There is no question but that Americans felt exposed, vulnerable to danger, and personally at risk as a result of 9-11. This showed up in national polls, the many calls to local officials about mail suspected of anthrax contamination, and the suspicion directed at young Arab Americans. A wartime atmosphere prevailed. After all, thousands of civilians had died as a result of one day's terrorism and tens of thousands in the armed services went off to war. All initiatives and responses to the new normalcy were held hostage by the threat of terrorism and the demands of security.

Two fundamental sets of issues are at stake regarding security: getting back into operation after the attacks and protecting people and property, assets and information. While for years major corporations and government agencies had a range of physical security and backup programs in place, most smaller organizations did not. Cost considerations and lack of focus usually accounted for failures to provide security and backups. All that changed after 9-11, as organizations reviewed their security arrangements or set them up when and where they were lacking. The lessons that stand out are:

Given these five lessons, what can be done? Implicit in these lessons is a sixth, that organizations, not individuals, can have a greater positive impact on security than can individuals acting alone. At the public level, local, state, and federal government can do much more than organizations responding on a solo basis, as significant as that can be. Three responses come to the fore. First, organizations are focusing on backup and contingency plans that ensure that their work continues after a terrorist attack. Second, they are implementing time-honored practices in information backup. Third, they are enhancing the physical security of buildings, vehicles, and employees.

If you accept the notion that security is more than protecting Americans from injury, the focus on organized and coordinated efforts makes considerable sense. For one thing, as a matter of national policy, we need to take into account the impact of job loss, not only on a breadwinner but also on his or her family. The impact is economic, psychological, and social, a trying experience only fully grasped with first-hand experience. From a national viewpoint, unemployment threatens the well-being of the country and its ability to function. Widespread economic trouble for individual Americans saps the country's strengths and its ability to recover from disasters and terrorist attacks.

To ensure the continuance of business as close as possible to “usual,” company managements must develop answers to the operational question, If my building is blown up, where do my surviving employees go to work the next day? Facilities can be acquired or rented as a contingency, or other company office sites can be prepared to accept an influx of employees. Firms are also spreading their employees out across a city, the nation, or multiple buildings, so that if one part goes down, employees elsewhere in the company know how to carry on. Long before a crisis, responses can be ready, in place, fully rehearsed.

Setting up physical backup sites for employees with the proper equipment raises the question, Where do we do this and how? It was a staggering problem after 9-11. IBM employees working with customers in setting up new data centers found that the problem was not technology but locating space all over New York and New Jersey. One IBM executive involved in that process, Todd Gordon, summed up the challenge: “It's been a physical problem, not a technological one.”

After 40 years of preaching backup to companies, many in the information technology (IT) industry are seeing a surge of interest in the subject. The key steps are fairly straightforward. Make sure that whatever backup information a company needs is set up elsewhere, ready to use, and that the appropriate people are aware of such information and have access to it. Next, negotiate in advance with other firms for access to their buildings, networks, and hardware to run the company's existing IT operations or to continue manufacturing and shipping products. In the case of IT, there are companies that will perform mirror operations of existing IT applications, so that if a data center is out of commission, a company can switch immediately to another. Meanwhile, business partners or suppliers can make products and provide services.

Because of the durability of the Internet, making sure that internal access is up and running is crucial in today's business and government environments. Typical strategies include use of internal private network providers, often several simultaneously, in case one goes down; dispersing work across many physical locations; beefing up access security so that people can't log on to applications they are not authorized to perform; physically protecting servers and other telecommunications equipment in more secure locations.

To pull all these elements together, companies can rely on the Internet, as the response to 9-11 demonstrated. While cell phones, regular telephone communications, and other networks crashed or had so much traffic that they choked, the Internet kept on functioning. The reason is that the U.S. military designed the original Internet so that it could withstand nuclear war. It was decentralized so that computers all over the country (now all over the world) could dynamically reroute messages without needing anyone to instruct them to do so. That strategy of decentralization made it possible for the Internet to operate seamlessly. People were able to check on each other quickly after 9-11, using the Internet. IBM workers, for example, used Sametime communications over the Internet to check on all their colleagues and employees throughout the New York area and in Washington, D.C., accounting for thousands of people within hours. In New York before 9-11, many cell phone calls had been routed through equipment located high on the now nonexistent World Trade Towers. On that date, many became useless by mid morning.

What is required is clear: Communications must remain up and running to ensure the operation and protection of organizations and people. Relying on multiple types of equipment, processes, and locations is essential. As we increasingly become an economy operating in the Information Age, these kinds of considerations must make the short list of the few, the vital, the essential “must do's.”

Physical security of buildings and people represents the other great challenge of the new normalcy. Major companies have been working on the problem for years, using surveillance cameras outside of buildings, putting up cement barriers at entrances to block potential car bombs, keeping people out who had no business in a building, escorting visitors to their destinations, tracking and profiling potentially dangerous people (airlines have done this for years), and inspecting bags and packages. There will be more of such actions as developers of various technologies create new ways of maintaining security. In the new normalcy, people and enterprises must work together more closely and consciously on the security of information, facilities, and people.

The factor of dispersal as a source of strength and a means of protection is relevant to the strength and security of the United States as a nation. Geography has helped considerably. America is protected by mighty moats—oceans on both sides—and is spread east to west across the North American continent. It is too dispersed, too varied, too many-sided to be vulnerable to single attacks. The truth is that one could wipe out New York and Los Angeles, and while it would stagger the economy, business would continue. The country would go on, however crippled. This is a big country, spread out with redundant resources all over the place. We have many cities that do what is done in New York and Los Angeles. Farmers in Virginia can raise corn, just as others do in Nebraska. Automobiles are made not only in Detroit, but also in Tennessee and Ohio. Our military bases cover the country. Our highway and air traffic control networks blanket the continent. There are multiple copies of everything we can do scattered across the country. Since there is so much of everything, knocking out one or more capabilities, places, or locations can hardly bring the nation to its knees. As tragic as it is, for example, when the vice presidents of a stock brokerage firm are killed in the Twin Towers, there are thousands of other vice presidents scattered across the country with parallel levels of education, expertise, and experience who can lead a stock brokerage operation after a 9-11 catastrophe. Maintaining organizational and operational diversity in a healthy economy across such a large nation is itself a form of protection against attack and a source of security.

There are national strategies that also need to be implemented, some already suggested in earlier chapters, others warranting attention here. They are a combination of personal and national initiatives. On the one hand, there are things that must be done at a national level—such as conducting the war on terrorism—but there are other actions to be performed individually. In combination, the two can make the new normalcy a sustainable way of life that is both safe and prosperous. So what strategies should be deployed? We believe there are several that need to be implemented simultaneously, in a holistic fashion. They build on prior experience and thus leverage what already has worked.

On a national basis, rooting out those who would attack the nation, kill its people, and destroy its assets is, of course, an immediate requirement. While this is the path which the Bush administration is already following, the campaign against terrorism must be unrelenting. We cannot afford to let our guard down or be lulled into complacency when our enemies lie dormant—until their next attack. National resolve demands that we use our assets and know-how to protect ourselves with a proactive strategy, one that seeks out the enemy and thwarts its plans.

A go-it-alone strategy does not make sense. Our post-9-11 coalition building demonstrates the need to meet the global threat of terrorism with a global response. Anything less endangers the entire effort and compromises the chances for success. As great as our assets and know-how are, we cannot alone defeat the worldwide threat of terrorism and its many sponsors. Technology alone is not enough. It cannot replace intelligence on the ground, which depends on international allies. The al-Qaeda alone has trained an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people now scattered all over the world. And it is only one terrorist group! Only by eradicating multiple terrorist groups will we put terrorists on the defensive.

The world faces terrorism as a constant in international affairs, liable to emerge anywhere, anytime. While terrorist acts declined in Northern Ireland and in Spain's Basque country, for example, terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament in December 2001, creating an Indian-Pakistani crisis. In the Middle East, the abiding Palestinian-Israeli conflict has kept the Middle East in turmoil, with the constant threat of spreading. A crackdown on suicide bombers alienates the more extremist Palestinians, the Hamas, which portends increased problems in the Middle East in a cycle of violence and instability that involves the United States and its Middle Eastern allies.

For the United States, as the world's most powerful nation, there is no escaping the fallout and repercussions of terrorism. Such has been the case with America's decades-long involvement with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Our reading of modern Arabic history suggests it will not be resolved soon in a peaceful way, following ups and downs. Meanwhile, American support for Israel faces a transformation as other priorities come to the fore and the Arab states exhibit political tensions within their own borders. Americans are becoming more sympathetic to Israel's claims that Palestinians are not nationalists, but rather terrorists. Saudi Arabia, long seen as an American ally, is increasingly being viewed as a hotbed of economic and political support for Arab terrorists. Iraq remains America's number one rogue country, targeted for attack if the U.S. could be assured that other Arab states would not get in the way. The replacement of the pre-9-11 government in Afghanistan with a new coalition government is already sending signals to other countries that the U.S. is willing to attempt real nation building, despite an historic reluctance to play that role. Overall, the U.S. must remain tuned to the twists and turns of political events around the world, not just in the Middle East, and must respond appropriately in fighting terrorism.

Taking a medium- to long-term view, the concept of homeland defense implemented by the Bush administration may turn out to be the most significant by-product of 9-11. Despite the concern of many Americans about the potential for compromising civil liberties, coordinated homeland defense can help to preserve our civil liberties, while improving our defense and security. That would result from the coordinated search for terrorists, in combining the talents and assets of the CIA, FBI, NSA, IRS, state police, and local law enforcement officials. By leveraging computer technology and sharing information, good old-fashioned police work can be done within our boundaries for civil liberties. The opportunity exists to improve security by drawing on the efficiencies involved in greater coordination.

Respect and support for the Constitution and the values of the founding fathers remain too strongly embedded in our culture to be brushed aside. The balance of power provided by the separation of powers—executive, legislative, judicial—can be expected to provide protection against extremes as it normally has in the past. State constitutions have a similar balance of power, as part of the legal backdrop against which to implement more closely coordinated security matters. Critics can correctly point out breaches in civil liberties: Japanese Americans interned during World War II, profiling of Arab Americans questioned today by the FBI. But take the emotion out of such examples and we can make two observations: The numbers involved are so small that they must be regarded as exceptions to an otherwise larger pattern of respecting civil liberties, and the American public historically has been willing to tolerate some flexibility in the preservation of civil liberties. Civil liberties have never been absolutes. In practice, they are malleable enough so that the government can apply sufficient flexibility in responding to specific threats to the overall welfare of the nation. In the long run, at least, justice normally prevailed.

Against the fear of “Big Brother” compromising civil liberties, there is the prospect of greater protection which will come from more efficient operations in our security apparatus. Before 9-11, major intelligence and law enforcement agencies operated in relative isolation from each other, the direct result of explicit legislation defining their missions narrowly and differently from each other. We can change the laws so that they have to work more closely together, share more information, and use each other's equipment and other assets. Tentative steps in this direction took place when the U.S. Congress passed enabling legislation in October, 2001 to begin the process.

Over time, we can expect that the cost of technology for these agencies will decline as they share more data. Redundancies of staffs and agencies will be reduced, just as occurs when two companies merge and improve their overall efficiencies. As a lesson from business, such mergers and better coordination will improve the timely availability of higher quality information with which to block terrorists and round them up. Typically, discussions about benefits of the Information Age have focused on business. Now we can expect to see them applied to homeland defense.

With history as an indicator, homeland defense will focus first on physical security of North America, applying current laws, governmental practices, technologies, and the economic wherewithal of the nation. The record of performance has been good; only once in the nineteenth century did the government fail in a major way—in the War of 1812, when it was unable to prevent the British from invading the United States and seizing the capital of Washington, D.C. In the twentieth century, there were four breakdowns in security—in 1912, when a few Mexicans invaded the United States, leading to General John Pershing's pursuit of them deep into Mexico; on December 7, 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor; and during World War II, when there was a small Japanese invasion of a remote island off Alaska. Both, however, were minor events. Then there was 9-11.

In terms of security, the United States has always used a wide-angle lens, focusing on all of North America. In the world of the new normalcy, we can expect that Canada and the U.S. will continue their coordination in security matters. That will happen because it is of mutual interest. The new element will be Mexico, where the outlook is promising. There is mounting evidence that the Fox administration in Mexico sees itself as part of a larger North American economic and social sphere of great benefit to individual Mexicans. NAFTA preconditioned both nations to cooperate economically, while the rapid influx of Mexicans into the U.S. in the last third of the twentieth century created a large Hispanic, mutually supportive culture, in sync with that of the United States.

Viewed together, all these elements—values, population makeup, national and homeland defense policies, and economic realities—have the making of an effective program to root out terrorism. The current initiative also borrows tactics from the experiences of the liberal democratic societies of Western Europe, which have a half-century of experience in dealing with terrorism. At the practical level, for instance, the British know how to minimize Irish car bombs, the Spanish how to hunt down Basque terrorists, and the Israelis in the Middle East how to gather intelligence and pinpoint retaliation.

Recent history presents a harsh comparison. Entire cities are not being blown up, as happened to the British, Germans, and Japanese during World War II. Tens of thousands of people are not being killed every month, as happened during the Iran-Iraq wars of the 1980s. Fewer people are killed in the United States by terrorists than die from automobile accidents or are injured on the job. Nonetheless, any deaths from terrorism are unacceptable and could escalate to catastrophic levels. For us as individual Americans, we have essentially three things to do:

First, as public officials urge, Americans should be cautious and scrupulous in making sure there is no strange, possibly dangerous situation around them. Neighborhood watch programs for decades have shown the way; now their watchdog practices need to be applied in public spaces and at work. What is unusual should be suspected, inspected, and questioned. We must make sure that common-sense security procedures exist in our place of work. When something doesn't look right, we must alert public officials so they can deal with the situation.

Second, we must support the government's elimination of threats to the nation anywhere in the world. Our national leadership relies on public backing expressed through opinion surveys, demonstrated by congressional action, and supported by individual actions, from enlisting in the armed services to volunteering to join in community-based security programs.

As part of their sense of involvement, Americans need to pay more attention to international affairs, learn more about political science, and become more aware of American history. Compared with other advanced nations, Americans tend to neglect these three areas that are part of responsible citizenship. In our schools, more American and world history should be taught at all levels through college years. Those of us out of school need to read more about these areas and watch public affairs programs on the networks and cable, particularly on PBS and C-SPAN. Understanding the context of our lives is part of responsible participation and citizenship. America does not live in isolation from the rest of the world, as 9-11 reminded us. The U.S. demonstrated the same global closeness when its planes commuted to Afghanistan from Missouri on bombing missions in the fall of 2001. Effectively, Afghanistan became as close as Canada. It's as though the Middle East were across the border where Canada is situated. If Canada were a threat, would we not want to know a great deal more about the Canadians and their internal affairs? Of course, and the same logic applies to the larger world.

Third, we must be vigilant about compromising freedom of action and civil liberties. The temptation to trade them away in exchange for physical security is great. That temptation—which is what it is—has always been presented to Americans during a national crisis. Some Americans bought into it but fortunately most did not. In the end, civil liberties and personal freedom of movement, expression, and thought survived. The key point is that Americans can have personal security without surrendering personal freedoms. It is the genius of the American system. It is simply now our turn to demonstrate its durability.

A sense of shared vulnerability after 9-11, followed immediately by the steps taken to provide security, pointed the country toward an age of decency, one marked by civility and a greater sense of shared community and of caring for one another. An introspective mood spread across the nation, nowhere more obvious than in its religious practices. Americans did what they have always done in times of national crisis, they went to church.

This is the characteristic way in which Americans build the nation's resolve whenever we face a problem of historic proportions. We turn to our values, our faiths, and to our heritage of inspirational songs and prayers, all of which have sustained us in prior wars, during depressions, and through natural catastrophes. Religion girds us for action and commitment to a righteous cause. Going to church has always been one sure signal that Americans were beginning to put aside their differences and were starting the process of joint commitment.

This ritual is important to recognize because no national strategy will have enough power to deal with the new normalcy without a powerful level of resolve. This represents the major message in this book: confronting the new normalcy calls for resolve that is open-ended, ready to go where nobody yet knows, and aiming for a conclusion that will not necessarily be marked by a specific event, such as a peace treaty or formal surrender. In sum, the new normalcy demands a resolve different from what we have known in the past.

Sustaining such an open-ended initiative requires a high level of confidence that the end result will be a good one and a sense of purpose that is unwavering. This is more than taking revenge for terrorism in a cold-blooded manner. It is about an abiding commitment to eradicate a problem, to focus on objectives, and to apply whatever technologies, assets, intelligence, and experience we have as Americans.

In the weeks following 9-11, religion once again fortified American spirit and determination. Attendance at church services rose by some 10 percent all over the nation. National memorial services and emotion-filled funerals in churches of different faiths demonstrated the role of formal religion. When the press began reporting that church attendance was dropping back to pre-9-11 levels, it missed the point about the religious involvement of Americans. An increase in church attendance has been slow but steady since the 1990s, as the population grew older and the nation became more reflective. We cannot measure religious influence only in terms of participation in religious services. Major studies of religious involvement in the United States conclude that Americans overall are some of the most committed to religion in the world. Besides steeling people with resolve, religion encourages a gentler, more caring attitude. It puts the mundane in perspective and provides a context within which to search for purpose in life.

Two historians who have looked at long-term patterns in American life have amassed an impressive body of evidence that provides a long view of what we face. William Strauss and Neil Howe have identified common experiences of generations of Americans and have concluded that we can speak about specific generations sharing characteristic values and experiences. This is more than knowing where they were on December 7 or on the day that President Kennedy was shot. The two historians have identified profound, fundamentally influential cycles of behavior that repeat themselves—four basic styles or rhythms of life, which they call turnings. Briefly summarized, they are: (1) a “high,” such as the U.S. experience between the end of World War II and the early 1960s; (2) an “awakening,” a period in which there is a revolution in consciousness, such as we experienced between the time of President Kennedy's assassination to the end of the 1970s; (3) an “unraveling,” an era of self-indulgence, such as we had in the 1920s and again in the 1980s and 1990s; and (4) a period of crisis, normally a time of war or the Great Depression of the 1930s. Each turning has profoundly affected the generation coming of age. Strauss and Howe believe, as do we, that America is now entering another fourth turning. In that phase of the nation's life, its mood and behavior are characterized by a renewed sense of community and commitment, such as patriotism and a resolve to win a war. In our time, it is the war on terrorism.

Those who lived during the protest era of the Vietnam War are discovering what older generations already knew, that the current wave of patriotism is a very positive, reassuring force. Renewed patriotism and a strong sense of what it means to be an American have triggered fresh interest in American values and history, as well as pride in our political institutions and freedoms. In how many countries could someone like Brian Lamb direct a TV station like C-SPAN, in which every kind of political process and event is presented to the public unedited, unvarnished, “from gavel to gavel”? Meanwhile, Americans have shown themselves as a gentler, kinder people. Their monetary contributions to various funds to help the families who lost members in New York and Washington, D.C. ran over a billion dollars in less than 45 days, evidence of the solicitous hands of individual Americans reaching out.

When Time magazine and CNN conducted a poll of the nation's mood in the fall of 2001, a gratifying and encouraging image of Americans emerged. People reported that family reunions had become more important, rifts with relatives were in decline, divorce lawyers even saw a drop in business. The American Bible Society reported that fall 2001 sales of the quintessential American book, the Holy Bible, were up 42 percent over the previous fall. Sales of the Koran shot up, as well, as Americans turned to that holy book for insights into the minds of the terrorists. In short, the new normalcy brought forth a renewal of traditional values and, for good measure, showed a desire to learn about others, a harbinger of national empathy.

September 11 also ushered in a time to honor heroes and follow leaders. Historically, American individualism has always made it easier to find them when needed. They emerged without fanfare as a plain and simple matter of doing their jobs and of defending others and themselves— New York firefighters, emergency medical teams, police officers, all rushing to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, military personnel rushing to the destroyed portion of the Pentagon to rescue colleagues, passengers and crew fighting terrorists on an airplane over Pennsylvania. They were not told what to do. They knew what they had to do.

Before 9-11, President Bush was given very low marks for leadership qualities. After 9-11, most Americans praised the high quality of his leadership. Mayor Giuliani went from being a mayor with marital problems to being the most popular politician in New York's history, lionized by the entire nation, named Person of the Year by Time magazine, hailed as “mayor of the nation.” Bush and Giuliani earned their accolades as leaders, as did firefighters and police officers earn their honors as heros. For the new normalcy, new leaders and new heroes provide inspiration, as well as answers. They represent Americans as individuals facing up to their responsibilities to act, to lead, to demonstrate American values in action. They stand out among the reasons why Americans as individuals and the United States as a nation can make this a safer world for all of us.

Let the wife of the second president of the United States, Abigail Adams, have the final word. Writing in 1778 in the darkest days of the American Revolution, when no sane, practical person would have bet that the colonists could ever defeat the most powerful army of the Western world, she argued, “If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind, whom should we serve?” She was thoroughly American in her outlook before the United States even existed!