9-11 Attack
The most stunning attack ever made on the United States took place on the morning of September 11, 2004. Nineteen members of the al Qaeda terrorist network hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and one into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania. The American response was near-unanimous support for President George W. Bush’s angry response that this was an act of war. He sent American forces to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban regime that had supported and housed the al Qaeda network. NATO took over the primary military role and in 2007 is still in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies.
The Attack
The plot was concocted by a veteran jihadist named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti from a religious family who had attended college in the United States, which he hated violently. He helped his nephew plan the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. In 1996 he went to Afghanistan to join forces with al Qaeda, headed by Usama Bin Ladin. It approved his scheme in 1999, and supplied guidance, collaborators, training, safe houses, and about $500,000 to finance the operation. All of the plotters were Arabs; most from Yemen or Saudi Arabia; some were recruited in Germany. The key hijackers entered the United States legally in 2000. The plan was to attack the World Trade Center as the symbol of capitalism, the Pentagon as the symbol of American power, and the Capitol or White House as the source of American policy supporting Israel.
The four hijackings were exactly timed to be simultaneous. “Muscle men” overpowered and killed stewards and pilots with box cutters smuggled past airport security, while the new pilots turned off the electronic signals and flew the planes, each loaded with over 20,000 gallons of fuel, toward the targets. The Air Force defense system, NORAD, did have a few F-15 fighter, planes available, but no one had planned for airliners turned into weapons of mass destruction. Communication breakdowns meant that the Air Force was unable to intercept the first three planes. The fourth plane had a delayed takeoff and passengers on board learned by cell phone what the other three planes had done. They organized themselves spontaneously and rushed the hijackers, who deliberately crashed to earth before reaching Washington. For years afterward the nation searched for overlooked clues. Amidst the millions of bits of evidence there was no smoking gun—no decisive clue that if understood and acted upon beforehand could surely have prevented the disaster
On most days 50,000 people worked at the World Trade Center and another 40,000 had appointments there. The two planes struck at 8:46 am and 9:03 am when the buildings, 110 stories tall, were only half full. The towers survived the impact of the huge aircraft, but the burning fuel weakened the steel support systems, and both collapsed straight down, leaving a gigantic hole in lower Manhattan. The total number killed by the four plane crashes was 2900. The world gasped in disbelief at the attacks, which live television broadcast in horrifying detail. Sympathy poured in from across the globe—apart from some Middle Eastern lands where the onlookers cheered.
Immediate Response
Americans were awestruck by the way New Yorkers pulled together in the face of the greatest disaster ever to hit their city. There was no panic, rioting, looting or despair. People took care of each other, and gathered in grief to honor the victims and help the survivors. From across the country fire and police departments sent rescue units as a symbolic gesture to honor the 343 firefighters and 60 police killed after they helped 25,000 people escape. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani became a hero to the city and the nation for the brilliant way he directed rescue, relief and healing operations. Psychologically the nation joined together in a unity that had not been seen since the end of World War Two. Long-standing hostility and ridicule of New York City burned away; there was no opposition to Congressional votes of $20 billion in aid to the city. Over a billion dollars poured in as voluntary contributions to help the families of the victims. Despite economic losses that approached $100 billion, the emergency repairs were quickly made and the economy of the metropolis never faltered. However the national aviation and tourism industries suffered heavily as people were afraid of future hijackings. The overall economy had already slipped into a downturn and 9-11 made the recession worse.
Overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan
President George W. Bush, after a few hours of embarrassing confusion on September 11, found his voice. In one of the most well received speeches in a century, Bush told Congress on September 20, 2001, that this was war. He blamed al Qaeda, whose goal was to impose its radical beliefs on the entire world. Bush explained it practiced a form of extremism that perverted the peaceful teachings of Islam and commanded them to murder Christians and Jews, and to kill all Americans. It had established a base in remote Afghanistan, protected by the Taliban regime. Bush issued an ultimatum: the Taliban must immediately turn over the al Qaeda leadership to American justice, or share their fate. Bush emphasized that Americans respected the Muslim religion but he promised to systematically destroy the terrorists—to hunt them down cave-by-cave and destroy them everywhere in the world. No government would be allowed to harbor them. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” he proclaimed. “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” In other words, the response would not be police work to arrest suspected criminals, but rather a worldwide military crusade to eradicate an implacable enemy. Bush called on Congress to declare war on terrorism, and it responded enthusiastically. The nation had united.
The immediate threat was in Afghanistan, and within weeks American troops invaded. The longer range threat came from rogue nations that Bush termed “the Axis of Evil”—Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Long term global peace could never be assured as long as those states threatened to support terrorism and had the capacity and incentive to make weapons of mass destruction. Article 1-42 of the 2004 EU constitution requires member states to "act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if a Member State is a victim of a terrorist attack." The U.S. State Department quickly assembled a new alliance of willing friends, led by the United Kingdom. After the United Nations failed to enforce its own resolutions against Iraq, America and its new coalition partners demanded that Saddam Hussein resign; when he refused they invaded Iraq and ousted him in March 2003. Other counties, seeing America’s fierce determination, radically changed course. Pakistan stopped exporting nuclear technology and became a close ally in the war against al Qaeda. Libya renounced its own program of building weapons of mass destruction and was welcomed back into the community of nations. The world had been accustomed to long-winded speeches about the need for actions which everyone knew would never happen. Now there was action, and the world stood in awe of America’s vast military power unleashed with cold fury. The lone superpower frightened many people around the globe, especially Muslims. Politicians from Old Europe (France and Germany) complained loudly, while New Europe—the nations recently liberated from Communism—supported America. It was clear that the United Nations could neither eliminate terrorism, nor reign in American determination to defend itself and avenge 9-11.
Gregory (2005) argues 9-11 required a wide-ranging response across all three of the broad divisions of European Union (EU) policymaking competence: the economic and monetary union, common foreign and security policy, and internal security. These policy divisions make up the "three pillars" of the EU's political architecture. Gregory reviews general issues of accountability and human rights protection in the EU's policymaking and implementation process, the evolution of the EU's response to terrorism, and the general response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Gregory examines the implications of the various response measures adopted under each "pillar." The article demonstrates the emphasis that the member states have placed on security measures and the wider concerns that their content and speed of adoption left little scope for other views to be heard. The effectiveness of the response measures is crucially dependent on the variable implementation capacity of the member states.
Homefront impact
In terms of domestic policy the most important result of 9-11 was the passage in October 2001, by bipartisan majorities, of a law formally titled “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001” (USA PATRIOT ACT). The Patriot Act significantly enhanced the ability of law enforcement agencies to trace terrorist cells, especially those using the phone system or the Internet, to share information among many different security agencies, and to seize the financial assets used by terrorists. Civil libertarians worried that the PATRIOT act sacrificed some rights in the name of security. The millions who waited in much longer lines for airport inspections did not complain, for a heightened sense of security was essential to the restoration of confidence in the safety of the transportation industry. Despite some fears that Americans would take out their frustration against Muslims inside this country, nothing of the sort happened. Law enforcement did, however, increase their surveillance of foreigners from the Mideast, leading to debates about the wisdom of ethnic profiling. The second most important domestic result was the reorganization of multiple federal agencies dealing with terrorism. 22 different agencies with 180,000 employees merged into the Department of Homeland Security in the largest reorganization of the federal government in 50 years. The new department included the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, Customs, Immigration and Naturalization,, and the Transportation Security Administration (which took over airport security from private firms). Not included in the new department were the FBI and CIA. They remained independent, while promising better coordination and information sharing, as well as a redefinition of their primary mission as combating terrorism inside the United States and worldwide.
Ground Zero became an informal shrine, as New York's leaders debated how to handle the memorials and the rebuilding. Mayor Rudoph Giuliani gained enormous prestuge from his sensitive handling of the crisis, propelling him to a leading position in 2007 for the Republican presidential nomination in 2007. Bush continued to defend his Iraq war as a method of preventing future attacks like those of 9-11.
Memorials
Greenspan (2006) shows that vernacular and official practices dynamically intersected to create multiple narratives of September 11 th . Specifically, narratives emerged out of groups', individuals', and institutions' negotiations over memorials' material and discursive qualities. Narratives on vernacular forms---homemade memorials at the WTC site created by visitors from around the world, testimonies during rebuilding hearings, and family members' private memorializations---marked multiple and contradictory histories of September 11 th . They voiced senses of sadness and loss within and across national boundaries, alongside assertions of national power. Narratives on official forms---the site's viewing fence, designs for a future site, and September 11th museum exhibits---marked more monolithic and therefore exclusionary histories. They echoed themes of national strength but marginalized senses of loss and vulnerability, and representations of supranational components of the events. Further, groups and institutions strategically employed categories of 'memory' and 'history' to naturalize narratives that represented September 11th as 'national,' and marginalize narratives that represented the events over a supranational scale.
Turning Point
9-11 was a turning point for the nation. The experience of 9-11 changed the Bush administration's "defensive realism" approach to foreign policy into "offensive realism" based on the neoconservative ideological system of which counterterrorism and counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction were main themes. The neoconservatism came under increasing attack by 2005. In the past national defense had focused on threats from a major nation state. Now the threat was invisible, insidious and of uncertain dimensions. Bush expanded the response to include Iraq, wining Congressional approval (but not UN approval) for an allied invasion of Iraq in 2003, which overthrew Saddam Hussein, established a democratic regime under UN auspisces, and attempted—without success—to stabilize the country against a Sunni-led insurgency.
See also
Bibliography
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- Der Spiegel Magazine. Inside 9-11: What Really Happened (2002)
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