The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Tuesday evoked comparisons to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The major difference, though, is that the enemy might be harder to find.
Kenneth Roberts, chairman of UNM’s Political Science Department, said the United States might have a hard time determining who to retaliate against because of the mobile and transparent nature of terrorist groups.
“In Pearl Harbor, we were dealing with another state,” Roberts said. “We know who the enemy is. But we’re not dealing with another state; it’s an independent organization with linkages to certain states. How do you go to war with an underground subversive group? That’s hard to do.”
Mark Peceny, a UNM associate political scince professor, said it is difficult to find out who organized such an attack unless a group takes credit for it. He said that even if that does happen, it could take more time before government officials know the truth.
Sometimes, a perpetrator is never identified, Peceny said, but if officials can determine that a country was involved in an attack, it becomes easier to plan retaliation.
“Something this large and coordinated seems difficult for non-state actors or groups to organize,” Peceny said. “It might be some state behind it because they have the resources to do it. But something this large would make any state vulnerable to a serious attack by the U.S. That’s one of the puzzling things about it.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
While much of the speculation has centered around Osama bin Laden and other Islamic groups, Peceny said it might be premature to make that judgment. He said people should let authorities handling the case finish their work.
Peceny and Roberts agreed that one of the first steps the United States will take is to increase airport security. Peceny said other modes of transportation, such as buses, subways and trains, will also increase safety measures. Roberts said he was surprised that the terrorists managed to hijack four airplanes.
“The level of the preparation of the group is staggering,” Roberts said. “From that standpoint, suddenly we’re rethinking how we do a lot of things. The government will increase security, but how will they do this without turning every building into a bunker?”
Henry Trewhitt, a UNM professor emeritus and former national security correspondent for The (Baltimore) Sun, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report, said a terrorist attack of this kind is unprecedented, and the next steps the United States takes will become clearer in the next few days.
Trewhitt speculated that upcoming legislation will probably remind people of the measures taken during World War II.
“It won’t be as draconian, it won’t be as severe and it won’t be as far-reaching, but the rebuilding that’s going to be required out of all this is going to be so heavy that it will be an enormously inflationary process unless they use controls,” he said.
Trewhitt said intelligence agencies in countries such as Israel and India and those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can help the United States find the responsible group.
He called the attack the worst kind of wake-up call the country could get about terrorism.
“I had feared for a long, long time that somebody was going to bring a suitcase of nuclear weapons into New York Harbor someday and we were going to know what terrorism was really like,” Trewhitt said. “Well, they didn’t have nuclear weapons, obviously. But they had something else, which was a pretty good plan of attack.”
