“CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” (Mad Eye Moody, a character from the HP book series)

I’ve read two-thirds of the way through the 9/11 Commission’s Report, which thoroughly reviews the events, institutions, and histories of the persons involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks. It also provides insight in the decisions of the Clinton and Bush administrations prior to and following the attacks.

With this in mind, I’ve been wondering if it would have been possible to prevent the tragedies which occurred that day. I’m not going to play the blame game and drag out the “would’ves, should’ves, and could’ves” because at this point they’re irrelevant to current counterterrorism efforts.

The reason why I say this is because the game has changed. Terrorism in the 80s and 90s, especially when it came to hijacking aircraft, involved terrorists’ demands to release their jailed comrades. On 9/11, the hijackers went beyond that and turned aircraft into missiles, forfeiting the innocent lives aboard those planes. Other terrorist strikes involved massacres to prove a point or further an ideological struggle which, in most cases, the terrorists don’t try to explain to the horrified public. Kill first, take responsibility later in the name of their god. In any case, killing someone is a given, regardless of whether or not whatever demands they make are fulfilled. One only needs to look at what’s been happening in Russia for the past week for evidence of this.

Part of me wonders how it’s possible for such human beings to exist. I pity them, more than anything. I get angry, too, because such wanton murder makes me want to lash out at similarly-aligned people who are just as determined to kill us, and yes, stop and kill them before they kill me. I realize that doesn’t jibe with Christlike behavior, but that’s the first human response I might have to a threat. It’s a response that I admit I actually like, despite what I’ve been taught and despite the fact that I know better than to react that way.

In a broader vein of thought, I don’t question that the existence of evil in this world holds a purpose, even though that purpose frequently escapes me. In light of this, is it possible for good men to physically prevent tragedies like 9/11 and the Russian school takeover? How is it possible for us to discover and disrupt terrorist plots when they have shown themselves to be patient and thorough while planning to inflict death and destruction on their enemies?

Last month, Condi Rice said, “Now, we know we have an uphill fight, because the terrorists only have to be right once. We have to be right 100 percent of the time.” (Bold emphasis mine.) She isn’t the only member of the Bush Administration to express this sentiment, which in my mind best describes the struggle we’re in.

Constant vigilance is perhaps the best weapon we have to guard against another major attack. Do I think this should involve paranoia and fear of the unknown? No. Suspicion and mistrust can only do so much when it comes to our security. We as individuals and as a nation have taken steps to ensure that a 9/11-like attack has not occurred again on our soil since 2001, while maintaining the normality of our everyday lives. Letting our guard down, however, is not and cannot be an option until the terrorists realize that their attacks are futile and concede defeat.