It is the element of surprise that so traumatised America two years ago. But should it, asks Abdel-Moneim Said Two years after the 11 September terrorist attacks and the US is no longer the same. The world, too, is a different place. So much is obvious. But it requires no small effort at analysis to understand precisely what has changed. Perhaps one of the most important features of that unforgettable day is the element of total surprise. It will continue to haunt US officials as no other national security breach has haunted them before. Perhaps the greatest source of American dismay resides in the fact that they thought they had learned something from that other notorious surprise attack when, on 7 December 1941, 353 Japanese fighters attacked the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. The assault killed 2,241 US soldiers and 54 civilians, sank 12 warships and severely damaged nine others, and destroyed 164 military aircraft and damaged 159 others. It was Pearl Harbor that galvanised Washington into entering World War II. This was not the first time US territory and possessions had come under attack. In 1812 the Anglo-French conflict in Europe threatened units of the US merchant fleet bound for France. More significantly, in Canada there were some 40,000 opponents to America's independence from Britain who had fled in order to prepare for the day when the revolution floundered and America was restored to the British crown. Regarding that hostile presence to the north as an immediate threat to their nascent independence officials in Washington declared the US at war with Britain on 18 June, 1812. As the British Isles were remote and B-52s yet to be invented American forces felt confident when they invaded Canada -- still a British colony at the time -- with the dual aim of eliminating the American opposition and of ridding the continent of its British colonial presence once and for all. Another objective was to expand the nascent US northwards after two decades of westward and southward expansion. The campaign proved an unmitigated disaster. The Canadians had no inclination to abandon the British crown and Britain had no inclination to lose more of its colonies in North America. By 1814 British-Canadian forces had destroyed the US fleet, driven the Americans back across the border, invaded New England and reached the capital, which they burned to the ground. Thus, if people believe that Bin Laden was the first to attack Washington by engineering the strike against the Pentagon they are mistaken. The British and Canadians preceded him by nearly two centuries. Nevertheless, it is the more recent of the two that has determined the direction of recent global politics. However diverse our perceptions of that day and its ramifications, there is no arguing over the fact that 11 September 2001 marked a decisive turning point in the history of the US and the world. Also, whatever our take on the motives behind the attack, the fact is that 19 Arabs hijacked four American passenger planes and crashed them into the two towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the ground in Pennsylvania, and that within two hours after the terrorist operation began more than 3,000 citizens from the world's sole superpower were dead. There were many aspects to the subsequent alarm and hysteria though the most important was the shock that came with the realisation that the US had just been attacked without the slightest warning or clue as to the nature of the beast that had descended upon them. In the American idiom, the US was "caught with its pants down". It had been too confident, too complacent. Never again, was an inevitable response. Eyes in the US and the world would no longer know sleep, rest or where to look next. Perhaps we would not have been able to appreciate the American frame of mind pre-11 September had we not followed the actions of the leaders of the US administration on that fateful morning, which began as a perfectly ordinary early autumn day. At 8am President George W Bush had breakfast in the White House. Perhaps he had a cup of coffee or a glass of orange juice on board the presidential plane bound for Florida where he was promoting education policy. Part of his programme that morning included sitting with pupils at the Emma E Booker Elementary School and telling them how reading made the nation great, while cameras rolled to record the moment. This was why the president did not have his regular 8 o'clock meeting with CIA Chief George Tennet in order to receive the latest update on intelligence gathered by the US espionage networks across the globe. Ordinarily those morning meetings lasted from a quarter to half an hour, after which the two would head off to their regular jobs, the president to run, maybe even to lead, the US, and Tennet to spy on the world in order to protect the US and sniff out new opportunities. But, as long as George W was having coffee on the presidential plane or talking to students in Florida, George T could have breakfast with his friend, former Senator David Boren (Democrat, Oklahoma) at a separate table, away from prying eyes, in the Saint Regis Hotel, which is located only steps away from the White House. Meanwhile, also at 8am, Colin Powell was sitting at a presidential breakfast table. This one, however, was located thousands of miles to the south of the US, in Lima, Peru, where the secretary of state was taking part in a meeting of the Organisation of American Nations. Powell was scheduled to meet some 35 foreign ministers from these nations, Cuba's being a notable absence. His host that morning was the recently elected Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, who was telling Powell about the advantages of the long staple cotton his country produced and the obstacles it encountered entering the US market. Other key administration figures that morning were engaged on their routine chores. Vice President Dick Cheney was already in his office at 8am, reading the latest intelligence reports. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld was at his desk in the Pentagon. And it was a perfectly ordinary morning for the rest of the American people. Anyone who knows New York and Washington knows that 8am is the height of the rush hour when hundreds of thousands of people juggle their paper-bag lunches, paper-cup coffees and briefcases as they climb aboard buses or press their way into the underground. At precisely that moment, the son of a friend of mine, Hatem Abdel-Moneim El-Mashat, woke up with a start and realised that he had shut off his alarm clock and would therefore be late for work in one of New York's hundreds of brokerage firms, his being located on the 104th floor of the northern tower of the World Trade Center. Hatem, hearing the voice of his father, a World Bank employee, lecture him about punctuality, jumped out of bed, raced to the underground and reached the World Trade Center at 8:50am. He had not had breakfast that morning. I doubt if he had breakfast for several days afterwards, stunned as he was at having been spared from certain death. About an hour before Hatem's unaccustomed late awakening the day's story began to unfold. At 7:45 American Airlines flight 11 to Los Angeles took off from Boston Airport. Two minutes later United Airlines flight 175 took off in the same direction. Seven minutes later, at 8:02, another American Airlines plane -- flight 93 -- left Washington's Dulles Airport bound for Los Angeles and eight minutes later, at 8:10, a fourth plane, United Airlines flight 77, took off from Kennedy Airport in New York headed for San Francisco. Exactly what happened on board those planes remains unknown. What we do know is that the first plane crashed into the northern tower of the World Trade Center at 8:45. Eighteen minutes later the second plane crashed into the southern tower. After another 28 minutes the third plane crashed into the Pentagon and after another 85 minutes the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. It was a nightmare and the aftermath was worse. Of importance to us here is that this surprise attack strategy had succeeded. No one in the administration that morning had given a thought to the assault that was about to descend on the US. The closest anyone came was George Tennet. Over breakfast that morning former Senator Boren asked him what worried him most. "Bin Laden," answered the CIA chief. But Tennet had long entertained concerns about Bin Laden and his Al-Qa'eda organisation. His comment that morning was not indicative of anything new except, perhaps, some unusual intensity in signals, communications and meetings, which frequently precedes a major terrorist incident, and on some vague words picked up by intelligence apparatuses to the effect that a decisive moment was being planned. To security strategists such activity was enough to cause worries but not enough to take precautions. In the wake of Pearl Harbor the US had resolved never to be taken by surprise again. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld is known to advise his aides to read Roberta Wohlstetter's Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. He asks them to pay particular attention to the forward by Thomas Schelling who cautions against confusing "unfamiliar" with "unlikely". The attack on the World Trade Center was certainly unfamiliar, but it was highly likely. No one had learned this lesson from Pearl Harbor and the price was catastrophic, not only for the US but for the entire world. * The writer is director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
