Cause & Effect of Sept. 11th Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Cause & Effect of Sept. 11th - Essay Example The social effect is captured by the way the catastrophe altered the American people’s perception, behavior and interaction towards Muslims living within and outside the country. The political effect is manifested by the labeling of certain states as the axis of evil and the American-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The economic effect can be seen from the increased use of resources to secure production, distribution, finance, and communication at the expense of national productivity. What caused the September 11 attacks? In retrospect the big question still is: what led to 9/11 in the first place? There is no clear answer to this question; however, numerous conjectures have been raised. Even the US government’s 9/11 commission failed to provide clarity on the real causes of September 11. The commission only gave an unqualified response on who was responsible for the heinous act. There is not a single event in modern times that has elicited as many explanations as this tragedy. According to Bergen (2006) the theories on the causes of the September 11 attacks could be categorized into three: (1) the outright absurd, which state that the attacks were orchestrated by the US government; (2) the believable but flawed that argue that the attacks were done as a response to foreign occupation in the Arab lands; and (3) the credible, which postulates that September 11 was simply a collateral damage resulting from a clash within Islam. The al Qaeda angle In its findings, the US 9/11 commission concluded that the al Qaeda was solely responsible for the terrorist attacks. Osama Bin Laden was at war unambiguously with the United States. Levingston (2010) argued that this was the case because Osama was irked by the multiple engagements of the US in the Arab lands and its unequivocal support for Israel. This theory fits the second categorization of Bergen (2006); the-believable-but-flawed argument. At this juncture, it is important to note that Osama ’s critique towards America had never been cultural. Osama was not fighting Western culture; his was a personal war against the US. Bergen (2006) stated that Bin Laden was astute enough to know that he could not wage an all-out battle against the world’s sole superpower. He therefore craftily embodied his vision inside al Qaeda and attracted similar disgruntled Islamists whom he managed to convince that America was the enemy. Osama saw terrorism as the only achievable mode of operation to wage war against the US. This argument is believable but flawed because it fails to provide sufficient reasons as to why an individual in the Middle East would be so obsessed with waging a war against the US. Western interference The second plausible root cause of al Qaeda’s attack was perpetual Western interference in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. This interference can be traced back to colonization of Arab states by France and Britain, the creation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state – Israel, and currently American hegemony that is exemplified by acts such as the Gulf War in 1990. Western interference is a broader cause than Osama’s war in that it does not merely point the finger at one Western state – America – but at the entire Western world. The heart of this argument on Western interference is that the West has slowly and steadily been eroding the Arab culture by permeating Western ideologies in the Persian