The point of the attacks was not to break down critical services. There was no attempt to hit the infrastructure, for instance, and if you wanted to attack the financial system of the U.S., there are more important places even just within Manhattan than the World Trade Center. The point was to create terror. Hitting a famous location creates more terror than hitting a critical nerve center of the financial or political world or of the infrastructure.
Let’s not forget the trillions of TV cameras in NYC or that, especially for barely-trained pilots, the WTC made a much easier target than the New York Stock Exchange which is, what, ten stories high.
[aside]
I have to admit that I didn’t have too much trouble with Mayor Daley shutting down Meigs Field on Chicago’s lakefront after a generation of Flight Simulator players have stuffed a Cessna 182 into the Hancock Building.
[/aside]
There’s a “World” on the other side of the Hudson?
Wendell Wagner/dropzone - I doubt if blowing up the stock exchanges would cause more than a temporary inconvenience. The AMEX building was closed after 9/11 but trading still went on (my friend had to commute to Philly for a few months). Most data is backed up somewhere halfway across the country. They have contingencies for everything from floods and earthquakes to bomb threats and alien invasions. And it doesn’t change the actual ownership of assets.
msmith:
Granted, but knocking down both WTC towers didn’t cause much more than an economic “temporary inconvenience” for all the same reasons. Tragic for the people and their survivors, yes, an interesting way to get all the wrong kinds of attention, sure, but it hardly brought the economy of the West to its knees.
That would be different from a normal Washington rush hour just how, exactly?
My understanding of the choice of the WTC, according to the Qaeda view of the world, was that it was several factors:
- Symbol of American/Western economic imperialism
- They had to be full of Jews, since they control Western economics
- Shock value - taking the “war” back to the source, shaking the infidels out of their smugness and superiority complexes
The DC targets appeared to have been the White House and Capitol, but that doesn’t seem hard to explain.
Yes, because Al-Qaeda gets their ideas from the SDMB.
Just in case they do, I have a great plane on how to fly a plane into a cave.
great idea even.
well, i knowThis was my idea…
Who’da thunk it, I thought they were bakesale types.
Of course not. Unlike in the movies, civilization does not collapse when one of it’s tallest buildings is destroyed.
Dare I say… understatement of the new millenium?
…to date anyway…
-Rav
You know, I’d be very glad if terrorists actually did read these boards. There is no better place to wage a war on ignorance than in the very heart of ignorance.
well, i consider **SeeThruArt **a terrorist…to sanity!!!
I though this was going to be a Pitting of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight hosts.
You must also realize that terrorism is theatre. The audience is in two parts. The vicitms of terror are supposed to feel terrorized. But the second part of the audience is made of Arabs from around the world. Those dissafected youth living in poverty and have no upward mobility and those in a position to finacially contribute to terror.
Each terror act is also recruitment for new terrorists. On 9/11, 19 well trained terrorists died. Terror organizations don’t spend their human capitol as freely as most think. If the operatives are going to die they need to die spectacularly to recruit more terrorists and to encourage terroists in training. And you’ve got to understand that the dissaffected youth in the middle east know NYC. They knew the twin towers so when al-shitheads knocked them down al-shitheads looked big in their eyes.
People who donate money and support are impressed by the destruction of the twin towers.
But neither group, the could become terrorists or the money lenders are ever going to be impressed by the destruction of the Quail Creek Crossing shopping center in Enid Oklahoma.
Zebra writes:
> But neither group, the could become terrorists or the money
> lenders are ever going to be impressed by the destruction of
> the Quail Creek Crossing shopping center in Enid Oklahoma.
Well, now we can figure out whether Al-Qaeda reads the SDMB. If the Quail Creek Crossing Shopping Center goes up in flames, we know who to blame.