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Is America's 9/11 Commission looking into the right questions
and issues? Knowing only what is reported in the public media,
it's hard to conclude that they are. The commissioners and staff
appear to be doing a reasonable "industrial age" review
of processes. But is that enough?
The World Trade Center calamity of September
11th, 2001, is a perfect illustration of an "unanticipated
change." Then why study it as if it was or should have
been an anticipated, and thus managed, change?
All change constitutes a disruption of expectations. Anticipated
change is almost always resisted for that very reason. Positive
change is usually resisted (surprised?). Negative change is
always resisted (you're not surprised).
But unanticipated change becomes unfathomable simply because
it is far outside our "paradigm" of expectations --
so far outside that we can’t even imagine it coming. A
car wreck, or the unannounced closing of the factory, are both
examples of "personal impact" unanticipated change.
The thing that made the World Trade Center experience so disruptive
is that there simply was no way, within America's established
national paradigm, to expect such an action. Our psychic makeup
did not make room for anything so outside the box of our expectations
-- no, not even when the focusing word was "terrorism."
During the cold war, Americans discussed and anticipated the
potential that a foreign power might lob a nuclear warhead on
a US city. Appropriately, we invented early warning systems.
John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev installed a famous pair of
"red phones." We even created the concept of MAD --
mutually assured destruction -- as a way of inducing extreme
caution on the part of the chief superpower rivals (and ourselves
too).
Below the nuclear-superpower level, in terms of conventional
Cold War conflict, the US developed new agencies, equipment,
and especially, alliance relationships, chief among them the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Rio Pact, and the "ANZUS"
mutual-defense agreement with Australia and New Zealand. Even
by 1955, the military and defense "paradigm" of the
US differed drastically from anything imaginable in 1900, 1928,
or even 1941.
Paradigms are the established behaviors, beliefs and assumptions
people use to define everyday expectations. Prior to 9/11, it
was assumed that even foreign enemies would not kill themselves
as a way of delivering weapons. People believed that enemies
would have to have a certain level of technical skill and financial
resources to be able to deliver deadly force – forces
normally associated with the power of nations or states. We
expected that their behaviors would leave trails of weapons
production or acquisition that we’d be able to detect.
None of these paradigm characteristics withstood the atrocities
of September 11th. The enemy rented the weapon for the price
of an airline ticket. They taught hatred and then recruited
unskilled believers willing to die to inflict destruction on
people they’d never seen for rewards visible only through
faith, albeit unjustified or uninformed faith.
Our paradigmatic belief that you do not intentionally inflict
collateral damage on your own people was abused. The perpetrator’s
willingness to kill their own Arab and Muslim brethren, as they
killed those they perceived to be their enemies, just did not
compute.
The 9/11 Commission can ask the famous questions about "who
knew what and when" and take the analysis of process beyond
logical extremes. But, until they also take the road less known,
and begin to ask how any nation can anticipate the unanticipated,
they are leaving their job more than half-undone.
The clear pattern now visible in the embassy attacks in Africa,
the attack on the US Cole, the Madrid train bombings and others
is that the civilized world’s new enemies understand the
power of paradigms and are creative enough to think beyond such
paradigms. They send innocent children to carry bombs because
we don’t expect children to carry bombs. They send small
personal boats loaded with explosives to intersect warships
because we anticipate warships to attack warships. They send
airliners to attack commercial buildings because we don’t
expect either.
The 9/11 Commission must give attention to paradigms and then
must recognize the lack of cultural uniformity in such paradigms.
Then they must suggest ways that Congress and the Executive
can invent or otherwise develop tools for detecting and fighting
the unanticipated.
The US Congress had the Hart-Rudman report warning of the need
for homeland security BEFORE September 11th. If anticipating
the unanticipated is expected, why did Congress not heed the
warning? Because it would have been unnatural, if not impossible,
for them to have done so. They would have had to anticipate
the unanticipated, to have breached the paradigm that held us
together, until it was bruised.
Jerome F. Climer
4 June 2004
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