The Norman Transcript: Lasting impact: How 9/11 changed the world

The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 changed Oklahoma, the United States and the world in an uncounted variety of ways.

Some of them were quickly apparent: airplane traveling restrictions tightened, “see something, say something” gained prominence and the U.S. engaged in two military conflicts in the Middle East.

Others were more subtle, impacting how we think, what we believe, and who we trust. Over the past 15 years, these changes have manifested in everything from criticisms of the intelligence community’s collection of data to the popularity of the War on Terror.

For Oklahomans, it’s impossible to think about Sept. 11 without connecting it to the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995. Until Sept. 11, the OKC attack was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.

Oklahoma Commissioner of Labor and Norman resident Melissa McLawhorn Houston was in the old Journal-Record building, just north of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown OKC, when the attack hit. The bombing spurred her into public service. As an attorney and survivor, she was one of the individuals who helped for the passage of one of the most significant pieces of legislation to come out of the bombing that impacted the U.S. post-9/11: the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. It was the first anti-terrorism bill on the national level.

“It was the framework for how we as a country would respond to terrorism,” Houston said. “We had the very first stream of funding to help local police and fire combat terrorism. It was a very small amount of money, but it was very significant.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Houston was approached by Bob Ricks, the FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge during the OKC bombing investigation. Ricks was then serving as the Oklahoma Secretary of Safety and Security under Gov. Frank Keating, and was tasked with establishing the Oklahoma branch of the Department of Homeland Security. The Oklahoma Department of Homeland Security brought together experts from across the state in law enforcement, fire and EMS, emergency management, and talked about what the statewide security system should look like.

“We designed a prevention and response system that is still used to this day,” Houston said. “There were a lot of lessons we learned from the Murrah bombing, and we had experiences first-hand that a lot of people didn’t have, so we were able to use all of that as a basis and a framework.”

Houston said terror prevention and response has always been a matter of resources, or the lack there of, but that there have been lessons learned since 9/11.

“The questions we had to ask were: ‘How do you identify who has terrorist intent? How do you protect your critical infrastructure? How do you identify potential targets and fortify those?’” she said. “When it comes to preventing attacks, it’s the citizens and local law enforcement who are on the front lines. They need to be properly funded. Not all the answers are at the federal level.”

One of the most significant, lasting impacts of the Sept. 11 attacks is the establishment of the global surveillance state.

Keith Gaddie, Ph.D., is the chair of the political science department at the University of Oklahoma in addition to serving as an associate director for the Center for Intelligence and National Security. He said 9/11 fundamentally changed how intelligence agencies communicate with each other and collect information, activities that have ignited the age-old debate over privacy and security.

“Without 9/11, you don’t get the USA Patriot Act,” Gaddie said. “It created this new coordinated information infrastructure and expanded the nature of information collection. It also sparked a debate. There has been criticism of these heightened surveillance activities from both parties.”

But while we live in a state of heightened surveillance post-9/11, the “technological creep of convenience” also means we’re giving up more information more readily than ever before.

“Because of smart phones, we wanted a GPS mapping system,” Gaddie said. “We want to use credit cards, so every transaction is recorded. Social media comes along, and we’re just giving up all this information about ourselves. It feeds into a different mindset when it comes to privacy.”

Gaddie said the U.S. Supreme Court has continued to uphold Americans’ right to privacy, even as we’re willing to give up more and more of it for convenience.

In the years following 9/11, there was bipartisan support for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That support has waned in recent years, as evidenced by the fact that both presidential nominees have said the Iraq war was a mistake. Gaddie said patriotism was politicized following 9/11, particularly by conservatives, but now there is disagreement even with the Republican Party regarding the war effort and military spending.

China establishing a military base in the South China Sea, Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Ukraine and North Korea’s nuclear tests are examples Cole used to illustrate that America’s war weariness and deescalation of military readiness have encouraged foreign powers to flex their proverbial muscles.

From our ability to prevent terrorist attacks, to our privacy in a global security state, to the tenor of discussions regarding patriotism and the U.S. military, our world has clearly changed. But the Middle East is as unstable as ever, and as we continue to be engaged militarily in the region, new threats have emerged.