The failure to Prevent 9-11 :: essays research papers

Failue to Prevent 9/11   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When a giant explosion ripped through Alfred P. Murrah federal building April 19,1995, killing 168 and wounding hundreds, the United States of America jumped to a conclusion we would all learn to regret. The initial response to the devastation was all focused of middle-eastern terrorists. â€Å"The West is under attack,†(Posner 89), reported the USA Today. Every news and television station had the latest expert on the middle east telling the nation that we were victims of jihad, holy war. It only took a few quick days to realize that we were wrong and the problem, the terrorist, was strictly domestic. But it was too late. The damage had been done. Because America jumped to conclusions then, America was later blind to see the impending attack of 9/11. The responsibility, however, is not to be placed on the America people. The public couldn’t stand to hear any talk of terrorism, so in turn the White House irresponsibly took a similar attitude. They con centrated on high public opinion and issues that were relevant to Americans everyday. The government didn’t want to deal with another public blunder like the one in Oklahoma City. A former FBI analyst recalls, â€Å"when I went to headquarters (Washington, D.C.) later that year no one was interested in hearing anything about Arab money connections unless it had something to do with funding domestic groups. We stumbled so badly on pinpointing the Middle East right off the bat on the Murrah bombing. No one wanted to get caught like that again,†(Posner 90). The result saw changes in the counter terrorism efforts; under funding, under manning, poor cooperation between agencies, half-hearted and incompetent agency official appointees and the list goes on. All of these decisions, made at the hands of the faint-hearted, opened the doors wide open, and practically begged for a terrorist attack. So who’s fault is it? The public’s for being 2 96304812 unaware, uninterested, and inadvertently the driving force behind American Democracy? No, of course not, that would be a completely ridiculous idea. In the events of September 11, 2001, the United States Government, by ignoring signs of a terrorist attack and continuous blunders in American intelligence, failed to accomplish one of their basic responsibilities as a governing body: keeping us safe.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  September 4, 2001, just a week before the attack on the World Trade Centers. A teletype regarding known facts about a suspected Islamic extremist, Zacarias Moussaoui, was sent to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Customs Service, the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Services, and the Secret Service.