9/11 and Counter Terrorism

This assignment is requesting information on domestic counterterrorism, major errors that were made, my personal take on 9/11, and if there is anything we can do to prevent future attacks.

Should the attacks of 9/11 have been prevented?

My personal thought is no. Let me explain, to prevent the 9/11 attack we need to go back to 1998.

Before 9/11 there “was no credible Anti-Terrorist Strategy until 9/11. This should have been in place after the first bombing of the World Trade Centre by Islamic radicals and the attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998” (Hoffmann, 2004, para. 1). When the attack took place in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and we were aware that it was Bin Laden, who was behind these attacks, we should have acted appropriately to eradicate him and his infrastructure by taking massive, swift, permanent, take no prisoners action from 1998 – 2001.

Therefore, I believe that we should have been able to cripple Bin Laden infrastructure, by eliminating Bin Laden, by removing his leadership we would have forced his infrastructure to regroup, or postpone any type of plans they had in place. Therefore, we should have used armed predator aircrafts, Special Forces, and continuously “bombing their training camps, and not allowing them to regroup” (Hoffmann, 2004, para. 6), and this should have taken place in 1998 – 2000. Our former President(s) missed this opportunity, as well as the “CIA executives who were responsible for such operations” (Hoffmann, 2004, para. 6).

Major mistakes and errors that we made

I think the mistakes we made came from every department. There were mistakes and errors made by bureaucratic mismanagement and by others who were supposed to be monitoring chatter and other leads of a...

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...rism not now or ever, and we will never forget our fallen from 9/11.

References

Bell, A.M. (2013). Colorado Technical University: CJUS675 - 01 Special Topics in Criminal Justice, Professor Michael Railey. Retrieved from DB 2

Bell, A.M. (2013). Colorado Technical University: CJUS675 - 01 Special Topics in Criminal Justice, Professor Michael Railey. Retrieved from IP4

Counter-Terrorism: History, Strategy and Tactics (n.d.). Retrieved from http://globalfocus.org/GF-Counterterrorism.htm

Hoffman, H. (2004). Retrieved from http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/terrorism/hubertus-hoffman/9-11-could-have-been-avoided-but-only-very-soon-starting-1998-

Hurlbert, H. & Lamond, J. (2011). p. 2. Lessons in counterterrorism ten years after 9/11: what works and what doesn’t. Retrieved from http://spi.typepad.com/files/lessons-in-counterterrorism-ten-years-after-9-11.pdf