I disagree with this. On the morning of 9/11, the world waited for several hours for the third largest building in the world to collapse, and to await the fate of the thousands of individuals inside. The images of this unfolding over the course of an entire day are embedded in this culture’s subconscious.
If those planes had hit smaller targets, the coverage would have been MUCH less. Bush still would have retaliated, but the acts themselves would have had much less of an impact, IMO.
I think not. First of all, there is no way that any attack on a hospital would have killed 3000 people.
Second of all, the American public associates the WTC as quintessentially AMERICA. An attack on a lesser target would not have embedded itself into teh public psyche.
Plus, no matter which way you go about it, the WTC footage was pretty damn dramatic. Especially with both towers falling. It made for a whole lot better television footage.
I may be totally off base here but while I think the Pres. and the Admin would have acted basically in the same way I don’t think that the American people(and the rest of the world BTW) would have. Without the WTC the event would not have been burnt into every Americans mind.
Sorry if that insults you but it is my honest opinion.
The consequences of a differently targeted 9/11 have been discussed here before, but without quite as inflammatory an OP.
Whatever one might believe about Dubya’s campaign finance base, his values, etc., I don’t think he’s nearly so cynical as Bosda’s posts imply. Indeed, he’s often criticized for a Manichean Good/Evil worldview seen as driving the current war in Iraq. I’m sure that Dubya feels a sense of responsibility for the protection of Americans of all social classes and ethnicities, regardless of whether one believes that his views about the economy or affirmative action are the best ones, or even make sense.
The most significant consequence of the 9/11 attacks to the nation as a whole was a dramatically increased sense of vulnerability, extending across all socio-economic classes. Rural middle America was left feeling stunned and vulnerable, in spite of how little they superficially had in common with Northeastern urbanites. I doubt that even the most callous moneyed classes could have shrugged off an attack (gas? plague? nuke?) that killed thousands of rural farmers or urban poor. What reason would they have had to feel secure in the wake of such an attack, merely because it happened to “someone else”, this time?
The operative factors in the psychological impact of the attacks were:
They were visually spectacular – They struck landmarks, and were televised “as they happened”
They killed a lot of people – and, in tandem with 1) above, they looked like they killed a lot of people, even before any count was conducted.
They were the work of “foreigners”, and thus felt like an attack rather than a disaster in a way in which the actions of a domestic crank like McVeigh probably could never quite manage. At the very least, as the work of an organization, rather than a disturbed individual, the 9/11 attacks gave a focus to feelings of both fear and vengeance.
I think that any attack sharing these characteristics would have shaken the nation in pretty much the same fashion as 9/11, and would have elicited pretty much the same response. Omit one or more of them, and the issue becomes a bit grayer – If al Qaida had snuck in and dynamited Mount Rushmore on national TV, with no American lives lost (in support of the ongoing Taliban campaign against giant idolatrous statuary), would we have invaded Afghanistan? Perhaps not… I think it would have depended on specifics. I do think that the body count was the single most significant element. If the first WTC bombing had been conclusively lain at bin Laden’s feet, I still doubt that an invasion would have resulted. If, on the other hand, al Qaida had, say, sunk an American cruise ship, resulting in a thousand “off camera” deaths (and consider that even the “Harlem hospital” and “EPA” scenarios would have yielded plenty of pathos for TV consumption), I think a decisive response would still have been likely.
I think any attack on U.S. soil with the scale of 9/11 would have provoked a similar or identical response.
The better question is what Bush would have done if the airliners had been flown into a similar landmark in a different country — Buckingham Palace, say, or the Kremlin. Or better yet, the Petronas Towers, as Malaysia doesn’t have the diplomatic associations the UK and Russia do.
In keeping with this revised question, what if the attacks were against:
A single office building, resulting in fewer than a dozen deaths;
One or more U.S. Embassies in Third World nations resulting in more than 200 deaths;
A U.S. naval vessel in foreign port, resulting in more than a dozen deaths;
Would GWB have responded with force equivalent to Clinton? More? Less?
I’m pretty sure that, whatever Dubya’s own views, he would have been unable to muster political support (in any event, would have been advised by his cabinet that he would be unable to muster political support) for an effort of the scale of our attack on the Taliban, in response to an attack on Americans abroad, like the embassies, or the U.S.S. Cole. Neither of these attacks had an emotional impact on America remotely like 9/11. Being a bit less averse to using the military as a tool than Clinton was, Dubya (or Dole) might have pushed for a more sustained low-intensity counter-terror response, such as sending advisors to the Afghani Northern Alliance, or actively seeking to assassinate bin Laden, rather than simply making an isolated punitive gesture like the notorious “Monicagate Barrage” cruise missile attacks. That’s purely speculative, though, since I’m sure Clinton didn’t dream up the cruise missile attacks on his own. Much depends on the composition of the cabinet and advisors. Dubya’s hawkish cabinet might well have pushed for more decisive action. We’ll never know what Dole’s might have advised.
A smaller foreign attack would similarly have been unlikely to spark a concerted response, simply by virtue of its lesser emotional impact.
An attack not directly involving America at all would probably not have sparked any major US response on its own, other than relief missions and state visits. The threat would still not have seemed real. A major 9/11 scale blow against a major ally though, such as the UK or Canada (or even, at the time, France or Germany) would likely have led us to offer our support and counsel to the victim nation. I could see us spearheading an attack on Afghanistan if planes had been crashed into central London, al Qaida/the Taliban had been connected, and the UK called for it.