# Reasons behind the 9/11 attacks

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-behind-the-9-11-attacks/597968>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 29, 2011, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-behind-the-9-11-attacks/597968 "2011-09-29T02:53:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Isaacedwardleibowitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecb155/32.png) [@Isaacedwardleibowitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isaacedwardleibowitz)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-behind-the-9-11-attacks/597968/1 "2011-09-29T02:53:29Z")

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The most common reason I’ve seen cited for the 9/11 attacks is America’s foreign policy in the Middle East - for example, building bases in Saudi Arabia. However, it seems like the terrorists were also motivated by a hatred for the materialist, capitalist aspects of American culture and their effect on the world. Hence, their choice of the World Trade Center as a target. Could someone explain the motivations of the 9/11 terrorists to me?

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**Author:** ![anson2995](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-behind-the-9-11-attacks/597968/2 "2011-09-29T03:47:28Z")

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Your question is likely to set off a great debate, but the factual answer is threefold: the US presence in Saudi Arabia, the war in Iraq, and US support for Israel. That’s according to [bin Laden himself:](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1998.html)

> [@](#):
>
> First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.  
> (snip)  
> Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.  
> (snip)  
> Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.

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**Author:** ![Isaacedwardleibowitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecb155/32.png) [@Isaacedwardleibowitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isaacedwardleibowitz)\
**Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-behind-the-9-11-attacks/597968/3 "2011-09-29T04:09:57Z")

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Thanks. That quote was exactly what I was looking for.