Even science fictions writers would have been hard pressed to come up with such a sensational story. 4 airliners, hijacked to be flown into buildings.
Two of them into the World Trade Center. The WTC was 2 buildings that typically had 50,000 people in them at once. Think about that for a moment. How many people live in the city you live in? The town I grew up in only had 5,000 people in it total. Those two buildings usually had 50,000 people in them and could comfortably fit more than twice that.
I've visited the WTC as part of my job at Stardock. The picture ID card to get past security there is a collector's item now I suppose. If you've never been in the WTC, it was an amazing sight. It was gigantic. It was like a man made mountain. An entire mall was in the basement of it and underneath that was a subway. It wasn't just really tall, it was immense horizontally too. The pictures on TV don't give it justice as to how large it was.
No disaster movie had ever even attempted to tell a tale of something as horrific as flying two loaded commercial jet liners into those two buildings and for them to collapse. Such a story wouldn't have been credible. Yet, it happened in real life. Done by people who hate our culture and for what we stand for so much that they were willing to spend years planning and then sacrifice themselves just to murder as many Americans as they could arbitrarily.
The third airliner crashed into the Pentagon. Most people now believe that the Pentagon wasn't the primary target. As they were flying over Washington the actual target was harder to find than they thought and flying a commercial airliner as a "smart bomb" isn't easy. The capital building or the white house is thought to be what the actual target was but the Pentagon would do. The Pentagon is one of the world's largest buildings in square feet. It doesn't look that huge until you see that the airplane only managed to ding up one small section on it.
The fourth airliner was also on its way to Washington to strike either the White house or the capital building. But it didn't succeed. The passengers, having learned the fate of the other planes, heroically rose up to take back the plane. If they were going to die, they weren't going to let terrorists use their plane as a guided missile of mass murder. No one knows exactly what happened on the plane but the results speak for themselves - the plane crashed in Pennsylvania killing all on board but no one on the ground.
Without their heroism, imagine how things might have gone differently. Imagine the white house or the capital building destroyed. Seeing the white house destroyed in the movie "Independence Day" was done for shock value, but no one could really imagine it being destroyed for real. Yet it nearly happened.
The United States and other like minded nations (in particularly the United Kingdom) were quick to act. They identified who was responsible and took action to disrupt their ability to execute similar plans in the future. This action took the form of over throwing the terrorist-friendly regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan and destroying the strongholds of the terrorist groups therein. The leader of the terrorist group was forced to flee and is now either dead or living in some cave, isolated.
During this time, people began to debate why these terrorists would go to such lengths just to murder Americans. Depending on how much research and knowledge on the background different conclusions were reached. But most of the experts who have done the most research into the how and why have concluded that the terrorists are the offshoot of radical Islam. And radical Islam hates western civilization and the United States being the primary example of it.
Western civilization has evolved into a set of ideals that can be summarized as a belief in personal freedom.
Radical Islam hates this concept. Some people think this is absurd but they are allowing their culture prejudices to get the better of them. Personal freedom is so taken for granted that we can't imagine that anyone not wanting it. Radical Islam believes in personal morality being central to their lives. And their morality defined by the tenets of Islam.
So the freedoms we enjoy have created a culture that is vastly different and seemingly immoral to radical Islam. Our women have equal rights. People can dress as they choose. Our capitalism highlights economic Darwinism. The west's cultural domination has spread, particularly in the last 50 years. Coca cola and McDonald's and Levi's have permeated out everywhere and radical Islam sees this as a subtle form of conquest. Their solution is to try to turn the tide -- with violence.
And that's what we face now. Since September 11th, we've all been given a wake up call. Particularly the United States which has historically been fairly isolationist. Issues like Iraq, which was probably not directly involved with the attack but is still related to the larger issue at hand now suddenly matters more. If radical Islam is willing to hijack commercial airliners to fly into buildings, what would they do if they managed to get a hold of nuclear weapons of various kinds?
This is where the question of Iraq comes up. Should the west do something now about Iraq or should the west be prepared to accept Iraq as a nation that has nuclear and biological weapons that it may or may not covertly provide to terrorists. Or at the very least use to intimidate their neighbors to increasingly limit the west's options to fight terrorists. And that's the debate we're having now, a year later.
I believe history is on the side of western civilization. I look at the Internet and the completely seamless cooperation between people from all over the world. Here on WinCustomize.com, the site is run by people ranging from the USA, to Europe to Canada to Brazil to Australia and elsewhere. We're all part of a single team that works seamlessly because we make the same assumptions on what is right and wrong. We share the same ideals and hence easily cooperate together. Those ideals include meritocracy which is a very difficult ideal to battle against (i.e. that the best should rise up and be accepted). Those ideals also include the basic personal freedoms previously discussed. And more importantly, tolerance to other points of view.
But sometimes history needs help. We must hold true to our principles. Make sure that our actions are guided by compassion and justice and not revenge. History will record September 11th as a real turning point I think. It’s a wake up call as to how dangerous the world can be. What remains to be seen is what kind of turning point it will be remembered as.
