9/11: 20 years onLessons from 9/11
Beyond their painful human toll, the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed and continue to influence life in America in many ways. Harvard professors detail how the tragedy reshaped U.S. homeland security and foreign policy, study and treatment of PTSD, and crisis planning and management.
Beyond their vast and terrible human toll, the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed and continue to influence life in America in myriad ways. Harvard professors detail how the tragedy reshaped U.S. homeland security and foreign policy, changed the study and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), led to a nationwide overhaul of crisis planning and management, and prompted substantial new regulatory changes in rules for building and fire safety.
Homeland Security and Foreign Policy
Is America safer from attack by Islamic terrorists than it was 20 years ago or was the war on terror a failure?
Many people are asking those questions now, after the recent messy withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan and the return to power there of the Taliban. The decision to leave the country ended a costly 20-year war — increasingly unpopular in the U.S.— that was launched in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida, which had found safe harbor in the south Asian nation.
“The Taliban flag will be waving in Afghanistan on Sept. 11. That is your split screen. There’s just no question about it,” said Juliette Kayyem ’91, J.D.’95, Belfer senior lecturer in international security at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).
“But I think it’s much more complicated and unfair to our efforts” to conclude that because the Taliban was not defeated, the U.S. wasted $2.2 trillion and thousands of lives in Afghanistan. “It’s not nothing, and it’s not luck that there was no similar size 9/11 attack in the U.S. for 20 years,” she said.
Without a military presence in Afghanistan, there will be a “detrimental impact” on future U.S. counterterrorism efforts, but “we’re not back to Sept. 10,” said Kayyem.
The counterterrorism capacity and capabilities of the U.S. and our Western allies have improved over the past two decades, especially in surveillance, droning, and information sharing, and U.S. homeland security is far more robust, said Kayyem, a former assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration.
But concerns remain. The withdrawal will be viewed in parts of the Arab world as a Taliban victory over the U.S. and undoubtedly help terrorist recruitment. It will also provide political fodder for critics of U.S. hegemony and interventionism. In addition, some Afghan refugees who have difficulty transitioning in their new countries could prove susceptible to radicalization, Kayyem said.
