9/11: 20 years onReflecting on September 11, 20 Years Later
Steven Simon, a counterterrorism expert: “[R]esilience is futile if counter-terrorism policy devolves to yet another partisan tool. Of all challenges, terrorism is mostly likely to spur a dangerously excessive reaction while degrading the state of American politics if the two parties have not cooperated on building and implementing effective defenses. If politics are too broken to permit such preparedness, then a successful strike against the U.S. will be more likely, the partisan blame game more poisonous, and an appropriate response far more difficult to engineer.”
The 20th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, is an occasion to look back on the American response to the atrocities, how and why they occurred, and what the implications are for future global policy dealing with terrorist groups. The long war in Afghanistan, a war-torn country that harbored Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and the subsequent war in Iraq took hundreds of thousands of lives, among them several thousand American military, and ushered in a global war on terror that by most reckonings has had doubtful results.
Steven Simon, the Robert E Wilhelm Fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies, is one of the people who observed the unfolding of the war on terror from the vantage points of the White House staff and as a scholar and writer. He served as the National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa during the Obama Administration and as the council’s senior director for counterterrorism in the Clinton White House. These assignments followed a 15-year career at the U.S. Department of State. Between government appointments, he worked in the private sector and in academia. He comes to MIT from Colby College, where he was professor of the practice of international relations. Simon has co-authored books on the U.S. response to 9/11, including The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right, which was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and listed among the best books of the year on this topic in The Washington Post and Financial Times.
In this interview, Simon reflects on the 9/11 catastrophe, and offers some advice on where we can go from here.
Center for International Studies: Looking back at events leading to September 11, it is often noted that a lack of communication between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation contributed to the execution of the attacks. Based on your experience at the White House before 9/11, do you agree that this was the most significant intelligence failure?
Steven Simon: As with many surprise attacks, 9/11 entailed an interlocking series of both intelligence and policy failures. (Cont.)
The 20th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, is an occasion to look back on the American response to the atrocities, how and why they occurred, and what the implications are for future global policy dealing with terrorist groups. The long war in Afghanistan, a war-torn country that harbored Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and the subsequent war in Iraq took hundreds of thousands of lives, among them several thousand American military, and ushered in a global war on terror that by most reckonings has had doubtful results.
Steven Simon, the Robert E Wilhelm Fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies, is one of the people who observed the unfolding of the war on terror from the vantage points of the White House staff and as a scholar and writer. He served as the National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa during the Obama Administration and as the council’s senior director for counterterrorism in the Clinton White House. These assignments followed a 15-year career at the U.S. Department of State. Between government appointments, he worked in the private sector and in academia. He comes to MIT from Colby College, where he was professor of the practice of international relations. Simon has co-authored books on the U.S. response to 9/11, including The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right, which was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and listed among the best books of the year on this topic in The Washington Post and Financial Times.
In this interview, Simon reflects on the 9/11 catastrophe, and offers some advice on where we can go from here.
Center for International Studies: Looking back at events leading to September 11, it is often noted that a lack of communication between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation contributed to the execution of the attacks. Based on your experience at the White House before 9/11, do you agree that this was the most significant intelligence failure?
Steven Simon: As with many surprise attacks, 9/11 entailed an interlocking series of both intelligence and policy failures. (Cont.)
