Journal forkspoon's Journal: Causes of the September eleventh attacks 4
Causes of the September eleventh attacks:
Besides the obvious answer of "19 evil people with boxcutters and knowledge of how to fly a plane", this list tries to investigate the immediate causal links that lead to these acts in an attempt to illuminate some theory behind predicting terrorism.
Voters fault - We control the government through whom we elect. If we had cared about airline security, which we didn't, even after Lockerbie incident and that Egyptian copilot guy crashing the plane into the sea, then we would've voted in people who would've passed legislation or appointed people who would have enforced more security.
FAA's fault - The FAA has the authority to force airlines to conform to standards. The FAA knew about airline security, but at the insistence that the airlines were making little profit and even losing money, they were reluctant to force too many requirements on struggling airlines. The FAA knew about previous hijackings, and perhaps had the intelligence from Manila, but still did nothing, or only set voluntary requirements.
Airlines fault - The airlines may have known about voluntary requirements or had ideas or suggestions about security, but didn't follow them. The ignorant practice of only paying attention to the bottom line (profit) that nearly all corporations cling to, leads to the reasoning "if its not required, it costs money, and there's no clear profit to made from it, don't do it". The airlines and airports could have provided more security in the air travel process, but didn't want to invest the money it would have taken to create more security, when there was no perceived threat and there was no regulatory requirement.
Executives fault - Either Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II, take your pick, were in recent years in charge of the executive branch and had control over policy and appointments. Others in the executive branch are responsible too. The executive could have required stronger security policy at airports, and even could have subsidized such systems with government money, thus creating incentive for airlines to do it because they wouldn't lose so much money as if they had to pay for all the improvements themselves. The executive is supposed to be the "care takers" of the people, and think about the issues the average voter doesn't think about and manage the services that only the government can/will offer.
Congress' fault - Although the congress can be viewed as simply the extension of the voters will, to an extent they are also trustees of the people and are "care takers" like the executive branch. Congress failed in the same ways as the executive in terms of planning and funding security and instead were spending their time (and today spend their time) bickering about meaningless details of various bills and what riders to add, instead of thoughtfully considering more important topics and responsibilities of government.
CIA's and FBI's fault - A member of Al Qaeda was arrested in Manila, Philippines in the early nineties. His seized computer held plans for various plots to destroy airplanes and the world trade center. The plans for destroying airplanes involved small plastic explosives and the plans for destroying the world trade center as they in fact were was yet unformulated but the roots of what happened can clearly be seen in the obtained records from Manila. The person captured in Manila I believe went on to be one of the planners of the van bomb attacks on the world trade center. The computer and other evidence were referred to the CIA by the Manila authorities, which in turn gave it to their analysts. The analysts didn't consider it a high priority and shelved the information. They should have taken it seriously after the van bomb attacks on the world trade center and started going over possible scenarios implied by the captured documents, but didn't. This was the major intelligence failure, having information about a related plot and not going through all the alternatives and possible scenarios to accomplish the same goal of destruction. The analysis provided no warnings, and thus we were all caught with our pants down. The FBI also may have had this information but their analysts didn't make the connection between various people entering the country and attending flight schools and the captured documents. The relevant conclusion is that US agencies had for nearly a decade enough intelligence to consider flying planes into tall buildings as a possible scenario, and even if their analysts did arrive at that possibility, they shelved it instead of causing a policy or regulation change from it.
The second fact they knew about was Al Qaeda. They knew it existed and what its goals were yet weren't as aggressive as they could have been to dismantle it. Planting operatives to disrupt and destroy the organization in those early years would have had a chance of success, but to my knowledge no such effort was made.
US foreign policy's fault - Whether Israel is justified or not in their existence as a state, there is a perception in the middle east that the United States not only supports a Zionist state but that our support is so strong that we are in fact part of the Zionist entity. To many who sympathize with the plight of dislocated Palestinians, and others who consider the Israeli state Muslim holy land, the Israeli state and its US backing are affronts to their religious values and in a more secular sense can be seen as an injustice in that people were pushed out of their homes and that the region is now in a perpetual state of conflict whereas before the creation of the Israeli state there was less conflict. Among Arabs, Muslims, and many in the east, the Israeli presence is an invasion and the US strongly supports and pays for or provides for that invasion. Thus we have earned ourselves a very bad reputation with these people, and they truly don't like us. George Washington warned future leaders to stay out of "foreign entanglements", and the backing of Israel is clearly a foreign entanglement, which has gotten us some big problems in return.
Second, in an unintended effect of the perhaps ill implemented fight to stop the spread of soviet imperialism, we gave guns and training to various opposition groups in Afghanistan, among them the Taliban. There is no way we could have known that things would unfold as they did, but perhaps in the future we should be more prudent in who we back and why. Sure, opposing communism in central Asia or central America may have seemed like a good idea on paper, but once again all this foreign meddling got us in a lot more trouble than we planned on. Plans and strategies created from theories on paper tend to always encounter some kind of alteration in real life. Perhaps we should have simply let things unfold as they would and let the regimes collapse. Ultimately, at the end of the eighties, the Soviet Union collapsed, the largest of all the communist world powers. Wouldn't this same fate have transpired in a communist Afghanistan or Nicaragua? But in our thick skulled attempt to rid the world of communism forcefully instead of letting it collapse on its own, we created a state that would eventually be the base of operations for our first adversary of the new threat in the twenty-first century, terrorism.
Religious radicals in the US - It doesn't help that various religious (mostly Christian radicals) radicals in the US condemn US society and policy for the same reasons the Islamic radicals do. I can't point to a direct effect on this event, but it certainly doesn't look very good to have people in the US saying our moral debauchery caused the events, just as the Islamic radicals claim.
Other causes we can't easily control:
Religious radicalism - There are many causes for renewed Islamic radicalism in central Asia and the Middle East. I won't get into them now, but this was a contributing factor to the success of recruiting people and having resources and places to train people.
Poverty that the US isn't responsible for - Although some could argue that US foreign and economic policy are responsible for poverty in some parts of the world, we won't focus on that. There are parts of the world that are naturally poor because of a lack of various resources, or because of poor governments or development. The US is in no way responsible for the acts of chance that certain countries have crappy climates or no natural resources to sell. It's also not our fault that your government is run by a dictator and you have no free open economy. However, it is known that not only does poverty breed religious radicalism; it breeds discontent and anger against the rich countries. This "have-nots" discontent combined with religious radicalism leads to more religious radicalism and compounds the problem of the widespread hatred for the "opulent" west and our "lax morals".
Chaotic state of technology - Technology can't be easily controlled; so one person in a plane can kill thousands by simply moving a wheel and a few levers around. We build machines and have knowledge that when used properly leads to greater convenience and mostly peace for many people. But the problem is it's too easy for someone to make a bomb, fly a plane, or release and send in the mail some deadly virus. The ease of use of technology makes it useable and practical, but also makes it usable for purposes of destruction and killing.
puh (Score:2)
We control the government through whom we elect. (Score:2)
Hijackers? (Score:1)
I cling to free speech like the precious right that it is, but I can also think that those who expound useless rhetoric are morons.