9/11 four years after From: Agence France-Presse From correspondents in Washington
September 11, 2005
AMERICANS will mark the fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks nagged by new burning questions about their readiness to confront a major disaster after the debacle of Hurricane Katrina. Scenes of anarchy and neglect in the flooded southern city of New Orleans, where survivors spent hellish days waiting for troops and relief supplies, have revived a sense of vulnerability not felt here since 9-11.
Both critics and supporters of President George W. Bush are wondering what happened to the billions of dollars spent on civil defence since Al Qaeda flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon.
"If our system did such a poor job when there was no enemy, how would the federal, state and local governments have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no advance warning?" asked Republican Senator Susan Collins.
Four years after the assaults that left nearly 3,000 people dead and the world's superpower reeling, September 11 remains the defining moment for the United States in the new millennium.
It triggered wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saddled US politicians with new criteria of toughness and fostered a "with-me-or-against-me" mentality that reshaped the diplomatic landscape and strained alliances worldwide.
The city of New York will observe the now-familiar rituals the minute of silence at 8:46 am, when the first plane struck the trade centre's North Tower, the solemn reading of the names of the dead.
The only new wrinkle will be a Pentagon-sponsored "Freedom Walk" in Washington to honour US troops in Iraq in what critics called a blatant piece of political propaganda by the Bush administration.
But the country commemorating September 11 this year will not be the same.
Its celebrated war on terror is officially billed as more of an ideological struggle with Islamic extremists; its drive for security now cloaked as part of a global campaign for democracy.
Thirty months of war in Iraq have left it eager to withdraw troops, not send them into battle. Diplomacy has become the byword of a government scrambling to mend fences and cover itself with multilateral consensus.
It's no accident that Karen Hughes, a close Bush confidante now charged with burnishing Washington's image abroad, is seeking to use the anniversary to also memorialise terrorist attacks elsewhere across the globe.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed that Hughes was seeking ideas from US embassies abroad. "What this is meant to show is that we are all in this fight against terrorism together," McCormack said.
Hurricane Katrina, which left thousands feared dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in the country's worst natural disaster, has also spotlighted changes here since the September 11 attacks.
Whereas the Bush administration acted decisively with Al Qaeda, it faltered in its response to Katrina. If 9-11 produced displays of world solidarity, the post-storm relief fiasco prompted expressions of disbelief and even ridicule.
Perhaps more fundamentally, Katrina provided the Republican White House with the first real test of its elaborate civil defence program axed on a massive Department of Homeland Security. By all accounts, it failed miserably.
Experts such as James Carafano of the conservative Heritage Foundation looked at the response to Katrina and shuddered at the thought of a nuclear, chemical or biological attack that would leave tens or hundreds of thousands dead.
"We should learn from this tragedy whether we have the right kinds of resources and programs in place to provide an adequate national response to catastrophic disaster, either natural or manmade," Carafano said.
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, under intense fire for the federal response to the hurricane, has acknowledged that the measures adopted after September 11 were yet to be fully implemented.
"I'll tell you something I said a month ago before Katrina happened," Chertoff said. "I said that I thought we need to build a preparedness capacity going forward that we have not yet succeeded in doing.
