STRATFOR's George Friedman has posted an article on the years since 9/11 and their impact on US global strategy. His focus is specifically on the US's global strategy, but his observations have lessons for domestic policy as well.
It has now been nine years since al Qaeda attacked the United States. It has been nine years in which the primary focus of the United States has been on the Islamic world. In addition to a massive investment in homeland security, the United States has engaged in two multi-year, multi-divisional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, inserted forces in other countries in smaller operations and conducted a global covert campaign against al Qaeda and other radical jihadist groups.
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In looking back at the past nine years, two conclusions can be drawn: There were no more large-scale attacks on the United States by militant Islamists, and the United States was left with the legacy of responses that took place in the first two years after 9/11. This legacy is no longer useful, if it ever was, to the primary mission of defeating al Qaeda, and it represents an effort that is retrospectively out of proportion to the threat.
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But let me state a more radical thesis: The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States. Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attack. That is a tragedy, but in a nation of over 300 million, 3,000 deaths cannot be permitted to define the totality of national strategy. Certainly, resources must be devoted to combating the threat and, to the extent possible, disrupting it. But it must also be recognized that terrorism cannot always be blocked, that terrorist attacks will occur and that the world’s only global power cannot be captive to this single threat.
And he's absolutely right. For the past nine years, we have allowed Islamic terrorists to not only be the focus of US global policy, but dictate far too much of US domestic policy. There have been no more large attacks (not counting designed-to-fail fiascos incited by the FBI), and no proportionately greater number of lone-wacko incodents. But the damage done to American society and American freedoms by the pervasive fear that has driven Congress — and that Congress has in turn incited in the American people — has been incalculable.
In the morning of September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda launched a single massive attack against the United States that would never work again.
By lunchtime on September 11, 2001, Congress was wetting itself in fear.
But the American people weren't wetting themselves in fear. America was mad as hell. America began to fight back while the planes were still in the air, as Americans in the sky over Pennsylvania took the terrorists' fourth weapon away from them.
And then Congress continued the terrorists' work for them. And that needs to stop. It's gone on for far too long already. Congress's fear — amplified by the hysterical, sensationalist mouthpiece of the mainstream media — is weakening, dividing and harming America, and changing the nature of American society in ways that are good for Congress, but bad for America.
So am I saying here that the best interests of Congress are not aligned with — nay, are opposed to — those of America as a whole?
You betcher ever-lovin' ass I am.
In a timely footnote, Bruce Schneier just posted an excerpt from an NPR article citing Barnes study results, which found that while the actual top five causes of injury or death of children are car accidents, homicide (usually by someone who the child already knows), abuse, suicide, and drowning, the five threats that parents are most concerned about are kidnapping, deranged school snipers, terrorists, dangerous strangers, and drugs. Thank you, Congress and the media, for so COMPLETELY screwing up America's priorities.
