On 9/11, Master the Fear of Terrorism

Fifteen years after the September 11 attacks, U.S. anti-terror officials say the country is hardened against such well-developed plots but remains as vulnerable as ever to small and especially home-grown attacks.

Almost 3,000 died in the attacks, and more than 6,000 were injured.

The spread of Islamic State and its message presents a danger that is “considerably less predictable” than those posed by al Qaeda around the time of the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

“Over the last decade, there have been, on average, more than 10,000 terrorist attacks per year, causing an average of more than 15,000 deaths per year”, Haass noted. McVeigh too had religious motivations for his attacks. We need to remember, at all times, that terrorism is a form of violent theater, played out to an audience of both sympathizers and victims. But as it loses the ground war, ISIS is mutating back into an al-Qaida style terrorist organization, coordinating attacks in Europe and Asia while encouraging untrained sympathizers to wreak havoc on their own. At the end of 2015, according to a Gallup poll, Americans named terrorism the No. 1 problem facing the United States, and confidence in the government to protect us dropped to an all-time low.

We do not know how many have been killed or injured in the dozen countries across the Middle East and South Asia where the global war on terror continues unabated. After all, we never wanted the war in the first place.

Since 2001, 282 USA citizens have, on average, been killed each year in acts of terrorism committed around the globe. How vulnerable do you feel to violence and how much does it affect your day to day choices? “And to see those tanks just ‘boom, ‘ and more stuff keeps spewing out of them.it’s wonderful”.

“September 11 is one of our worst days but it brought out the best in us”. President Richard Nixon had ordered economic warfare against the elected Socialist President Salvador Allende, culminating in a military coup led by army chief, Augusto Pinochet. Their concerns are warranted, as many terrorism analysts and policymakers agree that despite trillions of dollars of investment in national security, the threat is as high as ever.

Since 9/11, our military has dealt a devastating blow against al-Qaida, shattering their command and control network.

The roots of al-Qaeda began growing during the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, both of which funded radical Islamist fighters against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The protracted conflict that followed the declaration of war saw 179 British military personnel killed and thousands of Iraqis also lost their lives. There were two million internally displaced persons and another five million became refugees in Iran and Pakistan, and the country was devastated.

The core fight is in ideology, officials also say, and the United States has made little progress in combating the propaganda that draws sympathizers to the IS group and al-Qaeda. Under the CIA’s “Operation Cyclone”, from 1979 to 1989, the United States and Saudi Arabia provided $40 billion worth of financial aid and weapons to nearly 100,000 Mujahidin and “Afghan Arabs” through Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence.

Bin Laden’s son said 9/11 was aimed at setting up a grand showdown with America in Afghanistan where the Soviet army had been defeated by US -backed mujahideen. Since then, 6,888 more Americans have died fighting for their country in that war.

Of course, what Osama bin Laden said was morally reprehensible.

With Hillary Clinton, voters will get a more activist internationalism that would have intervened in Syria and remained in Iraq, but at the price of her corruption and mendacity.

The report concludes that Blair “overestimated” his ability to influence the United States and his the decision to go to war was based on “flawed intelligence”. Afterward, for the first time, most Americans understood that a hostile ideology had declared war against America and the West generally.

Joel Beinin, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Stanford University, was criticized for anti-American remarks when he simply said: “If Osama bin Laden is confirmed to be behind the attacks, the United States should bring him before an worldwide tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity”.

French President Francois Hollande echoed this sentiment, noting that the USA invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to the creation of ISIS, and that even though (France’s then-President) Jacques Chirac refused to participate in the war, France has become a main target for ISIS. All in the hope that by our actions we might restore a world in which America was safe and secure from terrorist threat. After all, ideas, even distorted and extremist ideas, can not be bombed away.

The human and financial costs of such engagements are more limited – a significant fact, after the 5,300 U.S. military personnel killed, 50,000 wounded and $1.6 trillion spent from 2001-2014 in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional data.

To defeat the terrorist in the 21st century requires an entirely new way of thinking. The ability to learn from such mistakes would be their only saving grace.

Farhang Jahanpour, a TFF Associate and Board member and Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society, is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University.