IS JUSTICE NECESSARY OR A FACADE?
War is conflict between two nations or groups of nations where one side is trying to assert control over the other. A crime is an offense committed by an individual or group of individuals that when apprehended is punishable by law. To recognize the difference between crime and war is to understand justice through a lens of equity versus dominance. Some people may believe that 9/11 was an act of war because of the sheer destruction it caused and the declarations of war by Al-Qaeda against the American people. Others may take a step back from the emotions 9/11 stirred and understand that the way it was handled could have benefited by using our justice system rather than extraditing people to extract information out of them. Not only is there no technical way to declare war on an organization, but it is also useless when trying to fight terrorism. Terrorism is an ideology which is what makes it so difficult to understand in terms of justice. Having said all of this, our current method of dealing with terrorists through our criminal system is not adequate. The failures the US had in enabling Al-Qaeda as an enemy of war only spurred on the idea of defeating a superpower rather than exterminating terrorists. If we had treated 9/11 as a crime, we could have not only benefited from our justice system but also cut off the power Al-Qaeda had in twisting our emotions. 9/11 should be considered a crime that was misconstrued as an act of war because we need to learn from our mistakes of waging wars to resolve conflicts and attain justice instead.
We should have treated terrorist attacks in America as a crime to create unity within the FBI and the CIA together instead of pitting them against each other. It is important in America to uphold our moral values because that is what we are founded on. If we waver just because we are at war, then they were never our true values in the first place. Tom Petrowski said that it important for America to take the high road in situations for terrorism. If we always go behind the backs of other countries, it sows distrust and creates a divide between superpower and other. He agreed that in all situations we should try to convict terrorists because that is the valuable way to do things no matter how difficult the situation is. These ideas could have been better handled if our CIA and FBI were cooperating with the same goal in mind. Before the attacks on 9/11, the discourse between the CIA and the FBI prevented them from being able to collect vital information from Middle Eastern countries and connect the dots. “Colemans mission, as an FBI agent, was to gather evidence with the eventual goal of convicting Bin Laden of a crime. Scheuer, the CIA officer, had determined that the best strategy for dealing with bin Laden was simply to kill him…” (274 Looming Tower) These warring opinions created discourse on what to do with the information that each organization was given. How can the CIA fight international terror on a domestic front? Simply put – they can’t. There needed to be an understanding that the CIA cannot just do this alone, which is why the tense relationship between Scheuer and Coleman (“two men most responsible for putting a stop to bin Laden and Al-Qaeda” represented, “an emotion that reflected the ingrained antagonism of the organizations they represented” (275 Looming Tower). The CIA is responsible for crimes outside of the country while the FBI handles the domestic front. There needs to be organizations that fills that gap between the two otherwise there is a disconnect for crimes that is orchestrated outside but targeting the inside. One of these organizations is the DNI. They, “Establish objectives and priorities for collection, analysis, production and dissemination of national intelligence… Oversee coordination of relationships with the intelligence or security services of foreign governments.[1]” This organization was created after 9/11, but it would have been useful in the unity of the FBI and the CIA. Another organization that Tom mentioned which could be even more useful to the idea of transparency is the Joint Terrorism Task Force. It is an organization made up of groups of people from different federal organizations that come together to help prevent crime, not prosecute it. This allows for connections to be made across US organizations to share and cooperate with each other to build trust. Not only does the melding of these organizations central ideas allow for justice for the lives that were lost (such as money for the families who’s loved ones were lost in 9/11) but it also shows the rest of the world that the US isn’t a Superpower greedy to turn countries into military states for them to rule. With these new entities, we are now focused on preventing terrorism rather than waiting for a plane to hit another building.
It is not viable to consider 9/11 an act of war because terrorism does not encompass one state. Terrorism occurs all over the world and it is grouped together by ideology not borders. An example of this is our withdrawal in Afghanistan. “Two decades after invading Afghanistan the United States is withdrawing leaving chaos in its wake and the country much as it found it 20 years ago…the Taliban don’t just control Kabul but the whole country…we are doing the same thing year after year after year and expecting a different result.”[2] (Retro Report) We used the excuse of calling 9/11 an act of war to go into Afghanistan to focus on getting revenge on the people who harmed them. The United States lost 3,000 soldiers and 43,000 Afghans were killed in the war against Afghanistan. The US governments’ full retreat erased the efforts they made to extinguish terrorism. How can we prove that declaring war is useful against terror when we went to war to prevent the Taliban from coming into power and yet after we left that is exactly what happened? This was not only shown by the American people’s frustration but also the boots on the ground. When Abner Wahab came into to talk to our class about his time in the military, he explained the frustration many soldiers have between what the politicians want versus what is right for the foreign country. He believed that we shouldn’t have retreated from Afghanistan but should have come up with a better strategy plan for how to interact with the Afghan people. If the US government did not jump into Afghanistan for the sole reason of trying to get back at Al-Qaeda, the US could have made some real change. Another thing to think about when declaring war is, if the US does declare war on terror – how does the US government go about implementing that? President Bush highlighted in his speech that, “I also want to speak tonight directly to the Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith… Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.” If he truly believes this, how will he declare war on all Middle Eastern Islamist countries that have terrorists in them? This not only creates a sense of divide between religion but also brings xenophobia into the landscape of America.
Military intervention is one of the governments tactics in acts of war, but history has shown this does not work and eventually makes the situation worse. We have seen history repeat itself from the Cold War to our Invasion of Iraq in 2002. A reflection between the US history and other governments history in relating to calling terrorism act for war is the Soviets invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. “The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, hoping to install a friendly communist puppet government… the US would be the primary supporters of the mujahedeen throughout the 1980s.” (Ch 4 Change) The chaos that was created with the implementation of soviets in Afghanistan, propelled the mujahideen to fight to push them out of their country. When the Soviets retreated, it made the fighters feel so powerful that they wanted to create an organization that would keep Islamic countries safe from the secular superpowers. From the withdrawal of the Soviets, we saw the seeds of Al-Qaeda planted in the minds of religious extremists. This repetition is seen not only in Afghanistan with the US’s withdrawal, but also in Iraq. We went to war with Iraq because we suspected that they had WMDs (Public Law 107-243), yet that ended in failure leaving the people of Iraq in civil war between the Sunni and Shia and an even stronger hate for the people who came in to help Iraq in the first place, the US military. Using military intervention will never be helpful because it makes the civilians of these Middle Eastern countries hate the people who intervened more than their oppressors. They don’t see the change that the soldiers are trying to make, they only see the aftermath of death and destruction. We analyze history in order to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen over and over again. But the emotions and anger of being attacked on domestic land blinds the US government from taking a step back and implementing attacks on countries that are effective and don’t end up hurting us in the long run.
When we use the argument of calling 9/11 an act of war, this justifies the US government to be able use their “last resort” for information – Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. The US should never waver from their values and least of all in times of so-called war. Even a CIA spy agrees that “I… do not support torture as a means of information gathering. Also, after what I’ve experienced, I do not believe torture works.” (10 The Unexpected Spy). Not only is it unethical, but because these terrorists want to be known as martyrs for their cause, this method is completely ineffective when prosecuting extremists. “Defense lawyers want all information from FBI interrogations excluded as tainted by torture, arguing that their clients had been conditioned by that point to provide answers that would please their interrogators.” (Trial Guide: the Sept. 11 Case Guantanamo Bay) That’s why this isn’t truly a “last resort” for the US. It’s a justification to use violence against these people because of the harm they caused. If the US was truly trying to get justice, then the only way to do that through breaking through the wall of distrust between its law enforcement agency to process evidence that can be presented in the courts. The US would be able to convict terrorists and gather important pieces of information that could potentially save American lives. “One line of thinking proposes that America’s tragedy on September 11 was born in the prisons of Egypt” (61 Looming Tower). Not only is torture ineffective for extracting information but it also breeds discord in the people that is used on. If we want to change history for the better and utilize what history is telling us, then torture is not the answer.
The US would have been able to succeed better if we had taken a step back from our emotions and really saw this attack for what it was. A crime that never truly got justice. The adversarial nature of the relationship between the FBI and the CIA, the inability to declare war on an ideology, ineffective military invention, and using torture to get intelligence were all factors to show that 9/11 should have been treated as a crime. It is vital to keep ethics on the forefront of our decision making because without it, we are no different than the ideals of hate that we are trying to dismantle military response to the 9/11 attacks led to decades of war.