I have my own answer, that will be at the bottom of this post.
I want to know why you think Al Qaeda chose, of all things, the World Trade Center to attack. THey could have easily attacked any number of famous things in the region - between NY and DC. They could have swarmed the planes onto the Capitol. But they chose quite clearly to focus on the WTC (I don’t know if they knew they would utterly destroy both towers)
My thought on the matter is that they view the WTC as the symbol and heart of international corporations that are investing in and taking from MENA (specifically Saudi Arabia). The fact that they were also two of the biggest buildings in NY was just an added bonus. I think they selected their targets very carefully, and aimed directly at what they perceive as the enemy - the international corporations.
It was easy to find in New York…and its a symbol. Simple as that really. My guess is they had a number of targets they COULD attack, and picked the ones easiest to find while flying an airplane. Remember that these weren’t very experienced pilots, and they didn’t exactly have all day to fly around while they found the target, so they would have wanted something that stood out…and the twin towers were easily noticable against the NY skyline. The Pentagon was also easily seen from the air while taking off from any of the regional airports (like Dulles).
I think there was the symbolic value, but I believe the primary target was the financial infrastructure of our country. Not only were several fiduciary interests housed in the WTC, but he also used commercial airliners in the attacks, which he knew would hurt the airline industry as well.
For a country on the brink of a recession as it was, the attacks pushed our country over the edge.
And to answer your other question, ObL has eluded to the fact that the WTC collapse was a “happy coincidence.” He knew the attacks would destroy significant parts of the buildings, but even he couldn’t have predicted the temperatures of the burning planes, the subsequent weakening of the building’s supports, and the fall of both towers.
I’ve wondered about this too and of course they became fixated on these buildings long before 911.
My thinking is that the origins of Al Qaeda was not essentially an anti-American, anti-Western movement, but more a reaction against the religious practices of their own people and the oppression regimes on the Middle East. It was not until US troops were allowed upon Arab soil for Gulf War I, that the group’s angry became more focused on Western civilization. The knot between the governments and the US became more tightly tied in their minds.
The twin towers were a symbol of a lot of things – big money, Western and Middle Eastern, the city of a lot of Jews, easy target etc etc.
Strange thing is that, despite the grandiose name, the Towers by the time they died were stuffed with fairly ordinary firms. They’d been half-vacant in the late 80s recession and only recently started to perk up as Wall Street took off. My Dad used to teach classes to the state agencies there and a blander, less glamourous place you couldn’t imagine.
Of course, Osama was too stupid and ill-informed to know any of this.
Then why did they hit the Pentagon, too? And the other flight, that didn’t reach its goal, was also headed toward DC-- probably the Capitol Bldg or WH.
I don’t doubt that the WTC, and it’s representation of western capitalsm, had lots of symbolic value, but I think you’re oversimplifying a complex issue.
They’ve been attacking US military targets for years. Their attacks were clearly and purposely targetted at the international economic and military centers.
I’m afraid no one will know unless we capture someone who masterminded the attacks, but since y’all consider us liberals to be terrorists anyway, I just used my line of thinking on the matter.
My bolding. Well, if you had said that in the OP, I wouldn’t have posted what I posted. So, they hit military and economic centers. Did you just figure that out today?
It’s something of a Al Qida signature to attack two targets at the same, or virtually the same, time. Witness the attacks on our Embassies in Africa.
Attacking the twin towers was Osama’s “signature”, & eliminated any realistic possibility of it being a “coincidence”.
Yep. They were also BIG, not just tall. They were hundreds of feet to a side, unlike say, the Empire State Building, and they had relatively smaller buildings around them. Crashing into the Empire State=wow, crashing into the Trump Worldwide Plaza or something trying to GET to the Empire State=whatta buncha losers.
Pilots used to buzz them all the time, and in fact most New Yorkers thought it was a Cessna who’d missed the mark at first.
There was an interview with an AQ “mastermind” and he kept going about how the american economy was 70% services… and that services weren’t a real economic thing (I suppose he meant industry and agriculture are “real”). That if they got disrupted it would terribly wound the US economy. So the WTC was an attack on the “fantasy” financial economy.
They did attack the pentagon and mabye the 4th was headed for the White House or Capitol. The WTC was more visible though. Makes for good propaganda material… while the Pentagon attack is oft forgotten.
The attempt to destroy the WTC in 1993 was simply because the terrorists wanted to cause the maximum destruction on NYC, and trying to knock down its largest buildings was the best way to do this. It was also part of a larger plot to destroy NYC landmarks, so at least that time around it wasn’t targeted because of any symbolic reason, beyond the symbolisim of attacking NYC itself.
I would guess that part of the reason for the 2001 attack was simply “the fish that got away” thinking. Al-Queda first appeared on the radar screen when they failed to destroy the building the first time around, I think they wanted to attempt to finish the job.
And, as others have noted, the WTC was ideal so far as something that would be easy to find and hit with a plane. The other two tagets (pentagon and capital) were the same (in retrospect, it probably wasn’t brilliant to build our primary military headquarters in a shape thats so easy to recognize in the air). According to the 9/11 report, Osama wanted to try and hit the WH as well, but M. Atta decided against it on the grounds that it was two hard to hit with a plane.
They chose it for the same reason all suicide bombers choose their targets - to kill the greatest amount of people in the most efficient way possible. That’s all.
