On September 11, 2001 (a date now widely known as "9/11"), four large U.S. airliners were simultaneously hijacked by 19 Islamic radicals associated with the al Qaeda terrorist group. Shortly after the flights had departed from three East Coast airports, the hijackers disabled the crews, took control of the cockpits, and carried out their plans for mass murder. At 8:46 a.m. (local time) the terrorists piloted the first plane, which had originated from Boston, into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Fifteen minutes later a second plane, also from Boston, struck the south tower. (Both towers would entirely collapse later that morning.) At about 9:40 a.m. a third plane, which had departed from the Washington, DC area, struck the southwest side of the Pentagon. Within the next hour a fourth aircraft (from Newark, New Jersey) crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside after its passengers—informed of the other hijackings via cellular phone—attempted to overpower their assailants, who probably had intended to drive the plane into the Capitol or the White House in Washington. All told, some 2,750 people were killed in New York, 184 at the Pentagon, and 40 in Pennsylvania.
These attacks signaled the dawn of a new era in U.S. history. The American mainland and the average American citizen were clearly vulnerable to acts of unspeakable horror.
Of paramount importance to this section of DiscoverTheNetworks is the political left's reaction to 9/11 - not only with regard to the type of response leftists advocated, but also with regard to the motives they ascribed to the perpetrators. A leading voice of the left, Professor Noam Chomsky, claimed that no matter how appalling the terrorists' actions had been, the United States historically had done far worse to others and thus was culpable for 9/11. Said Chomsky, "[W]e can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes, which means making an effort to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators. If we choose the latter course, we can do no better, I think, than to listen to the words of Robert Fisk, whose direct knowledge and insight into affairs of the region is unmatched after many years of distinguished reporting. Describing 'the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a crushed and humiliated people,' he [Fisk] writes that 'this is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and U.S. helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps.'"
Late in 2002, Medea Benjamin, a communist anti-war activist and the founder of Global Exchange, exhorted the American government (which had invaded Afghanistan and overthrown the Taliban regime that had provided safe harbor for al Qaeda) to "stop taking innocent lives in the name of seeking justice for the loss of other innocent lives." Benjamin identified "the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world" as items ranging from "our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel." The bombings in Afghanistan, she said, had "made Afghans so upset that some [have] talked about waging a jihad, or holy war, against the United States." "If the Muslim world sees the United States as willing to bomb but not feed people," she added, "it will deepen the suspicion and mistrust already felt by millions . . . that the United States doesn't care about the lives of the Muslim people."
In 2003 Ms. Benjamin was a signatory to the widely publicized Not in Our Name (NION) anti-war statement, which asserted that the U.S. War on Terror posed "grave dangers to the people of the world." The NION document characterized America's military response to 9/11 as "[w]ar and repression" that had been "loosed on the world by the Bush Administration . . . [in] a spirit of revenge."
The now-infamous professor Ward Churchill asserted that terrorist violence directed against the United States was a morally justifiable response to what he characterized as the U.S. government's "rape" and "murder" of other peoples. "If we want an end to violence," said Churchill, "especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world." Churchill did not, however, harbor any hopes that America might mend its alleged flaws; rather, he advocated the country's destruction: "I want the state gone: transform the situation to U.S. out of North America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether." Toward this end, Churchill candidly endorsed further acts of anti-American terror. "One of the things I've suggested," he said, "is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary." Lamenting that the terrorism of 9/11 had proved "insufficient to accomplish its purpose" of eviscerating the United States, Churchill wrote, "What the hell? It was worth a try."
When trying to explain 9/11, those on both ends of the political spectrum tend to assume that the Islamist holy war against the West revolves solely around Westerners themselves, around the moral drama of their goodness or their wickedness, rather than having something to do with Islam itself. The anti-war left believes that al Qaeda attacked the U.S. because the latter is imperialist, racist, or insufficiently responsive to the needs of the Third-World poor. By contrast, the pro-war right (including President Bush) maintains that the Islamists hate Americans for their freedoms, opportunities, and overall success as a society. In other words, the left believes that the Islamists hate Americans for their sins, and the right believes that the Islamists hate Americans for their virtues.
A very different perspective on the Islamist mindset is offered by Mary Habeck, a military historian at Yale University. Habeck holds that radical Muslims base their war against non-Moslems on the Islamic sacred writings, particularly the Sira, which, unlike the Koran, tells the story of the Prophet Muhammed's life in chronological sequence. Using Muhammed as their model, the jihadists think and act within paradigms provided by the stages of Muhammed's political and military career. According to Habeck, this internally driven logic of Islam, and not any particular provocation, real or imagined, by some outside power, is the key to understanding why the jihadists do what they do. While specific actions by the West might provoke the jihadists to greater attacks, their fundamental strategic and military decisions are not determined by anything done by the United States, Europe, or any other perceived enemy of Islam, but rather by tenets within Islam itself that call for the killing of the foes of Allah.
This section of DiscoverTheNetworks explores this question of the root causes of 9/11, as well as the political circumstances in the U.S. that allowed the catastrophe to take place.
