Transcript
Severe Clear
September 11, 2001
Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Pilots have a name for a morning like this: severe clear.
At nine forty-two, the FAA ordered every plane in American skies to land at the nearest airport. No one had ever given that order. The manager was on his first day in the job.
Flights over the Atlantic turned for Canada. Gander, Newfoundland, a town of about 10,000, took in 38 airliners.
By early afternoon, only military jets were flying.
2,977
That morning, nineteen hijackers from a group called al-Qaeda had killed twenty-nine seventy-seven people.
Six weeks later, the Senate voted ninety-eight to one to give the government new powers. Americans rarely agree like that. How long could ninety-eight to one last?
Blinking Red
1993–2001
Al-Qaeda means "the base." Its leader, Osama bin Laden, came from a rich Saudi family.
He declared war on America and named his reasons. American troops had stayed in Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's holiest cities, after the Gulf War. America backed Israel. And sanctions were squeezing Iraq.
In 1993, a truck bomb under the World Trade Center killed six people. In 1998, al-Qaeda bombed two American embassies in East Africa and killed 224.
In 2000, two men in a small boat blew a hole in the destroyer USS Cole. Seventeen sailors died.
Afghanistan's rulers, the Taliban, gave bin Laden a base. Thousands trained in his camps.
By summer 2001, the CIA's director said later, "the system was blinking red."
The Clerk Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US
That headline reached the president on August 6. It gave no date and no target.
The CIA and the FBI each held pieces of the plot. Neither put them together.
The Clerk The most important failure was one of imagination.
Tuesday
September 11–20, 2001
Nineteen men hijacked four airliners. All four were bound for California, heavy with fuel.
At eight forty-six and nine oh three, two struck the World Trade Center. At nine thirty-seven, a third hit the Pentagon.
On United 93, passengers and crew learned by phone what had happened.
The Clerk According to one call, they voted on whether to rush the terrorists in an attempt to retake the plane.
The Clerk They decided, and acted.
At ten oh three, United 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field, about twenty minutes' flying time from Washington. Everyone aboard died.
Jason M. Dahl LeRoy Homer Lorraine G. Bay Sandy Waugh Bradshaw Wanda Anita Green CeeCee Ross Lyles Deborah Jacobs Welsh
Twenty-nine seventy-seven people were killed. Twenty-seven fifty-three in New York, a hundred eighty-four at the Pentagon, and forty on Flight 93. Three hundred forty-three of them were New York firefighters.
Tugboats, ferries and fishing boats carried about half a million people off lower Manhattan.
On September 14, Congress let the president use "all necessary and appropriate force." The Senate voted ninety-eight to zero.
The House voted four hundred twenty to one. Barbara Lee of California voted no. As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore. She was quoting a minister she had heard that day. Death threats followed.
On September 20, President Bush addressed Congress. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
Horse Soldiers
October 2001–2002
The Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden. On October 7, American and British forces began bombing Afghanistan.
Small teams of Green Berets and CIA officers rode in on horseback, beside Afghan fighters of the Northern Alliance. From the saddle, they called in bombers by radio.
Kabul fell on November 13, five weeks after the bombing began.
In December, American and Afghan forces cornered bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. He slipped into Pakistan.
In March 2002, girls in Kabul went back to school. The Taliban had kept them out for five years. But the Taliban regrouped across the border. This war would last almost twenty years.
Neighbors
September–November 2001
On September 15, Balbir Singh Sodhi was planting flowers outside his gas station in Mesa. Sodhi was a Sikh from India, not a Muslim. His killer picked him out by his turban and beard.
Two days later, President Bush visited this mosque in Washington. The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.
Maryam Qudrat Aseel, an Afghan American born in Los Angeles, wrote a book about being both at once.
In two months, the government detained more than twelve hundred people, most of them Muslim immigrants. The government held seven hundred sixty-two on immigration charges. None was charged with helping the hijackers.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told airlines not to profile passengers by race or religion. He knew the cost. In 1942, when he was ten, the government had sent his family to this camp.
98 to 1
October 2001–2015
Washington was still opening its mail.
On October 15, an intern opened an anthrax letter in Senator Daschle's office. Letters like it killed five people. The Senate's biggest office building closed for three months.
Ten days later, a bill reached the Senate with a very long name.
The Clerk Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.
Now take the first letters.
Senators had the final text for about two days. The roll call is this afternoon.
The Senate passed it 98 to 1. President Bush signed it the next day.
The one no, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, had voted for the Afghanistan war.
Sen. Russ Feingold We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people.
Congress built a Department of Homeland Security from twenty-two agencies. Airport screeners became federal workers.
At Guantánamo Bay the military held captured suspects without charges, outside American courts. The CIA's "enhanced interrogation" included waterboarding. Critics called it torture. Defenders said it saved lives.
In 2013, leaked documents showed the government had used Section 215 to collect Americans' phone records in bulk. In 2015, Congress ended that program.
The FBI later concluded the anthrax letters came from an American scientist at an Army lab. In October 2001, nobody knew.
The Axis
2002–2011
In January 2002, President Bush called Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an axis of evil. That fall, the National Security Strategy claimed the right to strike first.
Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran and Kuwait, and in 1988 he gassed Iraqi Kurds. Most Western spy agencies believed he still hid chemical or biological weapons.
In October 2002, the Senate voted 77 to 23 to authorize war. The House voted 296 to 133. Twenty-nine of fifty Senate Democrats voted yes.
On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell took the case to the Security Council. My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources.
The Iraq Survey Group found no stockpiles, though Saddam had hoped to rebuild. Powell's speech is weak evidence about Iraq's weapons, and strong evidence of how the case for war was made.
On February 15, millions around the world marched against the war. Most Americans supported the war.
The invasion of Iraq began on March 19. Baghdad fell on April 9, three weeks later.
On May 1, Bush declared major combat over, under a banner that read Mission Accomplished. More than nine in ten American deaths in Iraq came after that day.
An insurgency grew, then a civil war between Sunni and Shia Iraqis. Millions fled their homes.
In 2004, photographs from Abu Ghraib showed American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. We won't show them.
The Clerk Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses.
In January 2007, Bush sent about 30,000 more troops, and violence fell. The last American troops left in December 2011.
Nearly 7,000 American troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Estimates of Iraqi dead run from over 100,000 to several hundred thousand, depending on how researchers count.
On May 2, 2011, Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.
Too Big to Fail
2006–2011
While the wars went on, American house prices rose about eighty-five percent. In Stockton, they rose faster.
New subdivisions spread over the farmland at the edge of town. Loans came with nothing down, sometimes with no proof of income.
Every loan on this street would be sold, and sold again. Follow one.
On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. It was the largest bankruptcy in American history.
Paulson asked Congress for seven hundred billion dollars. The first draft was three pages.
The Clerk may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
This time, the House said no, two hundred five to two hundred twenty-eight. That afternoon the Dow fell seven hundred seventy-seven points.
Four days later, a new version passed. It ran past four hundred pages, and cut taxes on wooden arrows made for children.
By October 2009, unemployment hit ten percent.
In Stockton, whole streets went into foreclosure. Mosquito crews searched for pools gone green, some from the air.
From 2005 to 2009, the typical Hispanic household lost about two-thirds of its wealth. The typical Black household lost more than half, the typical white household a sixth.
Voters elected Barack Obama, the first African American president. A stimulus of seven hundred eighty-seven billion dollars followed.
The Tea Party, named for Boston in seventeen seventy-three, fought bailouts and big government. Occupy Wall Street fought the banks with a sign: we are the ninety-nine percent.
Dodd-Frank tightened bank rules and set up a bureau for borrowers. Some said it went too far. Others said the banks were still too big to fail.
The Clerk We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable.
Addicted to Oil
1997–2018
The wars were fought in the region with about half the world's known oil. In 2005, America imported about 60 percent of its oil. Canada sold the most. Oil has one world price. Trouble in the Gulf showed up at every American pump.
America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The speaker was a former Texas oilman.
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans. More than 1,800 people died. Those who couldn't get out were mostly poor, and mostly Black. Federal help took days. It also shut Gulf refineries, and the price of gas jumped.
In July 2008, oil hit 147 dollars a barrel. Gas passed four dollars a gallon.
The Clerk Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
Scientists warned that burning oil, gas, and coal was heating the planet. In 1997, the Senate voted 95 to 0 against a treaty that excused China and India.
Then drillers learned to crack oil and gas out of shale rock: fracking.
By 2014, the oil fields of North Dakota glowed from space like a city that wasn't there.
By 2018, the United States pumped more crude oil than any other country on earth.
In 2015, the United States joined the Paris climate agreement. Later presidents left it, rejoined it, and left it again.
Full Sky
2008–2021
Here's the strange part. The crash started in America. Scared investors everywhere bought U.S. Treasury bills. Some briefly paid the Treasury to hold their money.
In 2010, America's economy was still the world's largest, more than twice China's. America spent more on its military than the next ten countries combined.
This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else. We cannot be reluctant to lead, and one cannot lead from behind.
The war in Afghanistan ended in August 2021, with the Taliban back in power.
The sixty-word force authorization of 2001 is still law. Presidents of both parties have used it.
Ninety-eight to one lasted a few weeks. After it came argument, over safety and freedom, war, oil and money.
Ten years after the ground stop, the sky was full again. The United States was still the most powerful nation on earth, still arguing about what that power was for.