Accepting 'The New Normal'
We mourned, united, and adapted. But five years after 9/11, we are divided once again
The snuffing out of nearly 3,000 lives on that perversely beautiful September morning five years ago brought one consolation. For a time, at least, the American people put aside their differences and embraced their common citizenry. And we were not alone. "We are all Americans," a headline in France's Le Monde declared. People disagree about how much, or even whether, America has changed since 9/11. But one thing is almost beyond dispute: That early sense of solidarity is largely gone.
Some would say it is an inevitable story. A nation of pragmatists, we are also a disputatious tribe, prone to impatience and quick to point the finger when things go wrong-even when things don't go right fast enough. Yet at first, everything seemed to go so well so fast. George W. Bush, after some initial discombobulation, rallied the nation with a declaration of war on the terrorists and those who harbored them. No more minimalist responses; no more law-enforcement-style half measures. Yet it was a curious war footing. There would be no draft, no large material sacrifices expected of the citizenry. Americans were under orders to act normally, as though doing otherwise would be conceding victory to the terrorists.
Big Brother. For the most part, Americans began to adapt to the "new normal" even before the administration launched military operations in Afghanistan, an invasion supported by well over 80 percent of the public. Adjusting to long lines in airports, color-coded risk advisories, and Big Brotherish highway signs urging drivers to report suspicious behavior, a usually inward-looking people consumed record numbers of books on Muslims and the Middle East, learning to distinguish between true Islam and its corrupted form. Irony and humor, said to be fatal casualties of 9/11, made their comeback, helped along by the good news from Afghanistan. A dashing little war in which horse-mounted Special Forces combined with smart bombs to produce marvelously swift results, it was marred only by the unfinished business at Tora Bora, where Osama bin Laden eluded death or capture. Yet the noose, we were assured, was tightening.
Back at home, Americans were eager to do their part, even if that meant sacrificing some of their liberties. Shortly after the Patriot Act was signed into law in October 2001, 53 percent of respondents in one poll expressed concern that the government would be too protective of civil rights in its pursuit of terrorists. Americans were equally supportive of using extraordinary measures against the enemy. While critics around the world carped at the treatment of prisoners in GuantÃÂánamo, 55 percent of Americans in one early 2002 survey deemed it appropriate.
If World War I gave rise to the national security state, September 11 created the homeland security state. Morphing from an office into a full-fledged cabinet-level department, the Department of Homeland Security was the institutional expression of a new national obsession. While many warned of bureaucratic bloat, wasteful spending, and even more dangerous consequences-later confirmed by FEMA's performance in the handling of Hurricane Katrina-a course was irrevocably set.
The urge to prevent future attacks found further expression in the demand for an independent 9/11 investigation to study what went wrong. But even as the 9/11 commission moved toward its first meeting in January 2003, the nation was growing queasy about a military venture far more ambitious than the one in Afghanistan. In one poll, 59 percent responded that invading Iraq would increase the risk of terrorism against the United States, while only 12 percent thought it would decrease it.
Americans had to digest a lot in the year preceding the invasion of Iraq: Saddam Hussein and WMDs and U.N. resolutions; rumors of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda; the Bush Doctrine and pre-emptive war; the growing rift with "old" Europe. There were so many questions, so many risks.
Regime change. But many went along, including leaders of the Democratic Party. The idea of bringing democracy to the failed autocratic states of the Middle East wasn't bad in principle, even if, in the case of Iraq, it had to be sold in conjunction with a dubiously established threat of WMDs. Still, many asked, was this the best way to win Muslim hearts and minds? And why did U.S. attempts at public diplomacy seem so feeble? Some wondered why more wasn't being done to stop the Saudi-funded Wahhabi religious establishment from indoctrinating more Muslims into the most intolerant strain of Islam. Others pointed to the growing instability in Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons. And even if many of the al Qaeda top brass had been rounded up or killed, bin Laden and his sidekick Ayman al-Zawahiri remained at large while organizational clones of al Qaeda kept popping up around the globe.
Some charged that America was succumbing to a dangerous idealism and forgetting its tradition of foreign policy realism. Even the president's father thought his son should listen to a wider circle of advisers. Americans, however, saw ever widening rifts within the administration, the more cautious heads in the State Department and the CIA losing out to the full-speed-ahead gang in the vice president's office and the Pentagon. If there was no clear, universally agreed-upon plan for postwar Iraq, well, that would take care of itself later.
And then came the swift deposing of Saddam Hussein, briefly silencing the naysayers and doubters at home and abroad. But the looting of the Baghdad museums was an ominous flicker of a greater lawlessness to come. The failure of the liberating forces to move swiftly in re-establishing order and normalcy in the Iraqi economy and society gave renewed credence to all those pre-war warnings about the need for greater troop strength, a more thoroughly worked out plan, and the full cooperation of all our traditional allies.
As Iraq began to unravel into the civil war that we see today, American confidence further suffered from the disclosures of the 9/11 commission. Why so many clear warnings ignored? Why such poor communication between (and even within) organizations like the CIA and the FBI? And why, apart from Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism official, did nobody seem to take full responsibility for the many institutional failures? The looming question, set forth in the commission's many recommendations, was how well the administration and the nation would address such troubling deficiencies. (Grades on 41 areas of performance issued by the 9/11 commission in its December 2005 "report card" were not particularly encouraging: Twenty-four were C or below, and there was only one A minus.)
"Big bang." It didn't take the 2004 presidential election to prove that America was once again a riven nation, but it showed that red and blue Americans were now also deeply and evenly divided over the incumbent's handling of the war on terrorism. Bush's supporters could-and still can-point to one indisputable fact: not one successful act of terrorism on American soil since September 11. Yet the charges of incompetent leadership would grow ever sharper, many coming from traditional conservatives. "Five years into the global war on terror," says Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, "and trillions spent on the military has done remarkably little for its long-term health."
Strategically, Bush's plan for a "Big Bang" transformation of the Middle East is also receiving low marks from some of its earlier backers. Thomas Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action, faults the administration for accumulating more and more "postwar situations"-in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now, through encouragement of Israel, Lebanon-without solving any of them. "That is the path I've been warning against," Barnett says, "because if it seems cumulative, the American public gets tired." And that is to say nothing about how these postwar situations are serving as recruitment ads and training grounds for the swelling ranks of jihadists.
To keep track of the growing threat, U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, have been on a hiring binge, adding hundreds and hundreds of new analysts and case officers. But the CIA is suffering from a dearth of experienced hands, many of whom were driven out or retired during the troubled tenure of former Director Porter Goss. Domestically, it still seems very much in doubt that the FBI can effectively add counterterrorism to its law enforcement responsibilities.
Meanwhile, the American public is resigned to the inevitability of further attacks, says Karlyn Bowman, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has tracked polling data on attitudes toward terrorism-related subjects since 9/11. "But no one should have expected public opinion to be simple," she adds. "They believe it's a more dangerous world, but also feel they are safer. They give some credit for things like airport security, though they are still worried about other areas like port security." Bowman finds Americans are willing to put up with inconvenience, discomfort, and even some encroachment upon their civil liberties. Perhaps that is because most believe we are in for a long struggle, one that, in their view, neither side is currently winning. "We are resilient," Bowman says, "but there seems to be a deep hangover-a deep level of pessimism."
Or call it the realism of the aging new normal. "I think the terrorists have discovered that they have great power over our daily lives, our material lives, even over our imagination of the present and future. This is significant power," says Walter Reich, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University. But the way Americans have hardened themselves to the terrorist threat is also a source of power. Many believe that our tactics and strategy are badly in need of overhaul-and high percentages disapprove of the president's leadership-but very few think this is a struggle that we can or will lose.
This story appears in the September 11, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.