Critical Thinking - Assignment Example

The key question that was asked was very simple: Why? As the commission said in the report, “Why did they do this? How was the attack planned and conceived? How did the U.S. Government fail to anticipate and prevent it? What can we do in the future to prevent similar acts of terrorism?” Much like the public on September 11, 2001, the parties involved in this report were also in a state of shock, asking themselves how and why such a thing could come to pass on American soil. Much of what the committee needed to put together their report was already in evidence, gathered by various agencies as soon as possible after the actual events of September 11, 2001.

The committee in the report was very mindful that they were writing “with the benefit and handicap of hindsight”, meaning that in looking back, there were various events and actions, such as “not discovering false statements on visa applications, or not recognizing passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner”, as well as reports delivered to the United States government from around the world, that had they been linked together in any way would have probably led them to realize that the real threat of the attacks did not lay abroad in another part of the world, as they had originally thought, but right on American soil.

One of the biggest concerns of the 9/11 Commission was the lack of centralized response system to the emergency situation once the attacks were underway. The report specifically states that “the defense of the U.S. airspace depended on close interaction between two Federal agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).” However, there were fundamental problems even in the communication between the two agencies, as there was no protocol in place or procedure to follow in the case of a hijacked airplane being used as a weapon,