How many hijackings have there been since then? Have their chances of repeating such an operation decreased drastically since that event? Compared to the current financial turmoil, did it create more than a blip in the economy, or did it actually energise the arms industry, as if it needed it? It hasn’t stopped people going to work in high-rise offices, and it has brought international heat on their movement wherever they try to operate in the open.
No. WE attacked THEM; the entire situation is our fault.
Of course.
What are you talking about?
My life hasn’t changed at all, aside from budgeting an extra 45 minutes or so when heading to an airport.
9/11 didn’t do anything to “sow distrust” between us and our allies. On the contrary- our allies were as pliant immediately post-9/11 as they’ve ever been. The current Administration fucked up relations with our allies, not 9/11.
That’s irrelevant. You are creating an arbitrary standard. What do more hijackings have to do with the 9/11 attacks? The purpose of the 9/11 attacks wasn’t to preserve that tactic as one that could be used in the future. They wanted to make the populace terrified, impact our economy and overstretch our military forces on costly and ineffective campaigns.
Actually the current economic turmoil is a direct result of policies after 9/11. National Guardsman in Iraq cannot help in New Orleans or fight fires in California. A mountain of debt related to the Iraq war and a reduction in our standing worldwide. The fact that we focused so much on Iraq allowed infrastructure to crumble at home.
So you never paid more for gas eh?
Yes, the current administration fucked up relations with our allies. Part of the plan was to get us to overreact. Read what Bin Laden said right after 9/11 then get back to me.
I think there are a number of factors involved that lead to that sort of misunderstanding. There’s the fact sometimes we take for granted the accuracy of labels, for example. We call them terrorists, but throughout history they’ve also been called guerrillas, insurgents, counter-revolutionaries, uprisers, crusaders, and infidels. We tend to lose sight of the fact that they’re just plain criminals — murderers. They kill and injure people simply because they do not value human life or human rights.
With respect to long term aims versus short term aims, the fact that these particular people and their predecessors on whom they model themselves have been engaging in these practices for thousands of years suggests to me, at least, that they will never be worn down. All that can be done is to maintain the kind of diligence necessary to make their jobs as impractical as we can. And to that end, we need more freedom, not less. I believe that it can be effectively argued, for example, that an armed and law-abiding populace is a much more unlikely target than one that has been disarmed and terrified by propoganda.
Despite mswas assertion that there would be no attempt for an honest answer, I will attempt to give one.
Of course there is no ability to give exact numbers but clearly more civilians have been killed in Iraq as a direct consequence of American actions than were killed in 9-11, and orders of magnitude more as an indirect result of American actions. Some basic numbers.
For the indirect bystander numbers - which include those intentionally caused by opposition forces, and other deaths that have occurred because of the disruption of what was functioning as society before we got involved - more.
You can decide which methodology makes more sense to you but the high end study seems least politically motivated and scientifically rigorous to me. In any case, lots.
Well it seems it is finished and the last of the terrorists finally killed. So far the death toll is at 195 and some 300 wounded. But likely to climb as they comb the rooms.
Two of the terrorists were guests at a hotel and two others hired as security personnel there. Another group arrived by boat from somewhere else. They have found four or five dead sailors from the ship they had hijacked.
And it seems it was a much more organised and high tech terror attack than many first though. They have been using satellite phones to stay in contact with organisers in a foreign country, and GPS and BlackBerry mobile phones. Apparently they monitored police radio and journalists reporting on international media to be able to better outwit the anti-terror operations. I thought some of the reporting I have seen was irresponsible. Don’t the satellite phone operator keep records so it will be possible to track down where they called.
DSeid That’s a valiant attempt at answering the question honestly. I am just tired of the condescending notion that Americans have all the power in Iraq and that any death in Iraq is caused by America regardless of who pulls the trigger. It’s sort of a false compassion, because the portrayal of people as innocent victims is also a form of infantilization. Americans are the adults and Iraqis are the children, so anything that goes wrong is the responsibility of the adult Americans, whereas the benighted children of Iraq know not what they do and are merely reacting to external forces. It attributes a pernicious self-determination on the part of Americans, and no self-determination on the part of Iraqis at all.
I disagree. The purpose of 9/11 was to terrify the American people and make them spend time, energy and money on prevention. In this they have been wildly successful. Successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
America has closed itself to the world. Travel to America is so inconvenient and demeaning that tourists and business conventions go elsewhere. America has lost millions of tourists and billions of dollars. At a time when world tourism was booming American airlines had not recovered to levels of pre 9/11.
America has spent billions on Homeland Security and related witch hunts. This is money which could have been better spent elsewhere.
The red tape involved in travel, import and export has meant that those activities are hampered and diminished.
And I would say the war in Iraq is a direct result of 9/11 as it would have been very improbable without it.
I would say 9/11 was wildly successful for those who did it. They wanted to terrify America and they succeeded. America has been terrified ever since.
I agree with you there. But I am skeptical of the claim that terrorism is the result of powerlessness + conflict. Of course, it’s difficult to find situations where weaker countries have picked fights with stronger countries. However, I have not heard much about Argentine terrorism against Britain.
But more importantly, one needs to ask why Muslims are (apparently?) so prone to picking fights with entities they cannot defeat militarily. Why does Iran give a *&( about Israel?
If we assume for the sake of argument that a lot of Muslims feel that terrorism is the only way to pursue their aims, then one needs to ask: What exactly are their aims? And are those aims qualitatively different from those of non-Muslims?
mswas, I understand your point and I think that you recognize that America still shares culpability for what has resulted by removing the societal structure that had been there. If somehow someone came along and removed all of America’s police forces, and violence resulted as various gangs and syndicates vied for power, then the power that removed the police would be culpable, yes? Likewise is America at least partly responsible for the mayhem that followed our removal of the societal structures that were in place.
brazile84, indeed asymetric warfare often includes terrorism and other similar methods as part of the toolbox. The issues in regards to Islamists and their aims are in fact who the actors are and what the actual goals of the different players are. It is MHO that there are multiple levels of actors playing at different levels, some with very specific goals, but that the larger theme is the fundamentalist desire to keep the Islamic world insular and in control of a revealed truth; the desire to avoid integration into a community of communities that coexist according to some basic secular axioms. To that end “The West” (and America and Jews in particular) are the needed “others” to rally their world together against (much as all of the world might be united if they became convinced that our planet was under attack by some alien force - as in The Watchmen). Christian fundamentalists OTOH are used to existing as part of that community already. They fight against it still, but in other ways. And Jewish fundies mostly exert power by their control of coalition building balance of power. Hindu fundies get violent also but mainly are also a political force.
Is this attack in India part of that dynamic? Or is it related to other more specific goals? Or is it both to various levels to different elements involved in its funding and planning?
I don’t think there is enough information available yet to say.
Seven-plus years later, people are apparently unable to even agree what the broader goals of September 11th were. I don’t find this take very convincing.
Yes, America is definitely responsible, but so are the Islamists who wreak havoc there. If we can talk about mutual culpability then I have no problem. I just hate the ‘Americans are evil masterminds, Iraqis are stupid innocents’ method of foreign policy discussion.
Oh , there is plenty of blame to go around. On all sides. Terrorism is always inexcusable. But so is the totally unjustified initiation of war which was the invasion of Iraq. Everybody is guilty. The problem I have is that in this side of the world we all agree the other side is guilty and that terrorism can never be justified but only a much smaller fraction believe just as intensely that what America did was morally just as bad and that in fact it has done much more damage to life and property. That is why it gets to me when someone comes in condemning all Muslims. No, all Muslims are not guilty just like all Americans are not guilty. Each individual is guilty in the measure that they support the use of violence to further their world views. And that is true on both sides of the aisle and there is plenty of blame to go around.
I would say that’s part of it, but it looks to me like they wouldn’t shed too many tears if they made it past the gates of Vienna. And Srinagar.
Srinagar is muslim majority last time I checked.
And damn the philiophical quibbles, looks like there will be a war; not good.
Sure. As will be parts Europe eventually, if current trends continue.
Yes, but that is an elementary concept. One that most people do not get granted, but the problem is it often destroys any semblance of constructive discussion. Some people cannot come to understand this point, others cannot proceed past using it as some sort of egalitarian mantra.
There are things that can be usefully said about the how and the why and what of it. Things that can be said about Islam that don’t apply to America and things that can be said about America that don’t apply to Islam. The attempt to reduce everything to some sort of psychoanalysis where we are all parts of some sort of monoculture where our cultural identifiers are nothing more than binary signifiers that determine which side of the dividing lines we fall on robs us of our very humanity. We are not merely pawns in some grand psychological game, enslaved to our circumstances, unaffected by the cultural teachings of our society. Reducing it to mere socio-economic and psychological profiles assumes that the only thing differentiating us is the color of our plastic coating and the direction we face when a conflict arises. There is more to it than that, there are cultural and ideological leanings that run deeper into our selves than mere personal psychology can explain.
People like to claim that Islamic terrorists are terrorists because of poverty, but that is not true, Osama bin Laden was a rich man, Said Qutb was wealthy enough to study in Colorado, and found Colorado of the 1950s to be debauched and decadent. Many of the 9/11 hijackers were Middle-Class students, relatively well educated. The standard liberal dogma that everything can be related to the psychology of socio-economic status falls short of explaining things. The Islamists claim that their methods are rooted in Islam, and yet people try to claim that this is not true, they reach and they stretch to find some other explanation. This is the problem with people who at the heart of it view Religion as mental illness rather than one of the primary motivators of cultural action.
Saying they are terrorists because of poverty is an oversimplification which has a kernel of truth to it.
Like saying they hate us because of our freedom. Well, this is completely false but anyway.
It is not necessary that the leaders or terrorists be poor, it is enough that they feel their people are being oppressed. It is a matter of pride as a people, not a matter of personal situation. I would say almost all revolutionary leaders were well educated. George Washington, Simon Bolivar, Jose Rizal, José Martí, Lenin, Zhong San, were all well educated persons who felt their people were not getting a fair shake.
And the Muslims in the Middle East have a sense that they have been oppressed and abused by western powers for too long already and I think they have a fair point and that we need to talk to them. By refusing to talk we are closing that one avenue of resolving differences and we leave them with violence as no other option. But the attitude of American foreign policy has pretty much been “we have bigger guns; we don’t need to talk”.
You cannot expect people who feel they are oppressed and abused to just bear it because someone wrote some laws and by coincidence the laws were written by those who would benefit from them. When workers, including children, were expected to work 12 hours daily in a mine in exchange for a pittance while the owners were living in luxury you cannot be surprised that it caused innumerable revolutions and finally things had to change. But if they had waited for the fat cats to change the laws voluntarily they would still be in the mines.
When blacks wanted to ride in the front of the bus or go to white schools and universities it was not enough for them to say pretty please.
Either you talk to people who feel wronged or you are creating a pressure cooker which will eventually explode.
Today we have a situation in the world where western powers have been exploiting less powerful countries around the world for decades and centuries. We cannot be surprised if they want to change that. religion is a very small part and excuse. It is their cultural marker. Nothing more. Religion is just part of a cultural setting, no different from American belief in the superiority of democracy. Both things are just as capable of motivating people to support violence.
So, the way I see it, those who propose, condone or effect violence, from any side of the issue, are the ones creating the problem for the rest of us who believe violence should be a last resort and only in self defense.
So, while I agree that the terrorists’ actions are inexcusable, I also have to say the policies of America and its allies are also absolutely inexcusable. As I said, plenty of blame to go around.