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Former US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff discusses counterterrorism
For Michael Chertoff, former US secretary of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009, the fact that America has not experienced a single attack by foreign terrorists since 9/11 proves that the US was "successful" in its strategy to prevent terrorism. That "was not [an] accident and there was a deterrent effect to be honest — had we been lax, more would have tried." Although he admits the US government wasn't transparent enough about the intelligence it was collecting, Chertoff credits US intelligence agencies with helping to foil the plot to blow up airplanes mid-air from Heathrow to the US in 2006. The US mission in Iraq, or what came after was not clearly thought out, according to Michael Chertoff, who served as the Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush. The Iraq war made it difficult to focus on the US mission in Afghanistan and absorbed resources that could have been used more effectively elsewhere, he said.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Is America safer since 9/11?
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- Former top US official regrets Iraq becoming 'magnet' for terrorism ... ›
- Is America safer since 9/11? - GZERO Media ›
Former top US official regrets Iraq becoming 'magnet' for terrorism
If Michael Chertoff has one regret from his tenure as US secretary of Homeland Security (2005-2009), it's Iraq. He says the US-led war there not only distracted from Afghanistan, but the unclear mission and lack of post-war planning ultimately turned Iraq into "a magnet for all kinds of attacks on Americans, that absorbed more resources, more attention, and more patients." Watch his interview with Ian Bremmer on this episode of GZERO World.
Watch the episode: Is America Safer Since 9/11?
- Is America safer since 9/11? - GZERO Media ›
- Is the US safer from terrorism 20 years after 9/11? - GZERO Media ›
- 9/11 in America - GZERO Media ›
- Former US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff discusses counterterrorism - GZERO Media ›
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- 20 years since the Iraq War: Lessons learned, questions raised | Ian Bremmer explains - GZERO Media ›
- From Iraq to Ukraine: Reflections on "wars of choice" - GZERO Media ›
- The cost of war: Senator Tammy Duckworth on what we owe veterans - GZERO Media ›
With US out, will Afghanistan become a greater terrorist threat?
While the US has gotten a lot better at counter-terrorism since 9/11, many bad guys are still out there — and the Taliban victory in Afghanistan has given them a huge morale boost. "They will see this as they did, indeed, the ISIS victories in Syria and Iraq, as a sign that they're on their way back," says former UK diplomat Rory Stewart. "Whatever we think about Afghanistan, nobody should be concluding that there are no terrorist threats." Watch his interview with Ian Bremmer on this episode of GZERO World.
Watch the episode:Is America Safer Since 9/11?
Is America safer since 9/11?
20 years have passed since 9/11, but is the US any safer? As the Taliban regains control in Afghanistan, was the War on Terror a failure or has it kept America safe from harm? And how did US allies feel as the last American planes left Kabul? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to two people who have had a hand in crafting global policy since the towers fell: Michael Chertoff, who served as Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security under President George Bush; and Rory Stewart, who worked extensively in Afghanistan in his role as UK Secretary of State for International Development and beyond.
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- Enter China, exit policeman: How the world has changed since 9/11 ... ›
- The Graphic Truth: The cost of America's post-9/11 wars - GZERO ... ›
- Former top US official regrets Iraq becoming 'magnet' for terrorism - GZERO Media ›
- Former US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff discusses counterterrorism - GZERO Media ›
Hard Numbers: 9/11's enduring toll
25 billion: Both the public and private sectors have invested around $25 billion to reconstruct New York City's Ground Zero, including the 9/11 memorial, transforming the area into a popular tourist destination. Two remaining projects could put the bill over $30 billion.
3.1 million: It took first respondents and volunteers a collective 3.1 million hours of labor to clear 1.8 million tons of debris from Lower Manhattan after the hijacked planes flew into the Twin Towers. The cleanup effort ended on May 30, 2002.
3,000: Nearly 3,000 children lost parents in the 9/11 attacks, the bulk of whom lost fathers (86 percent). While many were too young to remember their parents, here they talk about their own resilience and how they try to keep their parents' legacies alive.
1,106: The remains of 1,106 people killed on September 11, 2001 — roughly 40 percent of the Ground Zero death toll — have never been identified. For two decades, medical examiners have been performing DNA tests on 22,000 body parts recovered from the wreckage hoping for matches so that families can conduct some sort of burial for their loved ones.
20 years since 9/11 attacks
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi everybody. It's the 20th anniversary of 9/11 coming up real soon, and I thought I'd give you a few thoughts about it. I was here in New York, like so many of us, when the planes flew into the towers. It was shocking. I was in our offices in Midtown at the time. At first, of course, everyone thought it was an accident. And then suddenly it became quite apparent it was not. And it was a gut punch. It was a feeling that the world had changed inextricably even if you didn't know exactly how.
I was scared. I was angry. I certainly wanted the country to take action. And I was quite happy, as I think most Americans were, when we had a leader that promised to bring those who attacked our Homeland to justice. We also didn't know what else was out there. Were there other terrorist attacks? I mean, there were aircraft, fighter jets, American fighter jets that were sort of buzzing around New York for the next several days. And every time you heard one, you immediately sort of thought, "oh my God, was this another attack that was coming?"
And at the same time, there was a concern that the United States, whenever you have a big crisis, you focus overwhelmingly on that crisis and that means at the expense of other things. I mean, the idea of not supporting the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan was almost inconceivable as an American at that point, or as any American ally around the world. And you'll remember even the Russian government, which we weren't happy with at that point, they didn't like us at that point, it was of course still Vladimir Putin, but nonetheless offered for the United States and for NATO to use bases in Central Asia, which never would've happened without Putin's approval, to facilitate logistics for the attacks in Afghanistan.
So, it did feel like the world was coming together. I mean, we, of course, all stood up and applauded as the fire trucks were coming back and we all could smell the dust in the air for months. It was even Thanksgiving. You could still smell. And you knew that there were thousands of dead bodies that were in that debris from downtown. And it was hard. It was hard to go down there. It was hard to walk past, even years after, the actual site itself. Now, we're 20 years past this and we're going to talk a lot on the day about Afghanistan and the end of the war. But I think that it is important to remember that the United States did come together after it was attacked. And the country felt like a country. It felt like it was rallying around values that mattered.
And it is so unfortunate that both the war in Afghanistan's mission became so diffuse and expanded and bad and wrongheaded. And then the war in Iraq, which was wrongheaded and misguided and actively misled from the Bush Administration leadership from day one, that so much damage was done over the course of decades, that Americans now much more fundamentally mistrust the idea of the United States providing security around the world. I mean, I think that the level of opposition for the US being involved in support for nation building internationally has decreased significantly. I think the value that Americans see in military alliances has decreased significantly. And I think that's unfortunate because those things matter. Because as deeply divided as America is right now, the values that the United States and its allies ultimately support are values that would do good for poor human beings around the world, especially compared to the alternative.
Now, the challenge is, of course, that all of those values, when they are harnessed to a military superpower with a strong military industrial complex, tend to operate through that lens. And so, as much as it is true that the United States improved the lives of a lot of young Afghan men and women and gave them opportunities over the last 20 years they wouldn't have otherwise had, it's also true, the war in Afghanistan was overwhelmingly damaging on the ground to towns and villages across that country. And the US would have been vastly better off, as would the planet, if most of the effort had not been focused on the war. Fight terrorism, fight Al Qaeda, but spend more of your money and engage more of your people and actually trying to improve the wellbeing and understand the wellbeing of the people on the ground.
And this is definitely a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water, that the United States in fighting ultimately failed wars is also much less interested in other people around the planet. And that is a lesson we do not want to learn from having now ended the war in Afghanistan. I'm a supporter of having brought the war to a conclusion 20 years on, but I'm not a supporter of forgetting about the people in Afghanistan. Even once we get the remaining 100, 200 American citizens out, the hundreds of thousands of Afghans that fought with side-by-side the NATO coalition, the hundreds of thousands of Afghans that worked with the Americans and the coalition, we have a responsibility to. And also a country that we've spent that much time on the ground in and that much time both supporting and also damaging, it can't just leave you. So I do think that the lesson of 9/11 ultimately should be both resolve, but also compassion.
The United States remains today by far the most powerful country in the world. A 20 year ultimately failed war in Afghanistan does not change that. And being the most powerful country in the world also creates a sense of obligation, a sense of responsibility, a sense of stewardship. Maybe one that we weren't as aware of as we should have been before those planes attacked civilians in the United States almost 20 years ago, but one we need to do a better job of going forward.
So that's the way I think about 9/11, 20 years on. And I hope we can all take a moment of silence to reflect on that on the day. And I hope everyone's doing well. And I'll talk to you real soon.9/11 in America
The great Spalding Gray once wrote that he had fled his native New England for Manhattan because he wanted to live on an "island off the coast of America," where human nature was king, and everyone exuded character and had big attitude." I've now lived in New York City for 35 years, and I know what he meant. Manhattanites are Americans, without doubt, but they're suspicious of patriotic displays, and they like to keep the rest of their country at arm's length.
But 9/11 was different. All of us in the city on September 11, 2001, remember that day's clear blue sky, the time it took to understand and absorb the shock of what was happening at the World Trade Center that morning, and then the horror unfolding around us. But the response of ordinary New Yorkers was unlike anything seen in this city since the end of World War II.
Within hours of the twin towers' collapse, lower Manhattan was closed to all but first responders, city officials, and reporters. The compulsion of many New Yorkers to do something, anything, that might help someone drove thousands down the island's West Side Highway on foot to come as close to the wreckage as we were allowed, to pass bottles of water to anyone who needed one – and to cheer for the exhausted and traumatized police and firefighters passing in both directions through the barricades in cars and trucks.
New Yorkers of every description saluted, shouted their gratitude, and blew kisses to police. That's not something you see every day. That's not something you ever see. I saw it, and I won't forget it.
A few weeks later, I was in the back of a taxi heading home from a friend's place downtown, a 6.7-mile ride that covered 105 city blocks. I lost count of the American flags I saw in apartment and shop windows across our "island off the coast of America."
That surge of patriotic pride and good feeling swept the nation. In the weeks after the attacks, President George W. Bush enjoyed a 90-percent approval rating, the highest ever recorded by Gallup. Even those who would never vote for Bush supported him in that moment of trauma. It was a rare moment of American unity.
It didn't last. The War on Terror that followed continues to divide America, as we saw again last month during the chaotic exit from Afghanistan. But there was a moment after 9/11 when it felt like all Americans were living in the same country. Even us arrogant New Yorkers.
A lot has changed in 20 years. American politics, always rancorous, has grown dark and increasingly bitter.
On Saturday, as we mark the 20-year anniversary of that shocking, humbling day, we should consider this question: How would Americans respond if the nation were attacked again tomorrow? Would we, could we, unify, even for a few weeks? Or would the culture-war-driven political dysfunction that has dominated American politics in recent years divide our national response?
If so, Americans have lost much more than we realize.
Political transformation 20 years after 9/11
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, shares insights on US politics:
Two decades later, in what ways has 9/11 shaped US politics?
Well, I think if you can go back in time from today to late 2001 and early 2002, people then would be surprised to learn three things. The first is that the Taliban were back in charge of Afghanistan. The second is that Iraq can transition to a relatively stable democracy. And the third is that after 9/11, there were no future foreign-planned major terrorist attacks against the United States. This last piece of information will particularly surprise people, and they'd also be surprised to learn that the major threats facing the US were largely domestic political instability and a rising geopolitical conflict with China, which had just become an open trading partner of the US just before the 9/11 attacks happened.
As a result, Americans have largely moved on from 9/11 and while huge majorities think that September 11th attacks were the major historical event of their lifetimes, it's having a smaller political impact in the US than either the aftermath of the global financial crisis or the election of President Donald Trump. The most visible impact from 9/11 has probably been the security theater that Americans have come to live with at airports and other public venues. And Americans still haven't resolved issues over acceptable levels of government surveillance into their private matters, even while they've given up more control of their privacy to tech companies that didn't really exist anywhere close to their current form in the year 2000.
Probably the biggest change between then and now is how the US might respond to a future terrorist attack. It's important to remember that George W. Bush was a deeply polarizing figure coming out of the 2000 election, which was very, very close. Decided by fewer than 800 votes in the state of Florida and ultimately, settled by the Supreme Court. Since that time, most policy issues are seen through a much more deeply polarized lens, and this wasn't really the case in 2001. As a result, you had enormous support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Congress, which took many years for members of Congress to start to repudiate as they caught up with the polarization in the public. Today, you've got much more political outsiders in Congress who might take a different view around rallying 'round the flag to fight a war in a foreign land, and you also have a lot more diverse voices in the media, which would probably complicate efforts to have a cohesive national response to a terrorist attack like this.
So, in many ways, it's surprising how little an effect 9/11 has had 20 years on now that the war in Afghanistan has ended. Obviously, that's different for military families and others who have sacrificed over the years in order to keep America safe, but today's political landscape has really transformed from what it was in the days after the attack.