Tulsa World: 12 years after 9/11: Oklahoma legislators talk about how attacks changed U.S.

Tulsa World - Randy Krehbiel

Tom Cole watched the events of Sept. 11, 2001, unfold from an office across Lafayette Park from the White House. A television told him what was happening in New York. From a window, he could see troops deploying around and on the White House as jet fighters screeched through the sky. In the distance, smoke rose over the Pentagon.

"I knew I was watching something of historic magnitude," said Cole, then political director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and now U.S. representative from Oklahoma's 4th District.

Cole's opinion has not changed in the dozen years since. Public recognition may have waned, yet Cole says the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., continue to define life in America and the world.

"The past 12 years have been shaped more by 9/11 than any other event," Cole said in a telephone interview.

The attacks, he said, created "a very different feeling" in a country conditioned by the face-to-face confrontations of the Cold War.

"After the Cuban Missile Crisis, we understood that the Russians were rational human beings," Cole said. "Now we have an enemy ... who is irrational.

"The 19 people on those three planes (on Sept. 11) knew they were going to die. I have no doubt if they'd had access to a nuclear weapon or (weapons of mass destruction) they would have used them. The mindset is fundamentally different."

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe was speaking to a state Chamber of Commerce group when the attacks began. In the chaotic evacuation of the Capitol that followed, someone snapped a picture of Inhofe helping his old friend and adversary Sen. Ted Kennedy from the building.

Inhofe and 3rd District Rep. Frank Lucas are the only current members of Oklahoma's congressional delegation who were in office 12 years ago.

Inhofe said Tuesday that the nation learned a lot from the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Many security measures were put into place after Sept. 11 that helped to make America safer and less vulnerable," he said.

"Thanks to many of these security measures, more than 50 terror plots have been foiled, and many more remain classified."

Lucas was also in Washington that day and remembers "thinking an attack of this magnitude hadn't taken place since British troops burned the Capitol in 1814. Since the Cold War ended in 1991, I would have never thought there was a real threat to our nation's Capitol."

Lucas, like Cole, says the attacks fundamentally changed America.

"I do not think we will ever feel completely secure again," he said. "Knowing there are terrorists who want to kill and hurt others badly enough that they are willing to take their own lives in the process makes these types of tragedies hard to prevent."

The Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, can be seen as a more immediate if less deadly reminder of the contemporary world's dangers.

"The tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, taught us the need to be constantly vigilant," said U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., of the 2nd District. "Subsequent attacks at home and abroad, including those in Benghazi, are reminders that we cannot let down our guard for a single moment. ... We must stay alert and attentive in any situation, because there are those who wish to do us harm."

U.S. Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., said Sept. 11 should be remembered for both the 2001 attacks and Benghazi, where four Americans died.

After the first Sept. 11 terrorist attack, Lankford said, "we realized this is not a war like any other. We have to remain ever vigilant."

The 5th District congressman said the United States is safer now because "we have ... learned a tremendous amount about terrorism and the people who hate us."

"The American people should remember we are a free nation and we should live as a free nation," he said, "but we should also continue to be more aware."

Cole agrees that the country is safer despite myriad threats.

"I don't believe anybody thought we would be able to go more than a decade without something comparable" to the 2001 attacks, he said.

"We're considerably safer now," Cole said. "The same kind of attack wouldn't work again."

Inhofe disagrees. He says the nation's ability to counter terrorist attacks has been degraded by the Obama administration.

"Not only are terrorists still trying their best to destroy America - and becoming more sophisticated at it, too - but we have Iran capable of producing a nuclear weapon that could hit the East Coast by 2015, terrorist cells increasing throughout Africa, and the Middle East in a growing state of unrest.

"As former President (George W.) Bush once said, we have to be right 100 percent of the time, and the terrorists only have to get it right once."

Online: Tulsa World