9/11 at 10: A Long Walk Home

In the early days after 9/11, people in the public policy world spoke with disdain about “September 10th thinking.” By that, they meant thinking that failed to take seriously the threat of terrorism. But whenever I hear that phrase, I recall what was on my mind on what we now refer to as “the day before.”

I spent September 10 on a 20-hour flight home to Washington, D.C. from Durban, South Africa, the site of a major international meeting designed to confront not terrorism, but another evil: racism. The first UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance had just concluded, and as I prepared to head in to my office on Capitol Hill on the morning of September 11th, the outline of new work – “the post-Durban agenda” – was taking shape in my mind.

But I never made it to work that day. As I was leaving to drop my kids off at school, the phone rang. It was my sister in England calling to make sure I’d made it back on my connecting flight through New York the night before. “Something’s happening in New York,” she said. We spent the rest of the day together in front of the television, stunned and confused, heartbroken and angry, and wondering what would happen next.

Several days later, I was part of a standing-room-only crowd gathered at the Stewart Mott House across from the Supreme Court. Groups as diverse as Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and Norman Lear’s People for the American Way had come together in an emergency session to mourn the loss of life, call for unity, and urge fidelity to the values of human rights and civil liberties on which the country was founded, and from which we knew there would be strong temptation to stray. As our nation’s leaders grappled with how to respond to the attacks, this ad hoc group quickly unified behind a statement of principles we urged the government—and the American people—to embrace.

Ten years later, we are still dealing with the consequences of the failure to adhere to these principles. If you had asked those of us gathered that day what our greatest fears were about potential reactions to the attacks, we might have mentioned internment, increased surveillance, and martial law. Even in the days right after 9/11, I don’t think any of us believed that several years later the president of the United States would be asserting publicly the power to seize anyone anywhere in the world, hold them in secret CIA prisons and interrogate them using torture tactics rejected by our own military as inhumane and unlawful. I guess we lacked imagination.

One of the tragedies of the last 10 years is that so much of what was done in the name of fighting terrorism actually exacerbated it. Yet the framework of a Global War on Terror has proven a difficult paradigm to shift. Looking at the resilience of the Bush Administration’s approach, it’s tempting to conclude that former vice president Dick Cheney — who asserted that these policies were part of a “new normal” —was right. Guantánamo is still open, we are still denying terrorist suspects basic rights, and the 1,700+ prisoners at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan enjoy even fewer rights than those at Gitmo.

Despite all this, it’s important to recognize how much progress we’ve made. President Obama rejected many aspects of the previous administration’s approach to fighting terrorism, including its embrace of torture. But the killing of bin Laden rejuvenated the debate over torture and exposed the fragility — or, more accurately, the lack — of an anti-torture consensus in the United States. Polls show that support for torture has increased over the last few years; a slim majority now favors it under some circumstances. And several of the leading GOP presidential candidates say they would, if elected, make torture official U.S. policy again. That’s why we enlisted General Charles Krulak, former commandant of the Marine Corps and a leader of our retired military coalition, to set the record straight in this ad.

We need to protect the progress we’ve made and prevent further damage. This fall, Congress will consider the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would compound some of the worst aspects of U.S. counterterrorism policy. The House version would empower the president to wage a “counterterrorism war” anywhere in the world. (President Obama has pledged to veto any bill that contains this provision.) The Senate version of the NDAA would keep Gitmo open indefinitely by making permanent the prohibition on transferring prisoners — even those who have been cleared for release (the majority of those still at Gitmo). By requiring terrorism suspects to be held in military custody, these bills also would make it likely that more prisoners would be sent to Gitmo.

If vastly expanded presidential war powers and the indefinite detention of detainees at Guantánamo without any possibility of transfer become the new normal, it will be a giant step backward—and go a long way toward proving Cheney right.

After the revelations about waterboarding and secret CIA prisons, Bruce Springsteen wrote powerfully about American ideals, and our failure to live up to them:

You know that flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't
It's gonna be a long walk home.

Today, we’re joined in that walk by a group even more diverse than the one that gathered at the Mott House in those days right after 9/11. It includes General Krulak and a coalition of nearly 50 of his fellow retired generals and admirals—men and women who have devoted their lives to protecting national security and who believe, as we do, that respect for human rights makes us safer, and stronger.