Terrorist Attacks on America | Introduction
On the morning of September 11, 2001, hijackers took control of four commercial airliners outbound from cities in the northeastern United States. They intentionally crashed two planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and one plane into the Pentagon building near Washington, D.C. The fourth plane, which was likely heading for the White House, crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania. Thousands were killed in the most devastating act of terrorism that had ever occurred on American soil.
Images of the attack were harrowing. Each of the collisions into the World Trade Center—and the ensuing fires and rescue efforts—were captured on film and broadcast around the world. Americans watched in shock and horror as the two 110-story buildings collapsed and as smoke from the wreckage enshrouded the lower Manhattan skyline. Three days later, Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of military force to find and retaliate against those responsible for the attack. President George W. Bush asserted that the terrorists had committed “an act of war” against “freedom itself.”
September 11 was not the first time that the twin towers had been targeted by terrorists. On February 26, 1993, a bomb was detonated in a basement garage of the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring thousands. The perpetrators, who were eventually caught and sentenced to prison, were followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and had intended to attack the United Nations headquarters and several other New York City landmarks. Rahman was the spiritual leader of the Islamic Group, a militant organization that would later claim responsibility for a 1995 attempt to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and a 1997 attack in Luxor, Egypt, that killed fifty-eight foreign tourists. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was provoked by Rahman’s indignation over what he felt were corrupting Western influences in Egypt and other largely Muslim countries. In addition, Rahman and his followers were angry about the U.S. alliance with Israel. (Territorial disputes between Israel and its neighboring Arab countries, as well as the unresolved status of the Palestinian Arabs living in Israeli-occupied regions, have been a source of conflict in the Middle East since the late 1940s.) Some Muslim fundamentalists consider Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims to be “infidels” with cultures that undermine traditional Islamic tenets. Radical fundamentalists, whom most analysts claim are not representative of mainstream Islam, have often maintained that they must rid the Muslim world of infidels and state leaders who cooperate with Western governments.
As with the 1993 bombing, the September 11 attack was traced to Muslim extremists. In a nationally televised address before Congress on September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that “the evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al- Qaeda.” Al-Qaeda—an Arabic term for “the base”—is a globally operating network that officials believe is headed by Saudi Arabian exile Osama bin Laden.
Born into a wealthy Saudi family, bin Laden was heir to a fortune—currently estimated to be worth over $200 million—after the death of his construction tycoon father. In 1979, bin Laden moved to Afghanistan to join that country’s U.S.-supported guerilla war against a Soviet invasion. His formerly moderate political views shifted during his participation in the ten-year conflict, growing increasingly radical as he fought alongside Islamic fundamentalists with anti- Western sentiments. In the mid-1980s, bin Laden joined forces with Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood leader Abdallah Azzam to form the Services Office, an organization that funneled weapons and fighters to the Afghan resistance. The Services Office established recruitment centers around the world that enlisted and transported thousands of men from over fifty countries to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets; it also constructed and funded paramilitary training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The resources that the Services Office brought to the conflict helped Afghanistan expel the Soviets in the late 1980s.
Wanting to support Muslim resistance movements in Saudi Arabia and Yemen and extend his recruitment and training operations into more countries, bin Laden allegedly formed al-Qaeda in 1988. When Services Office cofounder Azzam was killed by a car bomb in 1989, the Services Office split into two factions, and the extremist faction joined al-Qaeda. After the end of the Afghan- Soviet war, bin Laden also forged alliances with several other militant Muslim groups—including the Islamic Group, the organization that was to be implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
In the early 1990s, bin Laden strongly denounced Saudi Arabia for allowing American troops into its borders during the Persian Gulf War. That conflict, a U.S.-led battle in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, was supported by Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern governments that were concerned about Iraq’s destabilizing influence in the region. Bin Laden and other militant fundamentalists, however, considered the presence of “infidel” American troops in Saudi Arabia a form of blasphemy because Saudi Arabia was the birthplace of Islam’s founder, the prophet Muhammad, and the home of Islam’s most sacred site, the city of Mecca. Bin Laden’s criticism, as well as pressure from the governments of Algeria and Yemen, led the Saudi government to strip him of his citizenship in 1994.
While living in exile in Sudan, Africa, bin Laden most likely began drawing up plans for terrorist strikes against U.S. interests. Bin Laden is presumed to have been behind the 1995 bombing of a joint U.S.-Saudi army training facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which killed five Americans and two Indians. A 1996 bombing of a military apartment building in Dahran, Saudi Arabia, which killed nineteen U.S. airmen and injured several hundred Americans and Saudi Arabians, was also attributed to bin Laden and his associates. Under pressure from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Nations, Sudan expelled bin Laden in 1996. He found refuge in Afghanistan, which was then under the rule of the Taliban, a Muslim fundamentalist regime.
The Taliban, a militant sect of religious students that had previously fought in the Afghan-Soviet conflict, gained U.S. support when it rose to power in 1996 because it was initially perceived as pro-Western. The United States grew wary, however, after human rights and women’s groups began criticizing the Taliban’s governmental policies. Of particular concern was the Taliban’s suppression of women, who were ordered to leave their jobs, abandon educational pursuits, and wear burqas—clothing covering the entire body—when venturing outside. The U.S. view turned distinctly negative after Osama bin Laden forged an alliance with the Taliban and persuaded its leaders to adopt an overtly anti- Western stance. According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, Afghanistan became “a haven for international terrorism” by the late 1990s, “and the Americans and the West were at a loss for how to handle it.”
In August 1998, the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were simultaneously bombed, killing 263 people, including twelve Americans, and injuring more than five thousand others. U.S. investigators soon traced the attack to bin Laden’s network, and, in retaliation, President Bill Clinton ordered military air strikes on suspected terrorist-related facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan. Though policy makers generally supported the air strikes at the time, many have criticized the attacks in retrospect because they apparently failed to impede bin Laden’s terrorist network. Some even feel that the U.S. counterstrike intensified anti-Western attitudes among radical Muslims, enhancing bin Laden’s appeal. As Sudanese scholar Abdulrahman Abuzayd stated after the U.S. retaliation, “The Americans have suddenly created a Muslim hero out of [bin Laden], whereas last week he was considered a fanatic nut.”
In October 2000, two years after the embassy bombings, a small boat exploded next to the navy destroyer USS Cole while it was refueling in Aden, Yemen. The blast, which killed seventeen sailors and wounded thirty-nine others, was eventually attributed to suicide bombers connected with bin Laden’s network. In the ensuing months—up through the summer of 2001—the U.S. government issued an alert warning Americans of an increased possibility of terrorism against travelers and U.S. interests abroad. The alert was nonspecific, however, and provided no forewarning of the events of September 11, 2001.
In the wake of the September 11 attack, President Bush officially declared a “war on terror,” directed not only against terrorist groups but also against na- tions that provide refuge to terrorists. Bush announced that “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” Consequently, as soon as officials determine that al-Qaeda was most likely the group responsible for the attack, they demanded that the Taliban hand over bin Laden and his associates. The Taliban refused, and in October 2001, the United States began bombing various Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and providing weapons and assistance to the Northern Alliance, a coalition of Afghan opposition forces. By the end of 2001, the Taliban regime had been toppled, numerous al-Qaeda members had been killed or captured, and an interim Afghan government had been established. The whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, however, remained unknown.
As this volume goes to press, bin Laden has not publicly admitted that he or his al-Qaeda network were responsible for the September 11 attack. However, in several videotaped interviews that have surfaced since the attack, bin Laden has made statements implying that he knew of and enthusiastically supported plans to crash hijacked planes into buildings. He has also expressed why he believes such terrorism is justified, and his reasoning echoes the thinking of Omar Rahman, the cleric who had instigated the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. In a taped statement that aired on an Arab television station on October 7, 2001, bin Laden maintained that Americans “have abused the blood, honor and sanctuaries of Muslims,” arguing that the terrorist attack was God’s punishment for the U.S.-backed sanctions against Iraq and for the U.S. support of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. He proclaimed that “neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it in Palestine, and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad.”
Bin Laden’s antagonism toward America may indicate a level of frustration and anti-Western resentment in the Muslim world that is more widespread than previously thought. In the years to come, the United States will face difficult challenges as it struggles to fight radical Islamic terrorism without alienating the growing populations of Muslims living in various parts of the world. This volume, which presents opinions from commentators representing different points on the political spectrum, provides an introductory overview of the causes, consequences, and responses to the terrorist attack on America.
