death celebrates 9-11. Can we stop and think before we walk further along the road of terror? — “The Uses of al-Qaida” by Richard Seymour.
- Bin Laden won, with our assistance. Our applause shows the scale of his victory. — About “Zero Dark Thirty”.
- It’s not too late to learn from 9/11. But soon it will be.
- Commemorate the 15th anniversary of 9/11 by understanding what followed.
Books to help you more clearly see our America.
All that has changed since these were written is that we have accepted the new America as our America.
Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World
The United States of Fear
Hi FM,
Spot on, of course. I hope you don’t get a bunch of hate mail and comments for noticing what should be obvious. The thing that makes me scream is the near universal assertion by the so-called “DC establishment” people like BHO, HRC, wonder-twins Graham and McCain, now POTUS and his merry band of generals who have never won a war (because they’re not winnable without terrible butchery we neither could nor should ever stomach) and hundreds of others call Afghanistan “the right war” because they gave safe harbor to “the terrorists”. Well, so did Hamburg and South Florida where some of those guys drank, partied, and went to flight school.
The economy and restraint of the operation contributed to its effectiveness. It was targeted and symbolic, not mere mayhem. Although it killed a lot of people, this was not a body count operation. Al Qaeda didn’t begin a campaign of terrorist operations in the US not because they couldn’t, it’s because they knew we would do it to ourselves. They were right. The last time I met someone at the airport gate was 1998. I heard that Pittsburgh airport now allows that, but you have to go through security, etc., as if you’re a traveler. But that’s less a return to sanity and more of a how can we get our concessions more cash.
It’s sad to simply notice that this event completely transformed the US and the wider world irrevocably for the worse in a brilliant masterstroke that cost a few hundred thousand dollars and 19 lives (on their side) which inflicted thousands of deaths, a recalibration of society which includes the collective loss of some element of sanity and emotional resilience, and trillions and trillions of dollars spent toward unproductive ends can get people calling you a traitor among other epithets.
Still, I do share your optimism that there is a core of resilience left in America. I think you wrote somewhere about America’s loss of “collective reasoning” maybe after WWII. It aligns well with some ideas that Jonathan Haidt has about individual reasoning is generally very poor, so we need to make collective reasoning systems that do better (e.g., science and scientific institutions, deliberative legislative processes, judicial review, etc.). I guess that’s part of the great task before us.
More time refining our flawed, but improvable, society; less time blowing up other societies. When you fight ideas with bullets and bombs, you lose.
With regards,
Bill
Bill,
Nicely said. 9/11 shows that the most powerful weapon is the human mind. 9/11’s strength was in its conception, aimed at our spiritual weakness.
Reblogged this on SiriusCoffee and commented:
Quote from article: “We were attacked on 9/11 by a group of Saudis, Emiratis, and a Lebanese, led by an Egyptian. Which is why we’re at war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.”
Fabius & Dr. Bill;
Absolutely spot on! I’ve been corrected and converted.
Beginning with William S. Lind and you, Larry, I’ve become educated.
Reading the post brought John Boyd’s maxim to mind, “People, Ideas and Technology in that order”. Al Queda proved it, didn’t they?
Islam is a mighty force. That, I have known for a long time. I learned as a Roman Catholic boy of 6 dining as a guest at a banquet hosted by a Sheikh. We were about to eat and I said, “shouldn’t we say grace first?”. They all stopped and allowed me to do so. How gracious!
Shalom, Salaam, Peace.
Loved your Tai Chi analogy! I pray for that American core of resilience.
Longtrail,
Thank’s for the reminder about Boyd’s quote. I’ll add that to the post.
Also — it’s Tom Engelhard’s Tai Chi analogy!
Thanks for the excellent article. I would appreciate your thoughts on the below article and/or where to go for followup. “What 9/11 Did To America And the World” by Ian Welsh, 11 Sept 2017.
Neil,
I wish I could disagree with Welsh’s analysis. But he is a smart guy, and his article is little but a list of facts. Unpleasant facts, but facts nonetheless.
The French won the Hundred Years’ War. They won all the battles that mattered: the last ones.
Froideterre,
“They won all the battles that mattered: the last ones.”
First, that is only sort of true. The French won the Hundred Years war due to a timely disease. By the Treaty of Troyes, Henry V was the heir to the French crown of the sickly King Charles VI of France. But Henry V died in 1422 at age 36 of dysentery, two months before Charles VI. As part of his victory over France, in 1420 Henry V married Catherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI. But their infant son (Henry VI, born 1422) could rule neither France nor England — allowing a French resurgence amidst disarray in England.
Second, that is a common saying – but quite daft. The French defeats during most of the Hundred Years War caused its people immense suffering for several generations. Blowing that off because of a win in the next century is callous in the extreme. Defeat has ill consequences in the here and now.
I sometimes wonder whether we would not be better off if we had required every adult to purchase and train with firearms and then simply tell the terrorist to attack if you wish rather than handing over so much of our freedoms to a government which will never return them to us without a battle. I have no delusions regarding the deaths among the American citizenry such actions would produce yet I cannot help but wonder whether those of us who survived might cause this nation to be even stronger than anyone could imagine.
crowccane,
“I sometimes wonder whether we would not be better off if we had required every adult to purchase and train with firearms”
That would have been a great social science experiment, using America as guinea pigs! Of course, it risks spiking our already insane levels of homicide mortality. But the deaths would be done by “us”, not “them.”
And all those gun-toting bold Americans could be as easily blown up as people in well-run nations. So the gain would — at best — be small, and the cost in lives might be large. But the benefit to social science would be historic. Think of the other experiments we could do on America for Science!
I believe that a majority of the increased homicide rate would be composed of criminals and then we would see a marked decline as everyone would learn to be much more polite to each other. But both of our ideas are mere conjecture as there isn’t any real world data to base either upon. Any experiment conducted by a city or state has never taken place in relative isolation.
We should have had sufficient tools already in place to prevent other nations from blowing us up shouldn’t we? I mean haven’t our intelligence agencies already been given all of the freedom to spy on and investigate outside nations and groups and if they found sufficient reasons our courts have been willing to give them permission to investigate people within our borders ? I try to educate myself but I will be the first to admit that there are most likely gaps in both my knowledge and my understanding.
crowcane,
“I believe that a majority of the increased homicide rate would be composed of criminals”
Evidence shows that almost certainly the vast majority of the increased homicides would be suicides, accidents, and murders (of various sorts). The number of terrorists killed would be microscopic. The number of terrorist incidents prevented would be smaller than microscopic.
Evidence? Please tell me which nation which has implemented such a program in the past that allows you to draw upon their experiences for such evidence.
crowcane,
Because that is the majority of gun deaths today. Why would increasing the availability of guns drastically change the nature of the resulting deaths?