It would have made sense for Al Qaeda to strike again in the US after 9/11, but nothing has happened.
Possible reasons:
As much as people decry what Bush and Ashcroft did by rounding up several hundred people and holding them indefinitely without trial, maybe that was a significant factor in preventing an attack after 9/11.
Al Qaeda takes years to plan its attacks, so one may still be in the works. This is a bit problematic, though, because it has been almost 3 years since 9/11, and it appears that Al Qaeda has attacked in Madrid and in Iraq, so why not the U.S.?
Al Qaeda is too busy in Iraq. But wouldn’t an attack in the U.S. make more of an impact than anything they do over there?
There must be more possible reasons, but I can’t think of any right now. At the moment it seems that Ashcroft’s civil-liberties-crushing methods might have actually worked.
If they did, this leads to two questions:
a) Is it worth detaining 1000 people for a couple of years if it guarantees no terrorist attack in the US? (theoretical question, since in reality we can have no such guarantees)
b) If Gore were president on 9/11, it seems his attorney-general would not be willing to suppress people’s civil liberties as easily as Ashcroft has done, and might have let a few of the detainees go due to lack of evidence, and we might have had another terrorist attack. So, would Gore being president have increased the chances of a second attack after 9/11 compared to Bush?
Attacks of that nature take years to plan and are difficult in the best of circumstances. In addition, its a lot easier to kick a sleeping bear in the nuts than it is to kick one thats awake and at least semi-alert.
I doubt that the terrorists (for the most part) rounded up in Afghanistan have a hell of a lot to do with the lack of attacks. From what I understand, most of them are spear carriers at best. However, the ATTACKS we did in Afghanistan against the Taliban and AQ certainly had an effect of disrupting their command and control (such as it is or was).
It takes years to plan a spectacular coordinated attack…years and lots of cash. The US really wasn’t looking for such an attack before, but we are now. The terrorists know this. Thats why they have been going after low hanging fruit instead of attacking the US. I have no doubt that if they wished to do a car bombing or suicide attack in the US they could do that fairly easily…but it wouldn’t have the same impact as 9/11 had.
AQ isn’t some monolithic organization. Think of it more like a clearing house for terrorist groups. So SOME AQ associated terrorist groups are busy in Iraq, some are busy doing other things. I don’t think this is a major factor for why there haven’t been any attacks.
Would it be worth it if it did? Probably. But I doubt this is the case. Is it worth it anyway? I don’t know. As near as I can tell, most of those being detained are simply terrorist spear carriers with a small mix of schlepps that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and maybe a few Taliban wanabe’s thrown in for good measure. We’d probably be better served simply shipping them back to their various countries of origin and letting THEM deal with the prisoners (which would probably mean a bullet or a rope in many cases). The potential high profile terrorists we might have, the leaders and organizers…thats a different subject.
I doubt Gore would have done too much different up to and including Afghanistan. The most dramatic difference I think is Gore would have probably let NATO invoke its mutual defense aspects for Afghanistan. However, Gore wouldn’t have wanted to be perceived as ‘soft on terrorists’ after 9/11 either, and I could very well see any terrorist prisoners being detained in a similar fashion. After all, what COULD he do with them? THe real breaking point between Gore and Bush, IMO, would have been Gore wouldn’t have gone into or even fucked with Iraq. I’ll leave it to the individual readers to decide if this would be good or bad.
No, Gore being president wouldn’t have increased or decreased the chances of being attacked after 9/11 IMO. I don’t think Clintons terrorist initiatives were either profound, nor effective pre 9/11. Neither were Bush’s. After the fact, they would have both done similar things because a lot of that was driven by public outrage and anger. Again, the key difference would have been Iraq.
I would just like to know what would have happened if Gore had been elected. Likely he would have instituted the plan Clark had prepared and Clinton supported rather than dragging his feet so much, but we can’t be sure. It makes me wonder if that might have been able to prevent it. Certainly the information we needed to do so existed, but the difficulty was in connecting the dots. I guess we will never know though.
I think you misunderstood which detainees I was talking about. I was talking about several hundred (the exact number is unknown because the government won’t say how many) people living in the U.S. that were arrested and detained without trial, because it was feared that they were members of terrorist cells in the U.S.
So, these are the people whom I was referring to, and who could have done damage if they were not detained.
Gore or Bush wouldn’t have made much difference as far as intercepting AQ operatives within the USA. The US never was an easy terrorist target… it was just “asleep” on its watch. AQ took advantage and managed a spectacular attack… the FBI & CIA fucked up major… now they won’t let anything major slip through. Well Islamic terrorism at least… the Anthrax guy is still loose.
As for civil liberties… I don’t think supressing them helped that much. In fact it might have estranged muslims that might have collaborated with US authorities. Its not a war… its police action dummy.
Finally why waste resources and precious agents hitting mainland US ? Sorry Homeland US ? There are loads of easy to hit GIs in Iraq. The terrorists of 9/11 were mostly well educated and more western savvy… different from most AQ members who are easily hidden in Iraq.
When Clark was asked this very question, point blank, he said no. Even if they had of done everything he wanted to do, Clark still didn’t think 9/11 would have been prevented (I don’t have the cite for this available atm, but its pretty common knowledge). Reason is, under Clinton they didn’t have even a wiff of what AQ was doing IN the US either. I seriously doubt that had Gore been president 9/11 would have been averted or changed in any way. I think the major differences would have been what Gore did after Afghanistan.
Um…afaik most if not all of those people have either been released or deported back to their countries of origin…long ago in fact (the date on your cite is August of 2002). Your cite doesn’t say how many or even if any of them are still being detained at that time either, even stating that ‘many’ had been deported. I tend to doubt that 1200 people are STILL being illegally detained with no word on them. Afaik, most of those presently being detained in our base in Cuba are prisoners from Afghanistan, and maybe a few from Iraq.
If you have a cite from a major credible source (bbc, cnn, etc) stating that we are STILL holding the folks you are refering too it will be news to me.
Do you seriously believe that nothing major will ‘slip through’ because the FBI and CIA now have their act together? I think you overestimate the abilities of the FBI and CIA [btw: to the FBI or CIA agent reading this post through Echelon: “Hi”]
You must be joking, right? Had they started doing suicide bombings in U.S. malls, similar to the attack in Madrid, do you think that would not have had a major effect on the U.S. population?
Also, how long does it take to plan something like the Madrid thing? Just get a backpack, fill it with explosives made from readily available materials, go hop on a train or go to a mall, and voila.
OK, it’s not *that * easy, but I do think we are very vulnerable, since our society is so open, and it makes me wonder why nothing has happened since 9/11.
Take the FBI and CIA in perspective... before 9/11 they were more worried about their careers and didn't pay attention. Now they pay attention BECAUSE they are worried about their careers. I don't think a 9/11 size attack would slip through... in fact if they had been paying attention on AQ they would have stopped 9/11 with the info they had. Smaller scale attacks might happen for sure... still its not easy getting inside the US... and much of it has to do with police work and allies giving the US info.
Now what effect would exploding malls have on americans ? Not too sure. But thats another discussion... strategic and long term goals of AQ ? Iraq is easier ?
The Madrid explosions were coordinated and detonated with Cell phones. Not so low tech. Smuggling explosives and setting up the bombs doesn’t take years I agree… but the timing was important… but its not something you just get going in a week or two. Bin Laden has patience… Bush doesn’t.
As for an open society... Europe I feel is more open and only Spain was hit. The US isn't as free as it says it is. I say this from friends and acquaintances that lived in the US. Compared to for example South America and Europe there is way more control and vigilance... not due to terrorism... but police work... information checking... cameras. Plus there aren't that many Muslims per capita in the US. Now with higher alerts... forget easy targets.
Nothing? Well, never say never. But I ‘seriously’ believe that the likelyhood of something major slipping through has been diminished due to the fact that both agencies are now focused on the problem…and weren’t before.
Agree with RM. A car bombing or a suicide attack in a mall are possible in the US, but its not going to have anywhere near the impact that 9/11 did. And something like 9/11 takes a lot of time and effort to pull off…and thats when we AREN’T looking. We are now. So, lots of better, easier targets for AQ to go after.
How long would something like that take in Madrid…or how long would something like that take in New York? Those are two very different propositions, as Madrid was a much softer target than New York would be these days. Also, RM made a good point with having people familiar with the US. Spain has always been more accessible so therefore it would be reasonable to assume that AQ had more access to agents familiar with Spain.
Again, AQ COULD do something like Madrid here in the US, but it would have a much better chance of failure here than it did in Madrid.
It only LOOKS like we are open from the inside. If you were a foriegner trying to come into the country, it would look a hell of a lot different.
It doesn’t matter if they are still being held. What I was getting at was that basic human right were violated in the name of national security and, maybe, those violations actually did play a role in preventing terrorist attacks in the U.S. after 9/11.
Some cites that show violations of basic human rights:
“Action taken region-wide to respond to these serious challenges to security has raised grave human rights concerns, and appears to be based on the premise that the basic human rights of individuals can legitimately be sacrificed in the name of collective security,” Amnesty International said. [click]
“The report is a superb expose of how the Justice Department circumvented people’s basic rights after September 11,” said Wendy Patten, U.S. advocacy director for New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). [click]
Whether or not these did help prevent future attacks is not clear, but something did, and I’m not convinced the other reasons given are very probable.
I think those heavy handed arrests were counter productive in the long term… if there was enough info around to have stopped the 9/11… then there was enough info to locate other AQ agents. After 9/11 only one guy was considered AQ inside the US if I remember… and he was an american. That brooklyn bridge wierd story. Or were there AQ operatives among those arrested ?
If you believe Al Qaeda’s own stated strategy, another attack on the U.S. isn’t really a direct or crucial part of the plan. While some commentators in the U.S. like to pretend that Osama expected the U.S. to shrivel up and hide after 9/11 (and that we didn’t is some show of our great resolve), his actual expectation was that we would strike back, violently, putting us in direct conflict with the Middle East. He even predicted that we would invade and occupy an oil-rich Muslim nation. The point of this was so that, regardless of whether Al Qaeda itself survived, the field would be set for a confrontation between Islamist radical and the West.
While another terrorist attack on the mainland U.S. certainly wouldn’t hurt their cause, and I don’t doubt that they will try again, it’s not really a priority in their grand, century long strategy. 9/11 served its purpose, and the major failure of their vision was not the US response, but rather the lack of broad support in the Muslim world for the sort of uprising they were hoping would take place. In fact, if anyone is not playing according to the Al Qaeda script, it’s Muslims. They are more pissed than ever at the US, as was the plan, but relatively few of them really desire open conflict or the creation of a ME-wide religious movement.
But I should also say that, in a broader sense, the main reason we don’t see more terror attacks is simply that the kind of psychosis required to actually want to go out and kill as many civilians as possible is very hard to find outside of warzones like Palestine. And when you do find it, often the individuals have other mental instabilities that make them rather shoddy planners and plotters. It’s one of the most relieving things about modern civilization: that given how EASY it would be to plan a massive murder of civilians, it’s almost astonishingly surprising how rare it is that any individual actually tries it. I almost scared myself when I started thinking about all the ways I could create massive devastation, most likely without getting caught: but I was quickly relieved to think that there is probably a high correlation between people like me who would know HOW to do something evil and could probably carry it out, and people also like me in that the thought of it makes me sick, almost no matter what the political or moral cause. That is, the engines of civilization that create the means and knowledge to carry attacks out also tend to, well, civilize people at the same time.
As for picking up shifty characters before and after 9/11: Bush campaigned against racial profiling of Arab men in 2000, and thus won a substantial portion of the Arab vote. Which, needless to say, he isn’t likely to win this time around.
I think if Gore was PotUS, two things would have been significantly different. All IMO, natch:
When the White House finally had evidence in January 2001 that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the USS Cole, Gore would have made an effort for a military strike (if not a full-blown war) in response. He might or might not have gotten approval to do so (depending on how obstinate Congress would’ve been), but he wouldn’t have ignored the matter for fear of “emboldening” the terrorists.
When the PDBs were surfacing about al Qaeda activity in the US during the summer of 2001, the Gore Administration would have “shook the trees” to see if they could have uncovered any information about the plot. It worked for Clinton, after all; and while there’s no guarantee of success, it wouldn’t have hurt to try.
And to address the OP, it’s worth remembering that even though al Qaeda hasn’t attacked the US directly since 9/11, they’ve hardly been inactive – remember the nightclub bombing in Bali?
I guess that nobody is counting the anthrax mailings as a post-9/11 terrorist attack on US soil. BTW, how is the FBI investigation of that case going, Mr. Ashcroft?
Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, one of the top people in al-Qaida and now residing in a U.S. prison, has said that the speed of response of the U.S. caught al-Qaida offguard. There were a series of attacks planned for the west coast of the U.S., but the organization was knocked off-kilter enough that it couldn’t put it together.
I would hope that even you Bush haters would admit that he did pretty good in the first months after 9/11. American bombs were falling on Afghanistan within three weeks after 9/11. There was a ton of pressure on Bush to engage in further negotiations with the Taliban - hundreds of thousands protesting in London, various Arab countries protesting, etc. But he stood firm and hit them fast and hard.
Also, I have heard more than one security specialist say that John Ashcroft is the unsung hero of the War on Terror, and that the Patriot Act is one of the most powerful tools the U.S. has. Ashcroft laid down a number of indictments after 9/11 and broke up several terrorist cells in the U.S.
