The next 9/11

Today marks not only the anniversary of the worst attacks ever on U.S. soil, but also seven years of safety from them. Neither the Bush administration-nor the president himself-nor the thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers have received adequate gratitude from the nation for what may be the single greatest achievement of this presidential term, "keeping us safe from another attack many thought was inevitable," as Sen. John McCain said in his convention speech a week ago.

But there are two possible reasons the United States has been safe since 9/11. One is that we have received human and divine protection. The other is that al-Qaeda is holding fire until it has developed a surefire way to deliver a nuclear detonation into one of our cities. Remember its patience before: An al-Qaeda with nuclear weapons can smuggle them into the United States-and won't hesitate to use them on our cities with the ruthlessness that allowed a select group of its cross-national, suicidal terrorists to set up residence in the United States, pursue flight training, and pilot airplanes loaded with human cargo into buildings filled with people.

Proliferation experts estimate the chance of that happening over the next decade as high as 50 percent. One has to be a very good optimist to go against the experts and put our chances at, say, 10 to 20 percent, as journalist Jeffrey Goldberg did writing on The New York Times op-ed pages this week. But Goldberg is not comforted by his optimism:

"The next president must do one thing, and one thing only, if he is to be judged a success: He must prevent Al Qaeda, or a Qaeda imitator, from gaining control of a nuclear device and detonating it in America. Everything else-Fannie Mae, health care reform, energy independence, the budget shortfall in Wasilla, Alaska-is commentary."

We can be thankful that this is a threat both Republicans and Democrats grasp. While still running for president last year, Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, former ambassador to the United Nations, gave a speech titled "Preventing a Nuclear 9/11." He said, "In the 20th century, nuclear deterrence worked. In the 21st century, it won't."

But what Richardson calls for is a "New Realism" that understands that many threats today come not from states, but rather from societies, "including our own society":

"Not from armies massing or nation states targeting us with missiles, but rather from complex social trends-such as our own consumption of fossil fuels. Not so much from hostile states as from hostile individuals, empowered by their willingness to kill and die for fanatical beliefs."

Richardson believes that "unilateral action usually will not work" and a "comprehensive global plan" is needed to end proliferation. This involves the United States dumping its nuclear weapons and warheads along with Russia and others. This fails to take into account the high security already present at U.S. nuclear sites-compared in particular to security in Russia and Pakistan. It fails to take into account that the United States has not been a proliferator of nuclear weapons, as Russia, Pakistan and others have been, but a nation that has used them as a deterrent for good around the world.

The challenge for a new administration is to curb the kind of unilateral excess that over time will turn America into a police state under the guise of preserving its freedom-while at the same time asserting its right to defend itself against all threats. And to never forget that Americans weren't flying the planes on 9/11; they were the ones sitting at their desks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the ones strapped in their airplane seats.