Many people think that tempering the national response to a terrorist event is impossible; they assume that we’re not like the British and the Israelis. I disagree. We’re slowly learning. As we saw in the aftermath of the horrific shooting spree at Virginia Tech, the media frenzy surrounding an event must be contained lest we give a madman his last wish for infamy and inadvertently inspire copycats. Initially, the media couldn’t resist twenty-four-hour coverage of that horrible carnage — and indeed, it was an important news story. But after plastering Cho Seung-Hui’s self-produced multimedia manifesto all over the networks for a day or two, most media executives realized they were serving the killer’s wishes and pulled the images. It’s a step in the right direction. In their response to domestic terror, the American media has begun to realize the significant impact they have on our national safety. I think Americans can and will learn to measure our responses to international terrorism as well, and in so doing effectively disarm those who seek to destroy us.

That said, let me be clear: we must never underestimate the very real threat of radical Islamic terrorism, led by al Qaeda. I’ve spent the better part of the past thirty years in counterterrorism work, and I’m fully aware of the special dangers this phenomenon poses. Our enemies have demonstrated both the intent and the capability to do us grave harm, and their leaders have repeatedly proven themselves impervious to reason. We must never bend to their will. Instead, we must prevent them from gaining the ability to sustain conventional bomb attacks or acquire a weapon of mass destruction. We do this by methodically strangling the terrorists’ organizations around the globe, primarily through intelligence operations — not through large-scale warfare or massive social programs. Undercover agents, informant networks, and phone and e-mail intercepts are the most effective weapons we have.

We’ve made significant progress in containing the strategic threat from al Qaeda since 9/11. Thus far, they’ve failed to hit in the U.S. homeland again, and their impact on Western nations has been limited to two attacks by associated franchises in London and Madrid. But the broader movement is alive and well; it’s attempting now to rebuild a strategic capability. The reemergence of al Qaeda in western Pakistan is especially troubling. The bomb-making capability being developed in Iraq is also frightening, as is the unrest in Islamic enclaves from Birmingham, England, to Jakarta, Indonesia. I’m sure al Qaeda’s leaders are preparing their next attack right now. We must stay one step ahead of them.

Fighting terrorism is not unlike fighting a cancer: early detection is crucial, followed by aggressive eradication of the offending cells. Crushing the cell requires an offensive strategy, but defensive, deterrent, and response strategies are also important. Some critical infrastructure, such as commercial aviation, requires special security measures with a “zero defects” approach. In other words, there’s no room for error in protecting our nation’s most vulnerable and valuable assets. But defensive strategies must be carefully thought through so they don’t bankrupt our treasury while providing only marginal increases in security.

What have we learned since 9/11?
Before 9/11, we underestimated al Qaeda’s lethal determination. We also completely failed to recognize that they were planning direct attacks on American soil. Previous attacks on our foreign embassies and the USS Cole were conducted far away from home. Americans were largely detached from these tragedies and seemed to forget about them as soon as the dust settled. Americans were comforted by the arrest of Algerian-born, bin Laden–trained terrorist Ahmed Ressam as he attempted to cross the Canadian border with a carload of explosives in December 1999, but we failed to heed this important interdiction as a portent of things to come. How did we miss the signs that a very lethal threat was creeping closer? We simply underestimated the geographic reach of al Qaeda and its ability to operate in the United States, and we misread a changing, globalized world that requires a much more effective unification of domestic and international intelligence. For these and other reasons, we were asleep to the al Qaeda threat, allowing the terrorists to strike a tremendous blow on September 11, 2001.

After underestimating the threat prior to 9/11, the overreaction that followed was predictable, but not inevitable. By failing to understand the context of the organization, its very strengths and weaknesses, we magnified our mental image of terrorists as bogeymen. We thought they were hiding under every rock with a cunning lethality that would allow them to strike at our open society with virtual impunity. The anthrax attack that came shortly afterward fueled the nation’s fears and feelings of vulnerability. The thought of a terrorist group getting its hands on a weapon of mass destruction became even more daunting. But just as we failed to recognize the scope of al Qaeda’s reach prior to 9/11, we were unable to see the clear limitations of the organization after the fact. Nobody would have dared to predict that six years later, longer than the entire Atlantic and Pacific campaigns of World War II, al Qaeda would not have had an opportunity to attack us again. It was impossible to know that they’d be absolutely unable to conduct even one follow-up attack or even forge a credible plot (in which an actual weapon was acquired or constructed) within the United States.

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