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Airport security shortly after 9/11
Something mentioned quite often is the changes that happened to airport security
shortly after 9/11. Overlooking the obvious need for changes after such an event,
prior to 9/11 you could simply walk into an airport shortly before a flight, buy a
boarding pass walk through a metal detector and be on a plane to your destination.
No taking off your shoes or jewelry, the process was very lax (Schaper, 2021). If you
have been to the airport recently you will see the drastic shift that has taken place
since the times prior to 9/11. Some of the newer technologies that are implemented
in the airport include facial recognition, biometric screenings, and Backscatter
passenger scanners (Ibid). Another major change that happened at airports after
9/11 was the creation of the TSA, or the Transportation Security Administration.
Established on November 19th 2001 as part of the Aviation and Transportation
Security Act, the TSA was created to "Protect the nation's transportation systems to
ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce." It is in all airports in the
United States and staffs over 60,000 employees (TSA.gov, n,d). While many people
who travel complain of the inconvenience of having to go through a TSA checkpoint,
it is without doubt a vital piece of our infrastructure protection that will help keep this
country safe from terrorist attacks, such as the one that happened on 9/11.
The changes that have been made to protect our critical infrastructure obviously
assist in keeping this country safe, however they are counter measures, that
unfortunately came a little to late. Similar to the attacks on Pearl Harbor there was
absolutely evidence that radical Islamic Terrorists were capable of attacks on the
United States. The most obvious evidence of this was that the radical Islamic
terrorists had already previously attacked the trade center in 1993. This attack took
the lives of six, while injuring over a thousand, the attack was later linked to multiple
terrorists from the Middle East who attacked the United States over its policy and
support of Israel (FBI.gov, n,d). In the early 1990s as the CIA followed leads on
radical Islam, they seemed to keep hearing the same name over and over again,
Usama Bin laden, it was said by many in the Intelligence community that he
"appeared to be at the center of a lot of activity." (Marrin, 2011). Obviously Usama
Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would eventually take claim for the 9/11 attacks (Ibid). On
February of 1998 Usama Bin Laden declared a 'fatwa' which is a ruling on the law of
Islam, made by a recognized authority. In this fatwa he stated "The ruling to kill the
Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every
Muslim who can do it in any country" (Hoffman, 2006, pg. 95). Shortly after this
'fatwa' simultaneous suicide attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
took place, killing only twelve Americans, but over two hundred natives (Ibid). In this
same fatwa Bin Laden also mentioned "Jihad is an individual duty if the enemy
destroys the Muslim countries" (Hoffman, 2006, pg. 95). The term Jihad translated
literally means "Striving, but contextually more often then not it refers to "holy war"
(Hoffman, 2006, pg. 91). Even with all of this knowledge available, over the course of
two presidencies (Clinton and Bush) the information was overlooked. Dahl states the
main reason for this was the need for specific information on the plot itself, with the
decision makers willingness to listen to these warnings stating "Without tactical-level
intelligence on the plot itself, policymakers were left with only warnings of smoke but
no sightings of fire." (Dahl, 2013).
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I think Dahl words this very well, and the imagery of 'smoke but no fire' really does
help the reader understand the perspective of those in charge of the nations
response. With that being said I think that after the nations inability to react to
'smoke' has gone so poorly over the course of this nations history we are learning
from our mistakes. In the case of Pearl Harbor we let our guard down, with a sense
of arrogance thinking that an attack from the Japanese was not plausible even with
much evidence pointing to the contrary. In the case of radical Islam we knew that
they were willing to attack our country as shown by previous attacks not just on the
United States, but all over the globe. It seems that each time a devastating attack
falls on our country we are left having to pick up the pieces, but learning from our
mistakes. After Pearl Harbor our production boomed to meet the demand of our
military, with some saying it was the biggest war production ever seen, with a drastic
shift from peacetime industry to manufacturing plants for weapons and military
equipment (Vergun, 2020). As previously mentioned the change after 9/11 was a
drastic shift in the importance of our critical infrastructure protection, mainly our
airports.
Word Count : 831
References
Dahl, E. J. (2013). Intelligence and surprise attack: Failure and success from Pearl
Harbor to 9/11 and beyond. Georgetown University Press.
FBI. (2016, May 18). World trade center bombing 1993. FBI. Retrieved August 5,
2022, from https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/world-trade-center-bombing-
1993
Hoffman, B. (2005). Inside terrorism. Columbia University Press.
Marrin, S. (2011, May 20). WWW-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.liberty.edu. The 9/11
Terrorist Attacks: A Failure of Policy Not Strategic Intelligence Analysis. Retrieved
August 5, 2022, from https://www-tandfonline-
com.ezproxy.liberty.edu/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2011.604198
Mission. Mission | Transportation Security Administration. (n.d.). Retrieved August 5,
2022, from https://www.tsa.gov/about/tsa-mission
Schaper, D. (2021, September 10). It was shoes on, no boarding pass or ID. but
airport security forever changed on 9/11. NPR. Retrieved August 5, 2022, from
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/10/1035131619/911-travel-timeline-tsa
Vergun, D. (2020, March 27). During WWII, industries transitioned from peacetime to
wartime production. U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved August 5, 2022, from
https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/2128446/during-wwii-
industries-transitioned-from-peacetime-to-wartime-production/
