Amidst the shock and horror following the September 11th assaults, our nation now confronts a painful and bewildering array of transitions. So far, most of these have focused on the management of anger, loss, and grief, and trying to find ways to make some sense of the madness of such unprecedented destruction. As the national psyche continues to mourn, we must also come to grips with other, more practical transitions: the pursuit of an appropriate response to the acts themselves, the establishment of meaningful domestic security, development of a balanced immigration policy, stimulation of economic recovery and the re-definition of national security itself...all of this to be accomplished in a way that will not compromise traditional freedoms and protections.

As Americans continue to respond to the attacks, it will be important to remember that for all its unique character, the turmoil following September 11th has at least one thing in common with all other disasters: it has a natural history. Whether the immediate cause of a catastrophe is natural, technologic or socio-political, the event is followed by tasks that evolve in response to the needs of the afflicted. As these tasks change, our response will require different plans, demand different skills, mobilize different assets, ask different questions and meet different needs as we adjust to what is now called "the new normal".

The natural history of disasters begins in the emergency phase; efforts focus on search and rescue activities and provision of basic needs and services for the victims: security, food, water, shelter, and health care. The U.S. is well suited to this. We are a nation made of traditions that orient to strength, generosity, independence, and mastery over adversity. These values couple well with communal wealth and technological sophistication. We may take at least some satisfaction in the knowledge that after the event, everything that could be done was done. Whatever losses sustained, it was not for lack of courage, commitment or materiel. 

As the demand for acute services decreases somewhat, the nation moves imperceptibly into the recovery phase, the period of adjustment to the changes caused by the disaster. One of the principle tasks of the recovery phase is to attempt to find some meaning or purpose in the suffering; we honor the dead and the living, search for spiritual support, reaffirm our need and capacity to carry on, and examine our lives to see what we have learned and what we must change. 

As we work to reestablish a sense of normalcy, we engage the final phase: rehabilitation. It is here we see changes born of the wisdom of lessons painfully learned. For many, it will be this phase that creates the greatest difficulty. Successful rehabilitation must certainly address historic losses, current needs and future requirements. To be complete, however, rehabilitation must also address relationships with the very environments that spawn the terrorists themselves. To a great degree it will be the ability to understand the "view of the other" that will permit us to truly complete efforts to help ourselves. Without this step we will succeed in institutionalizing the suffering and loss, but not realize the opportunity for growth and positive change. 

Understanding does not imply approval, forgiveness, or acceptance; it is an intellectual process by which information is acquired, analyzed and used to make decisions. The ability to "understand the other" can be limited by fear, vengeance and a range of other emotions that are easy to understand, but which do not always help to change things for the better. The process is often slow and invariably difficult, but we may obtain some useful guidance from the field of cognitive psychology.

The study of cognitive psychology tells much about how humans perceive and respond to the world around them. The process has been well described by the noted researcher Richards Heuer.  He observed that we construct our reality based largely on our senses, and that this sense-information is mediated by mental process that govern not only what information is attended to, but how it is organized and what meaning we attach to it. Although the precise neural processes are themselves complex, it is clear that our perceptions and the meanings we attach to them are strongly influenced by our culture, education, role expectations and past experience. From this thought-experience infrastructure we form certain understandings and biases, sometimes referred to as mental models, mind sets, or analytic assumptions. We use these assumptions or mental models to create certain understandings about cause-and-effect relationships, through which we then process and evaluate information.

Heuer describes these mental models as being like lenses through which we may focus or distort the images before us. If the lens is distorted, the images will be similarly affected. To see the clearest image we need more than just information; we need to understand the lens itself. Douglas MacEachen of Harvard's University's John F. Kennedy School of Government commented on Heuer's work, noting that,  "...too often, newly acquired information is evaluated and processed through the existing analytic model, rather than being used to reassess the premises of the model itself." If the premises are inaccurate or inappropriate, the result will often be less than optimum.

As we engage the rehabilitation phase of collective recovery we will need to examine our lenses and raise questions about our working assumptions. This principle is important to consider as we pursue long-term strategies to reduce the threat of international terrorism. It is not surprising that many who endorse terrorism live in environments mired in a history of autocracy, poverty, marginalization, and disenfranchisement. These factors loom large in the creation of the hopelessness, humiliation, anger, fear, poverty, and desperation that that create a vulnerability to radical solutions that support violence as the only alternative.

We must come to understand the environments, attitudes, motivation and worldview that support terrorists not because we agree with, or because we are responsible for their plight, but because it is these experiences that govern their perception of their world and ours. Our willingness to understand and respond to these perceptions will determine to a large degree whether or not the next generation of potential terrorists will grow to maturity.

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