Osler's Razor

I remember the incredulity of it all . . . it didn't really sink in until late afternoon, when I had a haircut appointment after work and it was deadly quiet everywhere. It was 4:45 pm and nobody was on the roads, or out shopping, on what would normally be a bustling, traffic-choked street across from UVA. Everybody was at home.

And then watching the news that night, making pesto in the kitchen for hours because I had to have something to do. The thing that made me cry, other than the horror of what happened, was knowing that our country was headed in a terrifying direction and that it would never be the same. That we finally knew why European composers wrote dissonant music, why painters made abstract art, why writers wrote despair. We were finally living what they'd seen.

But surely there's not a single cause, i.e. prosecutors failing to put terrorists in jail. The causes seem pretty vast, and complex. And I'm not sure we've yet to understand the causes, fully.
 

One of the most depressing aspects of the whole 9-11 miasma is the fact that honest, hard-working, principled people of this country have been forced to watch the Bush administration twist those events into a poisonous pretzel of jingoism and war-mongering. The goodwill expressed to us from around the world has been squandered to the point that we are in greater peril now than we were before 2001. If we are attacked again on a similar scale, it is doubtful that we will garner much sympathy.
 

An incredible posting. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
 

Sir-
I find your thoughts on the use of these "blunter instruments" (i.e. my friends in the Marines) to be quite interesting. The horror of 11 Sept has caused many to question criminal law as being a sufficient tool to fight terrorism at all.
Some now believe that only these blunt, harsh tools can end the threat that this country faces- I have heard comments such as "terrorism is not a matter suitable for law enforcement, rather it is a military issue." Prosecutors may have not failed, they may have simply just been the wrong tool for the task- if a knife snaps when used as a prybar, it is the fault of the user rather than of the instrument. Perhaps there is some sort of hybrid of the two systems that will aid in eradicating this terrorist threat. Yes, the cost has been great, but we will not know how much life has been saved by resort to more drastic measures, or, on the contrary, if less severe measures may have saved lives- the time seems to have passed to elect the other path, as we have already chosen the military option to solve this issue, and it appears to (according to recent reports) be reaping dividends for us.
 

I wouldn't call it failure by the prosecutors.

Sun-Tzu describes in the Art of War a battle against barbarians whose first line of attack (or defense) was to behead themselves. How do you defeat an opponent who has no bottom line? How do you defeat an opponent who operates in the absurd and left reason behind?
 

I do not think this was a failure on the part of Federal Prosecutors. It seemed to be an intelligence breakdown or failure and maybe the people who could have listened to those who were telling them the attacks were imminent could have paid attention and prevented it..MAYBE Like the people who noticed those guys taking flying lessons and not caring about landing... OR even how the actor James Woods saw like a rehearsal of the hijackers on an airplane and told the govt and they did not listen really or take him seriously. It seems that in hindsight a lot of people failed Like even our immigration Student Visa system, that allowed them to come in to the country anyway...

If they had been caught by the govt, and tried and you were the prosecutor, and failed to convict them, well then maybe you could feel responsible, but it seems like you were a few steps away from being in a position to have prevented it or to consider it as a failure on your part.

These people hate a lot of the world, and they think we should die because we are not like them. They happened to succeed in killing a lot of us. But WHO could have predicted all of this? Using a fully fueled airplane full of passengers as a guided missile? It is barbaric.

It is like our house Not to say that 9/11 compares to my house but Could I have predicted that the house would explode? You think when you go to buy Homeowners insurance You think what could possibly happen? A tree falls on it, a fire, robbery this kind of thing.. all unlikely but they COULD happen.. but a GAS EXPLOSION? The ONLY Gas thing we had in the entire house was the FAKE FIREPLACE. We never even used it. Everything else was electric!

We did not anticipate that a chain of events would be set in motion starting with incompetence, to mistakes, to timing, to everything.. and suddenly our house was FILLLLED I mean FULLLLL of gas, like 86% concentration and like a LAKE of it underneath the house in the ground as well, when we only had a gas fireplace.

HOW can you ever anticipate this kind of thing? Its unimaginable - until it happens.

I think they know that we are a society who works all the time, and everyone is just trying to take care of their families and have a nice life and achieve goals etc. They KNOW we are too busy to worry about airplanes being flown into buildings...They know this and they used it.
 

I moved from Manhattan to Waco for my first year of law school two weeks before the 9/11 attacks. I heard about the plane on the radio while I was getting dressed, called a couple of friends to make sure they were okay (one friend was in Midtown and didn't even know yet what had happened), finished getting dressed and headed up to school.

I had contracts I at 9:15. Prof. Trail told us that there was nothing we could do about what was going on in New York and - unless we had relatives there we needed to contact - we had contracts to learn. I was angry with him for two years until the first day of Professional Responsibility. Right off the bat, before saying anything else, Prof. Trail apologized to those of us who were in his class that day. We forgave him.

This was the first quarter in the new law school and we didn't have a television in the lounge yet. The thing I remember most from school that day was huddling around an old one-speaker am/fm radio someone placed on a table right by the cafeteria, between classes, listening for whatever snippets of news it offered.

The bottom line is, as angry as I was with Prof. Trail that day, we kept working. So did the prosecutors and the rest of the country. We rebounded.

Thanks for the post Osler, and thanks for a place to tell my story-it's cathartic.
 

I also agree with Sleepy: If you were to write a book about all that has happened since 9/11 and you called it fiction, critics would say "It is not believeable, this would never really happen, it does not ring true... " you know?

I swear, sometimes I think that the Legacy of Bush will be just one word: "HUH???"
 

I read a great article today about how it is impossible to talk about 9/11 just as Americans, because inevitably someone will turn it into a political football (whether it be those seeking to justify violence or those seeking for another opportunity to talk about why Bush is a bad president). Sadly, based on the comments posted here, it appears that writer is absolutely right.

Great post, terrible day for all Americans and all responsible citizens of this planet.
 

And that is the heart of a prosecutor, isn't it? The sense of personal responsibility for our community, especially the innocent or those who do not know, or want to know about the dangers on our own streets. Any "failure" due to an honest desire to protect the human rights of individuals, be they immigrants or citizens must be forgiven, or we lose America. But laziness or complacency in the face of terror or any other crime (and it is a crime like any other, not demanding some hiatus of the protections and trappings of our justice system) is wrong. From what I have learned of Professor Osler, the state prosecutors and US Attorneys I have worked with, they suffer instead an abundance of conscience, and work twice as hard for half the pay.

Like any violent criminal with a record, we ask why...why wasn't that person in jail, or not in America instead of being free to commit atrocity? But desperate criminals do not call for desperate criminal justice.

As for our president, I think ultimately his biggest mistake was that he missed a chance to unite this country for the first time in 60 years. But maybe we simply do not trust our Commander in Chief any longer, and if that is true it is not wholly Mr. Bush's fault.