The enemy within: America has done more damage to itself than terrorists could ever dream of

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/09/2011 (5204 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I stood belt-less, watch-less and shoe-less on the far side of the X-ray machine at Pearson International Airport in Toronto waiting for my carry-on computer bag to rejoin me for the trip home from a summer vacation. Then, a snag.

The conveyor belt moved forward just enough that I could see the nose of my bag poking out from the darkness of the X-ray chamber, and then it reversed. Forward, backward. Where there had been only one guard scanning the monitor, now there were three. They were pointing and whispering.

Finally, a guard walked over just as my bag appeared and asked if she could look inside. She opened zippers, pulled back flaps and sorted through the gum wrappers, restaurant receipts and tangle of phone and iPod charging cables that populated my bag. Then, after what seemed like an extraordinarily long time, she found it.

Using just her latex-encased thumb and index finger, she pulled out an oddly shaped object made from two pieces of metal, each about 10 centimetres long. They were hinged at one point, and spring-loaded so that the two pieces pinched together. It looked like an absurdly large pair of tweezers.

Turning it over and holding it up to the light, the security guard inquired, “What is it?”

“A capo,” I answered, and proceeded to explain that it was a device used to pinch off the strings on the fret board of a guitar to change the pitch of whatever you were playing. I had taken it with me on holiday, along with an electronic tuner, in the hopes of playing a borrowed guitar at the odd bonfire. It is a device employing what is in essence mouse-trap technology.

“Oh,” the security guard said with a deeply furrowed brow. She continued studying it, turning it over and over again and glancing quizzically at her fellow guards, still standing at the monitor. They shrugged at her, and she shrugged back.

“Tell me again,” she said. I repeated its purpose and even demonstrated how it worked.

“OK,” she said and handed it back and waved me on my way.

I was happy to be free of the ordeal. And yet, as I hustled to my gate, I was struck by a deeply disturbing thought.

It should probably be said up front that I am not an expert in rigging weapons from everyday items. I cannot say with any certainty that a capo could be repurposed into a device that could launch a projectile, or that it could function as an integral part of a larger weapon. I expect it could be used for torture, especially if you inserted a delicate part of someone’s anatomy into the spring-loaded pincers.

And yet, there was absolutely no way for security to know whether my innocuous capo was an ingredient in some evil plot. Despite all that, she gave it back to me.

 

The assignment was to provide commentary on how the world has changed since 9/11. In keeping with my natural tendency to seek complicated solutions to simple problems, and an affinity for answering questions with questions, I began to write down what I believed to be more pertinent, salient questions.

How has the world changed in the last 10 years, and how much of that is due to the fallout from 9/11? How has Canada changed in the last 10 years?

I started seeking out any and all commentary about how the world had changed and whether it was due to 9/11. I found very mixed results.

There is an assumption that 9/11 has changed the world forever. The obvious signs of change were certainly there: two bloody wars; terrorist-attack aftershocks in some of the world’s largest cities; a rise in xenophobia and an erosion of legal rights and freedoms in western democracies; an escalation of hostilities in the Middle East.

But outside of Tokyo and Paris and London and New York, has life changed all that much?

The legacy of 9/11 that most of us continue to experience is the farcical security theatre we endure at airports and border crossings. We are told to remove all metal items when we go through security and despite not knowing what they are or how they might be used in concert, security officers give them back to us on the other side of the X-ray machine. We continue to be prevented from bringing a 750-ml bottle of fine British Columbia wine in our carry-on luggage on a flight from Vancouver to Winnipeg, despite the fact we are allowed to bring hundreds of millilitres of other liquids in smaller containers as long as they fit inside a plastic bag. On my last trip to Toronto, I managed to get just more than 700 millilitres of liquids and gels inside that plastic bag.

To date, I refuse to transport wine in that manner.

 

In Canada, it is assumed our world changed since 9/11. Our role in the war in Afghanistan is a seminal moment in Canadian history and has changed the way Canada sees the War on Terror, international relations and itself. The loss of so many Canadian soldiers turned us from glib and somewhat naive bystanders of America’s war with Osama bin Laden to deeply affected, active participants.

We’ve seen profound change manifest from that shift already. When it was learned that Canada turned over Afghan prisoners to Afghan officials with the knowledge they would likely be tortured, the country more or less shrugged. I believe that had it not been for the loss of Canadian lives in Afghanistan, Canadians would have taken a more principled approach to the issue of torture. Or perhaps the cumulative impact of the hyperbole of the War on Terror had already convinced us that all is fair in war.

What about other manifestations of change?

Government is less willing to discuss its business, whether or not that business has anything to do with national security or the War on Terror.

And our legal rights and freedoms have been compromised. Police in Toronto arrested hundreds of protesters at last year’s G20 summit without legal cause. This is a trend directly attributable to the 9/11 mindset. Residents of most western democracies have been convinced over the last 10 years that their governments need powers that trump traditional rights and freedoms. This includes Canada.

There has been a shift in federal government priorities. A recent report by the Rideau Institute found that Canada spent an additional $92 billion on national security since 9/11. Spending on border security has gone up 177 per cent, while the CSIS budget grew 134 per cent.

However, it’s important to note that this was a decade of massive increases in federal spending. Overall federal government spending went up 70 per cent during the past decade. And the big-ticket items in the federal budget, such as transfers to the provinces for health and social services, went up 264 per cent. Transfers to individuals, including Employment Insurance and children’s benefits, doubled.

Despite the shift in funding to military and security files, Canada’s economy thrived for much of the last decade, growing at robust rates and producing government revenues that allowed for significant debt repayment and tax relief. Would any of the billions transferred to security files have been used to augment health care, lower taxes even further, improve government benefits, retire more debt?

Except for paying down more debt, it’s unlikely any of the other things would have happened if Ottawa were not compelled to augment security.

 

As we approach the 10-year anniversary, it appears more and more likely the greatest changes in our world have had little to do with 9/11.

With financial markets around the globe tumbling, it appears increasingly likely we are witnessing the decline and fall of the American empire and the end of the era of super power politics.

It is more than a bit ironic that Wall Street, the heart and soul of the American system of free market capitalism that Osama bin Laden sought to symbolically destroy in 2001 by bringing down the World Trade Center, has itself done more to bring the U.S. to its knees than any terrorist plot. The very same people who occupied offices in and around Ground Zero in New York City engineered an implosion of the U.S. economy so profound, it threatens to plunge America into decades of economic and social mayhem and in the process re-shuffle the world order.

In terms of the order of magnitude, the self-made American financial crisis and the damage it has done to the American economy and psyche has eclipsed the visceral wounds of 9/11. The economic crisis is being felt in every community in every corner of the world. That is not a statement that can be applied to the terrorist attack in New York City and Washington, D.C.

Some may suggest that 9/11, its accompanying military conflicts and the cumulative costs of those conflicts set the stage for the economic woes America is experiencing now. It is perhaps more correct to note that the War on Terror and its multitrillion-dollar price tag left America less able to protect itself from the sub-prime mortgage crisis and subsequent evisceration of equity markets. It is not hard to imagine that America might have shielded itself better from the deep recession that gripped the world in late 2008 were it not for the horrendous cost of its wars.

It is also not hard to imagine that, unburdened by the cost of the War on Terror, American lawmakers would have just cut taxes.

 

Change is hard to identify and assess because it’s happening all the time. The cause and effect between something like the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 and everything that’s gone on in the world in the last 10 years is hard to establish. The world was destined to change. Why it has changed is very much up for debate.

Despite the unconscionable spending on security and the military, progress has been made in addressing some of the world’s biggest problems. There are fewer hungry people in the world. The spread of HIV/AIDS has slowed. The planet is becoming better at organizing to combat the spread of killer influenza strains.

We have not made enough progress in any of these areas to claim victory. And perhaps we could have made more progress if we all decided that feeding people and making them healthier were more important than chasing Islamic extremists to the farthest corners of the Earth.

The question I’m left with is not how the world was changed by 9/11, but how much more change, and change for the better, could we have had without 9/11?

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca