Fareed Zakaria: Did the U.S. overreact to 9/11?

[fallstuff]

Did the U.S. overreact to 9/11?
September 9, 2010 9:40 a.m. EDT


Editor's note: Fareed Zakaria is an author and foreign affairs analyst who hosts "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN U.S. on Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET and CNN International at 2 and 10 p.m. Central European Time/5 p.m. Abu Dhabi/9 p.m. Hong Kong.

New York (CNN) -- The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, prompted the U.S. to take sensible security measures and launch a justified counterattack against al Qaeda, says analyst Fareed Zakaria. But he says they also led to an overreaction that continues today.

Zakaria argues the organization behind the attacks, al Qaeda, has been greatly diminished by the U.S. response to 9/11 and by growing opposition to the group in the Muslim world:

"All these trends have worked to further diminish the threat al Qaeda poses to us. We're in a strange situation where the right doesn't want to acknowledge it because it would suggest we don't need to be in quite this much of a war footing and ... the left seems reluctant to accept some of this because it suggests that, God forbid, George W. Bush might have done something right.

"As a result of our political dysfunction, we have lost the ability to have a rational conversation about 9/11," Zakaria said.

The author and host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" spoke to CNN on Wednesday. Here is an edited transcript:

CNN: Is the U.S. safer today than before 9/11?

Fareed Zakaria: There's no question we're safer. Look, 9/11 changed the way in which we viewed the problem of terrorism and Islamic radicalism, and we've gotten attentive to both. First of all, there have been huge measures taken -- a series of very simple, sensible measures that decrease the likelihood of anything like 9/11 happening.

Sealing the cockpit door, by itself, means that a plane can never be used as a missile and things like that ... the security measures have made it much more difficult for high-value targets to be vulnerable in quite the way they were.

The second part is that we have gone after these al Qaeda and associated groups quite vigorously, chasing them around the mountains of Afghanistan of course but also tracking their money. And those things collectively have made a big difference, and there's no question in my mind, we're safer.

Now we can begin to ask ourselves whether we have overdone the countermeasures, whether the tens of billions of dollars that have been added year after year to the intelligence budget, to the Homeland Security budget have been all necessary or are we on a kind of autopilot where no request for homeland security can ever be denied, and it has become part of the gargantuan pork barrel projects in Washington.

CNN: You've written that we've overreacted to 9/11 and al Qaeda. In what way do you think that's the case?

Zakaria: I mean it in two senses. We didn't spend a lot of time in the year after 9/11 -- once we had taken it on, once we had started chasing these people around the world, measures which I strongly supported then and still strongly support -- whether that had been effective and whether we had broken up the organization and made it far more difficult for them to operate. And therefore, what was the real nature of the threat going forward?

I think it's clear that al Qaeda is a much-diminished force. It has the power to inspire a series of local organizations around the world, but it has very little power to direct these high-profile terrorist attacks itself. The reaction to my point that al Qaeda is weaker than we think has surprised me only because I've made this point since 2004, and I've made it repeatedly.

CNN: Why do you think many people have not agreed with that point?

Zakaria: I do think we have a tendency in the United States to underestimate the evil intentions of our enemies, but overestimate their capacity, their capabilities.

What we now know, based on all the declassified documents we have available is that in the 1970s and '80s, the U.S. was massively overestimating the military capacity of the Soviet Union.

CNN: In what way?

Zakaria: If you look at every measure, from bombers to missiles, on almost every count, we massively overestimated their capacity to modernize, their capacity to build up, and as a result we had created a much, much larger military-industrial complex than would have been necessary to combat the actual Soviet threat rather than the one we perceived.

Similarly with Saddam Hussein, the intelligence agencies were absolutely convinced that what we faced was a very powerful state that was acquiring nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, which proved to be largely untrue.

When we look at al Qaeda, we have to ask ourselves: What is their actual capacity to inflict harm?

The second sense in which I mean it is I do think there is a tendency within the American appropriations system for projects to become eternal and eternally expanding and this has clearly become true of homeland security. Nobody wants to deny the request for more security, more measures, more procedures, all of which come with more budgets, more bureaucrats ...

CNN: So what should be done now?

Zakaria: This would be the right time for us to take a look and ask ourselves, in order to combat the actual threat that al Qaeda poses, which is real but which is limited in some senses -- what kind of intelligence apparatus do we need, what kind of homeland security apparatus do we need and how much can we do in terms in reallocating, reorganizing and reinventing these national security agencies rather than constantly piling up layer upon layer.

We now have 15 different intelligence agencies, we have 15 different organizations tracking the money that terrorists are moving around.

It's almost as though we took the entire Cold War bureaucracy and rather than scaling it down and reconfiguring it to meet this new set of unconventional threats, we just layered on top of the mountains of Cold War bureaucracy another set of mountains of terrorism bureaucracy, never mind that the Cold War is over ...

This is not a way to run a serious national security policy. And the greatest danger here of course is that unlike the Cold War, unlike World War II, this is not a war that has a clean ending, so you cannot set a point at which we would demobilize and therefore get rid of some of this apparatus.

This is a kind of existential reality that the United States has to deal with, the possibility of terrorism, the possibility of radical groups being able to inflict harm on an open society, so we've got to ask ourselves is this the normal national security state we want to live with.

CNN: Was the concept of a "war on terror" mistaken?

Zakaria: I don't know if I would quibble with it that much. ... The problem of course is that terrorism is a tactic, you can't declare war against a tactic. But in general it conveyed the idea that we needed to go on the offense and we needed to chase these guys around the world, we needed to track their money. I have no problem with any of that ... the problem is you can fight a war but you also need to actively gauge the strength of your opponent, and if you think he's 25 feet tall vs. five feet tall, that's important. That's a huge misdiagnosis of the problem ...

CNN: Why do you think people have missed the change in al Qaeda's capabilities?

Zakaria: We're not looking at trends within the Islamic world where al Qaeda has been politically discredited, trends that are taking place within the jihadi community, where prominent jihadis have broken with al Qaeda.

The reality is that al Qaeda has been unable to organize a single attack [against a major target in recent years], the reality is that when smaller local groups plan terrorist attacks all they can attack are local targets like cafes or train stations and thus kill locals, further alienating the local population and discrediting and delegitimizing al Qaeda and its associated groups.

CNN: Nine years after 9/11, why is the debate about Islam and terrorism fiercer than it's ever been?

Zakaria: What's more strange is that it feels as though it's a debate that's taking place without the intervening nine years. Sometimes the debate seems as though it could have been taking place in 2002, without noticing all these trends that I've been describing.

9/11 was a wake-up call for America, but it also was a wake-up call for a lot of people in the Muslim world. In the early months after 9/11, and I wrote about this at the time, there was a sense in the Muslim world that while they might not have approved of the attacks, they understood the anti-Americanism that lay behind it. That kind of totally irresponsible and pernicious implicit support for Islamic radicalism has worn very thin in the last nine years.

CNN: Why has radicalism lost support?

Zakaria: People who felt that way in Indonesia, in Jordan, even in Palestine have realized that these guys [al Qaeda] are as opposed to the secular regimes of Indonesia, Jordan and in the Palestinian Authority as they are to the United States and when they attack Indonesia and Jordan, they kill innocent Indonesians and Jordanians, innocent Muslims by the way.

That reality has also produced a kind of rethinking about Islamic extremism that has been very important. I should emphasize that it is not enough and there needs to be more persistent condemnation of radicalism and violence but there's no question, and the polling data make this clear, the number of fatwas issued against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden make this clear -- there has been a huge shift in the Muslim world over the last nine years.

CNN: Finally, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is reaffirming his plans to proceed with Cordoba House, the controversial Islamic center near ground zero. What do you think of that?

Zakaria: This is to be a community center that will have a swimming pool, meeting rooms, athletic facilities, modeled after the 92nd Street Y. It will have Jews and Christians and Muslims on its board, it will have prayer rooms for Jews and Christians as well as Muslims. It will have both physical spaces and programs to encourage interfaith dialogue.

Now to me that sounds like precisely the American answer to Muslim radicalism, to affirm a Muslim-led process of interfaith dialogue, of tolerance for other religions ... the plan here is to build a center that is really trying to bring people together, this is such an American response to intolerance, extremism and violence. It is about inclusion, dialogue and respect for other faiths.


Link:

Did the U.S. overreact to 9/11? - CNN.com

 

[EjazR]

Zakaria: Why America Overreacted to 9/11 - Newsweek

Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda’s best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and teach him to stuff his underwear with explosives.

I do not minimize Al Qaeda’s intentions, which are barbaric. I question its capabilities. In every recent conflict, the United States has been right about the evil intentions of its adversaries but massively exaggerated their strength. In the 1980s, we thought the Soviet Union was expanding its power and influence when it was on the verge of economic and political bankruptcy. In the 1990s, we were certain that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal. In fact, his factories could barely make soap.

The error this time is more damaging. September 11 was a shock to the American psyche and the American system. As a result, we overreacted. In a crucially important Washington Post reporting project, “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William Arkin spent two years gathering information on how 9/11 has really changed America.

Here are some of the highlights. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. The amount of money spent on intelligence has risen by 250 percent, to $75 billion (and that’s the public number, which is a gross underestimate). That’s more than the rest of the world spends put together. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet—the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons. Five miles southeast of the White House, the largest government site in 50 years is being built—at a cost of $3.4 billion—to house the largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs: the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people.

This new system produces 50,000 reports a year—136 a day!—which of course means few ever get read. Those senior officials who have read them describe most as banal; one tells me, “Many could be produced in an hour using Google.” Fifty-one separate bureaucracies operating in 15 states track the flow of money to and from terrorist organizations, with little information-sharing.

Some 30,000 people are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications in the United States. And yet no one in Army intelligence noticed that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been making a series of strange threats at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he trained. The father of the Nigerian “Christmas bomber” reported his son’s radicalism to the U.S. Embassy. But that message never made its way to the right people in this vast security apparatus. The plot was foiled only by the bomber’s own incompetence and some alert passengers.

Such mistakes might be excusable. But the rise of this national-security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government’s powers that now touches every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism. The most chilling aspect of Dave Eggers’s heartbreaking book, Zeitoun, is that the federal government’s fastest and most efficient response to Hurricane Katrina was the creation of a Guantánamo-like prison facility (in days!) in which 1,200 American citizens were summarily detained and denied any of their constitutional rights for months, a suspension of habeas corpus that reads like something out of a Kafka novel.

In the past, the U.S. government has built up for wars, assumed emergency authority, and sometimes abused that power, yet always demobilized after the war. But this is a war without end. When do we declare victory? When do the emergency powers cease?

Conservatives are worried about the growing power of the state. Surely this usurpation is more worrisome than a few federal stimulus programs. When James Madison pondered this issue, he came to a simple conclusion: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germs of every other … In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended?.?.?.?and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual war,” Madison concluded.

 

[muse]

Excellent Ejaz - I think you get it - and a laittle too late but Zakaria is starting to get it because his interaction with US government and political types has increased - no one who interacts with US government and political type can escape the impression that one is dealing with, essentially, fanatics.


A

s a result of our political dysfunction, we have lost the ability to have a rational conversation about 9/11," Zakaria said.

Political dysfunction? Now how did that come about??:

Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. The amount of money spent on intelligence has risen by 250 percent, to $75 billion (and that’s the public number, which is a gross underestimate). That’s more than the rest of the world spends put together. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet—the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons. Five miles southeast of the White House, the largest government site in 50 years is being built—at a cost of $3.4 billion—to house the largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs: the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people.

This new system produces 50,000 reports a year—136 a day!—which of course means few ever get read. Those senior officials who have read them describe most as banal; one tells me, “Many could be produced in an hour using Google.” Fifty-one separate bureaucracies operating in 15 states track the flow of money to and from terrorist organizations, with little information-sharing.

Some 30,000 people are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications in the United States. And yet no one in Army intelligence noticed that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been making a series of strange threats at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he trained. The father of the Nigerian “Christmas bomber” reported his son’s radicalism to the U.S. Embassy. But that message never made its way to the right people in this vast security apparatus. The plot was foiled only by the bomber’s own incompetence and some alert passengers.

Such mistakes might be excusable. But the rise of this national-security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government’s powers that now touches every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism. The most chilling aspect of Dave Eggers’s heartbreaking book, Zeitoun, is that the federal government’s fastest and most efficient response to Hurricane Katrina was the creation of a Guantánamo-like prison facility (in days!) in which 1,200 American citizens were summarily detained and denied any of their constitutional rights for months, a suspension of habeas corpus that reads like something out of a Kafka novel.

In the past, the U.S. government has built up for wars, assumed emergency authority, and sometimes abused that power, yet always demobilized after the war. But this is a war without end. When do we declare victory? When do the emergency powers cease?

Here's the core of the dysfunction:

James Madison pondered this issue, he came to a simple conclusion: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germs of every other … In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended?.?.?.?and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual war,” Madison concluded

Is this even America?? Might sound like hyperbole, and I grant you that it's difficult to think of the US in these terms - but why remain blind, deaf and dumb?? What kind of America is this? Is this even America?

 

[muse]

Some 30,000 people are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications in the United States.

Is this even America? Land of Liberty?

To my thinking, not Bin Laden, but the government of G.W Bush and US political right wing are responsible for creating this monstrosity - Americans, cannot reclaim the US of before this coup d'etat - they have to rebuild, to create anew, where such outrages will be unthinkable.