What Went Wrong on 9/11 Case Study

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Failures

The author of this report is asked to pick out a military or terrorist attack that has occurred since the World War II era and assess it from a case study and analytical standpoint. Specifically, there will be a focus on the failures and issues that occurred before and during the event. For the purposes of this report, the author has chosen the proverbial elephant in the room and that would be the 9/11 attacks on September 11th, 2001. The author of this report will conduct this study in four major sections, those being an overview of what happened, the pre-event and event actions that occurred, the missed indicators and the lessons learned. As with any scholarly research, any sources used for this report will be cited and given credit. While preventing terrorist attacks in general is exceedingly hard, 9/11 was entirely preventable and is a sterling example of how ineffectual and immobile government can be at times.

Overview

Of course, the events of 9/11 themselves are fairly well-known to anyone that was alive at that point. However, a decent summary will still be offered. On the fateful day in question, a total of four airplanes that took off (and were due to land) somewhere else in America were hijacked. There were a total of nineteen hijackers. Three of the planes had five hijackers while the other had four. Most of the hijackers were Saudi natives or Saudi in terms of former home or ancestry. Two of the jets were operated by American Airlines (flights 11 and 77) and the other two were United Airlines jets (flights 93 and 175). It would seem that the jets were selected in large part because the planes were basically all due to make cross-country or otherwise long trips. This would mean that their fuel payloads would be much more massive and thus would make any damage wrought by a crash all the more catastrophic. Two of the planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings, the third crashed head first (at an angle) into the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. It is presumed that the last of those four was supposed to hit a target in Washington DC such as the White House or another high-value target (CNN, 2014).

The primary actors in the case were obviously the hijackers themselves. There would also be the ancillary people that otherwise supported and funded the effort which would seem to have included the likes of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Osama Bin Laden and the rest of the major Al Qaeda operations group. Among the hijackers, the ringleader was apparently Muhammad Atta, who was on American Flight #11. The motivations of the attackers and their supporters or funders was the same as it generally is for any terrorist group and that would be to instill fear and terror in others. In this case, Al Qaeda has unabashedly spewed hatred for the West, the United States, Israel and Christianity in one form or another and hitting the United States was a way to address most of those at the same time. Issues at stake and involved would include airport security, trauma and stress for the victims and their families and the overall mood in the county at large once it was discovered that more than three thousand Americans were dead as a result of a single coordinated attack (Prokupecz, 2014).

Pre-Event & Event Actions

Speaking generally about nearly two-dozen people is not wise but the men in the attacks (there were no females) all entered the United States (many to most of them legally) and prepared for the attacks while in the United States. When the fateful day came, they all boarded their respective airplanes, somehow took over the planes and all but one of the planes ended up hitting its intended target. The lone exception was the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. Apparently, the crew and/or the passengers of the plane fought back against the hijackers and the plane ended up crashing in a rural area rather than in a populated area or the intended target for that plane. As noted before, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was presumed to be going to the same city as the one that hit the Pentagon...Washington DC (CNN, 2015).

In terms of the "level of surprise" achieved, that would depend on what one defines as "surprised" and who one is talking about. Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda brethren were spewing hatred and such for the United States dating back to the 1990's and the World Trade Center attack had been targeted before, that happening during the Clinton administration in 1993. There were other attacks on Western targets or allies throughout the 1990's including a couple of United States embassies in Africa, those being in Tanzania and Kenya.

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Those embassy attacks happened in 1998 (PBS, 1998). Even with the prior attacks (including at least one major one in the United States…the first attempt on the World Trade Center), the size and scope of the attacks and just how effective they were was a complete shock to the system for the culture and society of the United States as a whole. The political impact of the attacks was palpable because the approval rating for President Bush skyrocketed to very high levels before slowly tapering off as the shock of the attacks wore off (Gallup, 2003). There was also the fact that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars started in the next two to three years started off as being popular and well-received but support for both eroded greatly over the next decade. Bush left office with approval ratings that were quite low. When it comes to psychological impact, this was a mixed bag as well. Some people saw it as a way to band together with others and a lot of that did indeed occur after the attacks. However, the shock wearing off for the regular people caused them to return to old habits and many people turned to spewing hatred towards Muslims and/or getting too xenophobic or nationalistic. In terms of the concrete damages, there were about three thousand lives lost, the Pentagon was severely damaged, the World Trade Center itself and a couple of acres surrounding the same were damaged or destroyed and the confidence in the fight against terrorism and terrorists (not to mention any faith in airport security) was shattered on 9/11/2001 (CNN, 2015).

Missed Indicators & Lessons Learned

There are a couple of missed indicators and lessons learned that should be mentioned. First of all, the United States government had a wealth of information about the hijackers (Atta in particular) right after the attacks so it is clear that the men were on the radar of the United States government. Second, it is clear that airport security was clearly lax as nearly two dozen men were able to smuggle in something (box cutters?) that allowed them to take over the plane. Third, it was clearly not registering with enough of the right people that Al Qaeda was serious about killing a lot of people and doing so on American soil (Eichenwald, 2012). Since then, airport security has been changed (with mixed to shoddy results), the Department of Homeland Security was formed and a few other changes (DHS, 2015).

One barrier for the United States is that they refuse to engage in intentional profiling at airports. Indeed, all of the men that hijacked the planes were young Arab adult males. However, airport security is not allowed to behave as if that is a fact. Other countries/airlines (e.g. El-Al in Israel) do so without apology. However, some (rightly) point out that singling out all Arab males (or Arabs in general) would create bigger and different issues (Cook, 2010). Another barrier is that the government of the United States is so cumbersome, slow-reacting and dogged by infighting and stupid squabbles. One major weakness that was exploited is that the Central Intelligence Agency (which mostly operates on a foreign basis) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (domestic) were not allowed to share information prior to the 9/11 attacks (Washington Times, 2004). This was definitely exploited and used to the advantage of Al Qaeda. Not having a complete picture of what was going on clearly prevented the United States government from properly and fully assessing the situation. Even so, it would seem some lessons have been learned because there have not been any major attacks since then. Perhaps the worst was the Boston Marathon bombing a few years ago but the amount of deaths in that incident was nominal compared to 9/11 (CBS, 2015). Even so, airport security is still apparently very shoddy and Al Qaeda is still lurking in the ether (Bradner, 2015).

Conclusion

One major lesson learned is that while terrorist organizations do not have the resources and funds of the largest economies of the world, they are certainly more nimble, more ruthless and they are ready to strike. It would seem that….....

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