Osama bin Laden is dead. There has been enough chest-thumping to go around, and perhaps rightly so. After all, the man who is more responsible than anybody for the state of America right now—the symbol of and the brains behind the worst attacks on American soil in our country’s history—was finally made to pay for the lives he took.
But, amidst all the chanting of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” few are asking the hard questions. Ten years after the attack, are we safer? Have we rid the world of terrorism? After billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of lives lost—including bin Laden’s—have we accomplished anything?
Is air travel safer? There are more pat downs, X-rays and plainclothes police, but people on the “no-fly” list still get on planes. Is the country more prepared for an attack? There is the NSA and a greater cooperation between the intelligence-gathering groups, but our borders are wide open. Are Al Qaeda and the Taliban gone, or at least weakened? Every time we drive them from a place, they seem to simply wait until we leave to come right back, strong as ever.
The problem that some people are having with America’s reaction to the news of bin Laden’s death is that we seem to have learned nothing. Sure, it is a monumental event. But, we lost the message. We never asked why the attacks happened. We didn’t look at the underlying conditions that make terrorist propaganda so effective – things like crushing poverty, lack of education and dearth of prospects. We didn’t look at how our foreign policy might play into the hands of terrorists. We went to war before we learned anything. To paraphrase Wayne Coyne, we tried to use a crane to crush a fly. The problem is, the crane, although a million times more powerful, will never be as quick as the fly.
In so doing, we did exactly what bin Laden and his cronies wanted. He often said that his goal was to draw America into a war it could not win that would drain it of lives and money. He must have been supremely satisfied when he realized that he had drawn us into not one, but two wars that have done just that.
Ultimately, the problem is that terrorism cannot be fought by fighting. Fighting only fuels it. Until we address the roots of the problem, we will never be safe. The war on terror will continue to be conducted like a gardener pulling off the top of the weeds but leaving the roots.
I was a sophomore in college on September 11, 2001. I woke up that day and walked to my early-morning literature class. My girlfriend at the time was sitting outside with a few other classmates, and when I reached them, they told me that a plane had run into the World Trade Center. The second plane hadn’t hit yet, and we assumed that a pilot had fallen asleep, or something had gone wrong with the plane. By the time I left the class and got back to my dorm room, it was clear that something was wrong. People were everywhere, crying, trembling, everyone on phones. My roommate had the TV on, and I watched with horror as they replayed the buildings falling down. It is impossible to describe that moment. Reality split in half. It was soul shattering. I called my parents. It was almost a reflex—everyone in the entire dormitory was on the phone with someone in his or her family. We needed each other at that moment. I remember pacing the hall outside of my room, telling my father that I hoped our first reaction wouldn’t be to attack. Imagine how powerful it would be, I said, if we reacted with peace. Not peace for the terrorists—we would obviously have to track down the people responsible. But, imagine if our reaction was to say to the world that we would not become a part of this violence, that we would not legitimize the killing by creating more of it. The girl who lived across the hall came out of her room and called me a douche bag.
I’m still not sure I wasn’t right.
