Homeland Security: Based on Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower” Essay (Critical Writing)

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Introduction

In the book, “The Looming Tower” by Lawrence Wright, it is very apparent that legislation establishing a Department of Homeland Security did not transfer to DHS existing government intelligence and law enforcement agencies but envisioned an analytical office utilizing the products of other agencies (Homeland Security: Intelligence Support). Therefore, Wright’s writings are actual and factual, which makes this book very powerful. “There is a passivity and distinct lack of moralizing in this book that adds to his power. Wright does not seek to castigate Bin Laden or any of the individual Islamists but lets the facts speak for themselves.

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Indeed, what this book does is take the Bin Ladens of this world out of the fantastical domain and bring them back down to what they truly are – individuals with emotions whose vision of the world has changed over time and been altered by the course of events. There has been a danger as the vocabulary of the War on Terror becomes all-consuming to forget that those key proponents of terrorism are human and not otherworldly characters from some nightmare.

Indeed the 21st century cult of celebrity has enveloped Bin Laden and co in ways that can only add to the fear he and his network can perpetuate. This book redresses the balance somewhat by personalizing the characters and making the forces that drive them that bit more fathomable” (Penguin, 2006). Therefore, Wright’s book presents facts and truths that cannot be denied by the United States, CIA, and FBI, which indicates they were blind to the events that led to September 11.

Discussion

Wright’s arguments pertain to the idea that the United States was very blind to the events that led to the terrorist attacks of September 11. With that, it can be argued that if security measures were taken then, these invading security measures they have now would not be necessary. “Wright, a longtime staff writer at the New Yorker, builds his tale of these men on hundreds of interviews with their family members, childhood friends, and professional associates; extensive travel through the Middle East, Asia, and Europe; and a library-sized bibliography of his own, including key primary source materials translated from the Arabic.

In scrutinizing these figures, he humanizes them, showing us their quirks, strengths, and flaws. We see how distant adversaries mirror each other, their respective organizations at times reeling from vicious infighting, at others galvanized by renegade leadership. The illumination of these men in their complexity clarifies our sense of the people and politics that detonated the seminal event of our time” (Follman, 2004).

There have been many news stories over the last couple of years concerning the current administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping and “sneak and peek” operations. This seems to be an invasion of privacy even though the government has the good intention of putting a lock down on terrorism. The United States still needs its privacy in order to live a normal life. The government does not have the right to invade someone’s privacy because other people had broken the law. Wright points out that Homeland Security was not prepared for the attack of September 11, 2000. The book suggests the United States would not have to take these security measures if they would not have been blinded to the signs of the terrorist attack.

• Over the course of the year, the CIA enhanced intelligence collection capabilities near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and worked closely with host liaison services against key terrorist targets in the region. Arrests and raids foiled several terrorist plots. (“Support to the War on Terrorism and Homeland Security”).

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This can further protect Americans from terrorist attacks. Some criminological theories have been put into effect and use to reconstruct the criminology framework by exercising in the prison setting. For example, in prison, they surveillance the criminals so that they understand that the police have empowerment over them. This causes the prisoners to effectively control themselves so that they can be better controlled and rehabilitated by the prison. If people are under surveillance more, it is more than likely they will behave themselves and fewer terrorist attacks will occur, which makes this idea very feasible.

Within society, the statements that are made by the government authorities are true because they are the power among people, which gives them more control and the authority to define crime. By using this power, police can have the upper hand on crime and criminals due to the fact that people become intimidated by those who have power over them. In other words, the law was made for the police and criminal justice to gain and maintain power over society. When people believe there is a power that can restrain them, they have more self-control in order to avoid others who look down on them and embarrassment. Furthermore, the law was made to give society structure under the government. However, Wright’s book can help to argue that these measures would not be necessary if they had paid attention

“On March 9, 2006, President Bush Signed The USA PATRIOT Improvement And Reauthorization Act Of 2005. Since its enactment in October 2001, the Patriot Act has been vital to winning the War on Terror and protecting the American people. The legislation signed today allows intelligence and law enforcement officials to continue sharing information and using the same tools against terrorists already employed against drug dealers and other criminals.

While safeguarding Americans’ civil liberties, this legislation also strengthens the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) so that it can better detect and disrupt terrorist threats, and it also gives law enforcement new tools to combat threats. America still faces dangerous enemies, and no priority is more important to the President than protecting the American people without delay” (USA PATRIOT Act).

However, Wright’s argument can be refuted by the fact that within society, the statements that are made by the government authorities are true because they are the power among people, which gives them more control and the authority to define crime. By using this power, police can have the upper hand on crime and criminals due to the fact that people become intimidated by those who have power over them. In other words, the law was made for the police and criminal justice to gain and maintain power over society. When people believe there is a power that can restrain them, they have more self-control in order to avoid others who look down on them and embarrassment. Furthermore, the law was made to give society structure under the government.

TTIC appears to be designed to assume at least some of the functions intended for DHS’ information analysis division. Representative Cox, chairman of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, has welcomed the establishment of TTIC while noting that “The establishment of the Center in no way reduces the statutory obligations of the Department [of Homeland Security] to build its analytic capability.13” Making the DCI responsible for TTIC will facilitate its ability to use highly sensitive classified information and TTIC can expand upon the relationships that have evolved in the CTC that was established in CIA’s Operations Directorate in the mid-1980s.

According to testimony by Administration officials to the Senate Government Affairs Committee on February 26, 2003, TTIC will in effect function as an information analysis center for DHS, and DHS will require a smaller number of analysts with less extensive responsibilities. Subsequent Administration testimony indicates that DHS will receive much of the same intelligence data from other agencies and will undertake analysis. A key distinction is that DHS is not responsible for the information relating to threats to U.S. interests overseas (Homeland Security: Intelligence Support).

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Even though this act helps law enforcement to reduce terrorism threats, it gives them the freedom to tap into anybody’s personal information just on a hunch rather than actual fact. Unfortunately, as a society, police need that empowerment over criminals so that they can feel a little imitation when they are faced by them. This works because society as a whole does not want to be looked down upon and will control themselves in public to avoid embarrassment.

“During the camp’s early months, interrogators could gain access to personal health information (and did so to set limits on practices that might put detainees’ health at risk) but did not use psychological assessments of individual subjects. Conventional army intelligence doctrine has been unsympathetic to such input: it has relied instead on a mix of standard interrogation methods meant to appeal variously to subjects’ insecurities, pride, and fears, within constraints set by the laws of war. (5)

But by late 2002, growing frustration with the slow pace of intelligence production at Guantanamo led to calls from commanders for innovative tactics. Major General Geoffrey Miller, who took command of Guantanamo in late 2002, approved the creation of a “Behavioral Science Consultation Team” (BSCT, pronounced “Biscuit”) in order to develop new strategies and assess intelligence production. A principal BSCT function was to engineer the camp experiences of “priority” detainees to make interrogation more productive” (“Doctors and Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay). The government can be more effective because people are extremely self-aware when being watched and will behave when they know they are being indirectly controlled.

The Intelligence Community will review its current capability to gather human and technical intelligence on terrorist organizations and make recommendations, as necessary, to expand its recruitment, training, and operations. The Intelligence Community will continue its comprehensive effort to acquire new reporting sources, then use those sources to penetrate designated terrorist organizations to provide information on leadership, plans, intentions, modus operandi, finances, communications, and recruitment. The law enforcement community, using the leverage provided by our criminal justice system, will continue its efforts to identify and locate terrorist organizations operating at home and abroad (GOALS AND OBJECTIVES).

From there, these events could have been prevented, however, Wright focused on the fact that the government and CIA were blinded by what was being planned. Wright focused on the following facts, which further proves that they had opportunities to capture Laden and other leaders if they paid attention.

By exposing al-Qaida’s clash with America, Wright also helps us see the road beyond it. His work reminds us that the consequences of the Iraq war, massive deficit spending on security and the military, and the degradation of America’s moral standing fit bin Laden’s goals. Indeed, when bin Laden’s organization officially trained its mass-murderous sights on the United States in the early 1990s, Wright explains, “al-Qaeda’s duty was to awaken the Islamic nation to the threat posed by the secular, modernizing West. In order to do that, bin Laden told his men, al-Qaeda would drag the United States into a war with Islam — ‘a large-scale front which it cannot control” (Follman, 2006).

According to Islam, the foreign policy of the United States has developed over the past five years present many flaws. This is due to the fact that there is a sense of evangelicalism that has fueled the biased view of Islam (Benjamin 2007). General Jerry Boykin, who is a representative of the American foreign policy told a church group that he was sure America would prevail in the struggle against Bin Laden because “my God was bigger than his.” Boykin has made his viewpoints in an effort to rally support for the war in Iraq

Five years after the attacks, the United States may still be unable to track down bin Laden, but Wright helps us continue to track down who he really is. His portrait of the elusive Kalashnikov-toting terrorist builds on an already well-documented background. As a young man, bin Laden held a post in his family’s Saudi Arabian construction empire. He later enjoyed high-level contacts in the CIA and Saudi royal family as a jihadi leader in Afghanistan’s war against the Soviets. By the early 1990s, living in exile in Sudan, he ran a sizable farming operation while cultivating followers for his nascent war on the West (Follman, 2006).

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From there, the reader can relate to this book because America has been in a time of war. The United States has appeared to be a world “superpower ” for decades however this foreign policy needs to be “revamped” to meet the needs of the international community.

From there, it is apparent that the United States foreign policy has to change in order to fit European views on the war on terror, which was created to due terrorism attacks on this country on the day of September 11, 2001, if the United States is to continue playing the Superman card with that knowledge, people can relate to this book because Americans have had to experience wartime due to the decisions that political figures had made, which gives him the right to express his imagery of wartime and how America has missed many opportunities to capture Laden.

The full story of how America’s intelligence agencies failed to stop 19 men from turning four commercial jetliners into precision missiles may never be known. But enough details have surfaced to prompt the largest overhaul of the intelligence business since the United States first made it an institution during World War II. The turf wars among the CIA, FBI, and NSA, long legendary to insiders, increasingly have come into public view over the last few years. The documented examples of bureaucratic infighting and politicization that allowed the 9/11 attacks to barrel forward are multiple and gut-wrenching. Wright adds to what’s known of the tragedy largely from the perspective of the FBI (Follman, 2006).

When it comes to the war on terror” the United States begins a new round of undertaking in untouched soil. However, instead of forcing its power onto the nations, the United States should adopt its foreign policy to this region by understanding its dynamics. By doing this, they could have captured Laden if they paid attention to those ideas.

Soufan, who Wright describes as “a highly caffeinated talker, with a hint of Lebanon,” was one of only eight Arabic-speaking investigators working for the FBI in late 2000. He had earned a master’s degree in international relations before signing up. As Wright tells it, Soufan’s expert interrogation of suspects in Yemen — using empathy, smarts, and knowledge of the Koran, rather than any kind of harsh physical abuse — is alone a powerful argument for targeting terrorists with the traditional tactics of American law enforcement. Not only did Soufan crack open the Cole case, but he was also closing in on at least two of the future 9/11 hijackers — though he would come up excruciatingly short. It may have stood as America’s best chance, Wright concludes, to stop the attacks on New York and Washington (Follman, 2006).

From this evidence, it is apparent this book should be considered as good reading material because of the vivid wartime imagery, which helps people to relate since they have experienced the effects of battle and September 11. Everyone has beliefs about the events that occurred before and after September 11. and, Wright’s book shows that many people were correct about what the United States government failed to do to prevent the horrible event.

Therefore, it gives support to those people who suffered or believe what really happened on a fatal day. With that, support, as a construct, has been defined as a sense of belonging, specifically among peers, teammates, community, or family members. People who have strong social support/low isolation exhibit higher levels of resilience and lower levels of aggression. People are also less likely to be suicidal if they perceive their family, friends, and peers to be more accepting in life, and if they have more positive friendships, which can be reflected in a school setting. Those who feel supported by counselors, parents, or peers and have things that they can relate to literature exhibit healthier coping mechanisms and maintain a more positive outlook about their future.

Religious zealotry, poverty, repression, and cheap weapons are critical elements for any terrorist group, but in the hands of a charismatic leader, they can foment a formidable movement. That’s how millionaire Osama bin Laden revived an archaic form of Islam to confront contemporary Muslims, modernity, and Western culture. Lawrence Wright richly describes the people and events, including mismanaged U.S. intelligence information, which led to numerous attacks on U.S. interests – culminating, of course, in the destruction of the World Trade Center.

This disturbing book explaining the prospects of a long-term jihad has all the elements of a crime thriller, except it is real. getAbstract considers this essential reading for anyone interested in terrorism, current events and how the forces of radical terrorism hope to shape the decades ahead “(Get Abstract, 2006).

It is apparent that for people, the lack of positive adult support and communication from parents, teachers, pastors, or coaches leads to increased behavior issues in the classroom, which can consist of them being destructive. Additionally, if the outlook of adults were more positive, people will be more comfortable seeking support without fear of ridicule or rejection. Furthermore, the result of more positive adult support would result in an increase in self-confidence and comfort with themselves, which will reduce aggressive behavior.

The conceptual framework will be that with more social support from family, churches, and teachers, adolescents will contribute to a lower rate of behavior problems, which may need therapy. From there, without support, aggression will turn into destructive behavior.

From there, in this book, a socially supportive environment was presented to those with theories about September 11, and Bin Laden, which helps them to cope with the horrible events. Socially supportive environments were presented as pattern interpersonal relationships mediated through shared values and sentiments as well as facilitate the performance of social roles through which needs are met. In summation, social support has been defined as an intervening factor tied directly to the coping process (Pearson, 1986 6).

From there, some of the imagery in this book clarifies what a soldier goes through in order to survive wartime, which encourages the reader to take an interest in it because it is something that some Americans are going through at the moment.

In Lawrence Wright’s masterpiece The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, he effortlessly connects disparate puzzle pieces of our current clash with Islamofascism with a coherent, page-turning narrative that at the time reads like a Robert Ludlum suspense novel. He begins with FBI operative Dan Coleman who finds terrifying evidence in 1996 that there is an organization, Al-Qaeda, that is hell-bent on destroying America and spreading Islamofascism throughout the world. His superiors find Coleman’s claims “too bizarre, too primitive and exotic” and fail to take action. In other words, the Western imagination cannot comprehend the Islamofascist mentality.

It is Wright’s objective to get inside, to the very core, of Al-Qaeda’s chief figures and show us how they feel humiliated by the successes of the West, including Israel, and how this humiliation, plus a great deal of sexual repression, animates their obsession with becoming “martyrs for Allah.” Lawrence Wright achieves his objective masterfully and leaves a terrifying indelible imprint on the reader (Amazon, 2006).

Conclusion

This book demonstrates that even though the government defines crime and while the government has good intention in protecting U.S. citizens from terrorism, having the authority to go through someone’s personal telephone and email communication while searching through their financial and medical records is truly an invasion of privacy, which goes against everything American stands for. These security measures would not be necessary if they were not blinded to the events that lead to September 11, which Wright points out in his book, “The Looming Tower.”

“Anyway, compared to some of those conferences, this is a happy occasion because it involves your terrific new book, The Looming Tower, a history of al-Qaida from the point of view of its key leaders, and also of the efforts, particularly at the FBI, to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. Our readers should know that in addition to being colleagues at The New Yorker, you permitted me to read the manuscript earlier this year as part of your fact-checking rounds.

It floored me—it’s a brilliant, complete piece of work. I especially admired your research into the lives of Bin Laden and Zawahiri, which draws on extensive, original interviewing in the Arab world, and also your evocative, literary voice. The reporting in the book about internal al-Qaida debates and dynamics goes well beyond anything else that has yet been published” (Coll, 2006).

References

Coll, Steve. (2006). The Looming Tower. Web.

(2006). Customers Reviews Amazon. Web.

“Doctors and Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay”. Web.

Follman, Mark. (2006). The road to 9/11 and beyond. Web.

(2006). Get Abstract. Web.

Pearson, J. (1986). The definition and measurement of social support. (Journal of Counseling & Psychology).

The USA PATRIOT. Web.

Wright, Lawrence. (2006). The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Knopf.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Homeland Security: Based on Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower”." September 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/homeland-security-based-on-lawrence-wrights-the-looming-tower/.

1. IvyPanda. "Homeland Security: Based on Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower”." September 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/homeland-security-based-on-lawrence-wrights-the-looming-tower/.


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