Rep. Deal: Gains made in war on terrorism

Published 12:19 am Sunday, September 10, 2006

On Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., was on an airplane waiting to take off from Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport to return to Washington.

“They asked us all to get off the airplane. By the time we got off the plane, they had these emergency announcements to evacuate the airport,” he said.

That’s when Deal first heard that planes had been hijacked and flown into the towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Deal left the airport and returned home to Gainesville, then got in his car and drove back to Washington, arriving later that day.

“It was in a state of shock. There was a lot of uncertainty. Who did this? Why? What else was planned? But there was also a sense of resolve. We weren’t going to let people do this to us, intimidate us. There was also a sense of coming together,” he said.

Deal said that mood lasted for the next year or two, allowing Congress to pass several bills dealing with homeland security and terrorism with relatively little partisan battles.

“I think we’ve made tremendous progress,” he said.

Deal points to Afghanistan, where U.S. and coalition forces destroyed al-Qaida training camps and overthrew the Taliban government which had hosted them.

“Now we have a new constitution, a constitutionally elected president and national assembly,” he said.

“Female children who were formerly banned from school are now going to school. Two of the cabinet ministers are now women, and women have the right to vote,” he said.

Deal said the United States has also made great strides in disrupting the financial networks behind terrorist groups.

“We have a worldwide, coordinated effort to disrupt these networks,” he said.

Deal said the biggest challenge five years later is to not forget what happened on Sept. 11.

“You’re already hearing people talking about ‘Well, maybe 9/11 didn’t really happen. Maybe it was a conspiracy by the government,’” he said.

Deal says the public isn’t aware, and sometimes can’t be made aware, of all the things that have been done to prevent further attacks.