Why didn’t the United States invade Afghanistan and destroy Al Qaeda before September 11, 2001?

This isn’t as farfetched as it might sound. In 2001, President Bush issued a presidential directive instructing the Department of Defense to “‘develop contingency plans’ to attack both al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan.” After the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings, CIA Director George Tenet told employees that the Agency was “at war” with Al Qaeda. And the intelligence community well understood Al Qaeda’s grave threat to the homeland: the August 6, 2001, President’s Daily Brief included an item entitled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” the 36th PDB item briefed that year on Al Qaeda.

The answer, I think, lies in the cyclical political dynamics that drive our counterterrorism policymaking—dynamics I explore in a new essay in The Washington Quarterly. The American public would not have supported a unilateral invasion of Afghanistan in the summer of 2001. By November, of course, it did—overwhelmingly.

We have seen a similar cycle play out time and again: insiders struggle to enact needed measures before a crisis strikes; a catastrophe finally seizes the American people’s attention; with the public now clamoring for greater security, Congress swiftly enacts landmark policy changes; eventually, after a few quiet years, the fear recedes and civil-liberties concerns emerge.

In short: the cyclical politics of counterterrorism.

These dynamics are on vivid display today, in debates over Section 702, encryption, and other issues affecting counterterrorism. In the United States, skepticism about “incidental collection” and use of U.S.-person data, coupled with concerns about unmasking, may affect reauthorization of Section 702, a key counterterrorism tool. Legislative responses to law enforcement’s encryption challenge have stalled.

By contrast, in Western Europe, which in recent years has suffered one horrific jihadist attack after another, the pendulum has swung decisively toward security. Since November 2015, France has been under a state of emergency, which permits the police to conduct extrajudicial warrantless searches of homes and businesses. And it is overwhelmingly popular: Eighty percent of the French public supports preserving or expanding the state of emergency, according to a recent poll. Meanwhile, French, German, and EU officials are exploring options to enable security services to access encrypted communications and devices, with little public opposition.

The essay explores some of the underappreciated nuances of this widely observed, but little-analyzed phenomenon. For example:

Why counterterrorism policy is uniquely dominated by crisis legislation.

How the cyclical politics of counterterrorism challenge both national-security policymakers and civil libertarians.

What can be done to mitigate the volatility of counterterrorism policymaking.

How current policy stalemates illustrate these dynamics.

The piece begins with an extended hypothetical: what if we had invaded Afghanistan in the summer of 2001?