As I’m reading the 9/11 Commission report, I’m constantly frustrated by the frequent opportunities the U.S. had to stop Usama bin Laden before the September 11 attacks. We were stopped by small things like a lack of logistical support for covert operations or our standing national policy against assasination. These things seem so petty in hindsight. Those in charge seem guilty of lacking the political will to act. I keep feeling like I’m reading a story with the end written first, and the lead-up written as one long flashback. I keep wanting to yell to the key players, “They’re all going to die in the end unless you do something!”
Fast-forwarding to the present, our country is engaged in a lot of practices in our efforts against terrorism that draw legitimate questions from within our borders and throughout the global community. I’ts been recently revealed that the CIA has a network of prisons worldwide at which the United States ‘detains’ people without trial and uses questionable interrogation methods. I stand in a long line of people claiming to abhor that practice. But I can also imagine reading about the next attack in another commission’s report and wondering why we didn’t do more. I can imagine wondering why we were so squeamish when innocent lives were on the line and why we lacked the political will to act when so many lives were in danger. For now, I’ll suspend judgement and not choose a position for or against our government’s practices. Questioning such practices is healthy. Specifically, I ask you this question: How far is too far in trying to stop evil? It’s a classic ethical question with very observable outworkings. Are we going too far now? Should we have gone further before September 11, 2001?
I’ll keep reading the commission’s report. But I know how the story ends, and it saddens me. They all die.