A Chronology of that very day
B Consequences in US foreign policy
1 Military consequences
2 Political issues
C Domestic policy, public mood
D The “axis of evil” – Or: What’s next? Who’s next?
E What has changed?
F Topics for discussion
Appendix: Handout
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Big hole in the side, building afire.
First reaction: odd accident. People commonly surprised
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“This is no accident, it is an attack!” 600 firemen fight with the flames
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The building is evacuated at once; and so are several other buildings in Washington within an hour.
Vice President Cheney recommends Bush to let hijacked planes be shot down, Bush agrees
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The shock among the people is even more intensified, the firemen will later be called heroes
In the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), a plane is made out and established as hijacked (a man called Todd Beamer alerts authorities); it’s flying towards Washington, D.C. at 500 mph, 80 miles away (i.e. 10 mins). Before they can shoot it, it disappears from the radar screen (flying to low). After they have learned that it had crashed down (10.10), the officers speak of a ‘heroic act’, but it takes a little time until they see who the heroes are.[1] Beamer shall be given a special honour on May 4, 2002: The post office of his home town, Cranbury, N.J., is renamed “Todd Beamer Post Office Building”.[2] President Bush has signed up to this in January.
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This intensifies the cloud of smoke and dust, but one could expect this after the other tower had come down. Nevertheless, those who have been searching in the rubble, have not enough time to escape and are buried, too.
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Altogether, some 4,000 people lose their lives in these attacks, incl. 343 NY firemen. The number of (partly very) seriously injured is even higher.
1 Military consequences
- Suspicion goes to Islam fundamentalists
- esp. to Al-Qaida, who have been claimed responsible for the 1993 bombing in the garage under the WTC and several other terrorism attacks, too (not really proved)
- Iraqi National Congress (INC) rather thinks that Saddam Hussein is the actual wire puller, for the hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi agents in Prague before and there are training camps for terrorists near Baghdad, as a dissident in Iraq reports. The German ZDF Auslandsjournal on November 22, 2001 quotes Sharif Ali, the INC spokesman: “The Gulf War has never finished for Saddam Hussein. He is still at war with the USA.”[4]
- George W. Bush gets a video in which Osama bin Laden shows a lot of detail knowledge about the Sept. 11 attacks. At first, he does not publish it in respect for the victims’ relations, besides he is not sure in how far he should take that video seriously
- In mid October, special forces of U.S. troops invade Afghanistan after the Taliban have not obeyed to a U.S. ultimatum to extradite bin Laden. The USA lead mainly air raids, while the land fights are the business of the Northern Alliance. This troop invades Kabul on Nov. 13; from Nov. 26 on, U.S. troops fight on land, too.
- At first, the Northern Alliance controls its ‘freed’ cities, later the U.N. overtake this control. On the Petersberg near Bonn, Germany, the Afghan tribes come together to establish a new government, led by Karsai, after 5 years of Taliban oppression. The last Afghan city to be conquered is Kandahar (Taliban give it up on Dec. 8); after that, a guerrilla war begins that has not finished till today.
- There are only suppositions where bin Laden is (Pakistan, Yemen, …)
- Zacarias Moussaoui, a French man of Moroccan heritage, is arrested and shall be sentenced to death in Alexandria, Virginia, on Sept. 30, 2002:
“[Attorney General John] Ashcroft has said the government believes Moussaoui intended to be the fifth hijacker on that flight -- the only one with four, instead of five, hijackers.
Moussaoui was arrested in August 2000 on immigration charges and remained inside a Minnesota jail at the time of the attacks.
The U.S. government claims Moussaoui’s actions leading up to the attack follow the same pattern as those of the hijackers: He took flying lessons, allegedly trained at an al Qaeda terrorist camp and allegedly received money from a fugitive, Ramzi Binalshibh, who also wired funds from Germany to some of the dead hijackers.”[5]
- On April 30, 2002, CNN publishes this news:
[...]
[1] Even Thomas: The day that changed America. Newsweek Dec. 31, 2001, pp. 28–67.
[2] AP: New Jersey post office honors Flight 93 hero. CNN, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/04/beamer.postoffice.ap/index.html (May 8, 2002, 9:55 am)
[3] CNN.com: September 11. Chronology of terror. CNN, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/chronology.attack/ (May 8, 2002, 11:00 am)
[4] Spur des Terrors – Bagdad im Visier. ZDF-Auslandsjournal on Nov. 22, 2001. ZDF, Mainz, Germany. http://www.zdf.de/wissen/auslandsjournal/55925/index.html (May 6, 2002, 4:50 pm)
[5] Carol Cratty et al.: U.S. seeks death penalty for Sept. 11 suspect. CNN, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/03/28/Moussaoui.death.penalty/index.html (May 8, 2002, 10:15 am)
