Coursework Sample: The Causes and Effects of September 11 Attack

The 9/11 bombing of the US was one of the most ruthless terrorist attacks in the world. The attack resulted in the loss of numerous lives and massive property damage. The causes of the terrorist attacks on the USA are still under question and several conspiracy theories have been formulated with an attempt to explain factors that might have led to the attack. The former president George W. Bushs administration with the help of FBI and other investigative agencies tried to establish the cause of the attack and its effect on the American people, economy, and relations with other countries.

Immediately after the attack, Al Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack. This prompted the government to identify and bridge the flaws in their security system. As identified by Martin Kettle, there were different causes of the attack and the security was not effective enough to handle the scale of the attack. Some of the reasons for the attack that were identified by the former president in his news brief were factual while others were dismissed by several analysts of the situation.

The most reasonable cause of the attack was the US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly its support for Israel. The American soldiers had invaded the foreign territories and this ignited rebellion from those states, particularly Iraq. As stated by Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda primary reason for attacking the USA was because the Americans supported their enemy Israel in bombing Southern Lebanon in 1982. This infuriated Bin Laden and triggered his anti-Americanism. He organized a revenge mission on the Americans. His first action was to boycott the American goods in the 1980s and many of the countries in the Middle East began to have the same feeling towards America. The relationship between the Iraqi leaders and the USA government worsened when the USA deployed 500000 US troops to Saudi Arabia after the inversion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1990.

As pointed out by Andrea LeBlanc, the American inversion of Iraq and Saudi Arabia was another major cause of the attack. Robert Pape in his book, Dying to win, noted that modern suicide campaigns are driven by foreign occupation in other countries. Hence, the suicide attacks were not ignited by religious belief but were influenced by the occupation of the two countries by the American. This theory might truly explain the occupation of the Americans in the two countries as the primary cause of the attack since out of the 18 terrorists, 15 of them were from Saudi Arabia. However, the theory could not be fully embraced since the remaining three terrorists were from Emirati, Lebanon, and Egypt. Generally, one can easily conclude that the attack was mainly fueled by nationalism but not religion.

The most likely cause of the attack as identified by Martin Kettle was the influence of the CIA funding. The American government funded the Afghan Mujahideen insurgents that were fighting the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Army. This did not augur well with the leader of the Al-Qaeda organization, Osama Bin Laden. In retaliation, he organized an armed jihad in other countries with America being the primary target. A different analysis of the attack indicates that the Al-Qaeda attack was a blowback or an intended consequence of the American aid the Mujahedeen. However, the American government denied this theory claiming that the aid went to the Pakistani government and then distributed through them. From a financial point of view, this result into the breakage of connection between the US aid and Al-Qaeda. Based on the three possible causes of the attack, one can easily see that certain events culminated into the attack on the World Trade Center. However, the causes of the September 11 attacks are inclusively vague because of the number of contradicting theories that have been formulated and failure by the government to provide a detailed account of what happened. But it is quite evident that Americans were bombed by Al-Qaeda and it will forever remain etched in the history of the world as one of the most horrendous attacks that have ever been orchestrated by terrorists.

The results of the attack were catastrophic. The lives of people were changed forever with the attack resulting in the death of 3000 people and most properties were destroyed. Trade was impaired as the flow of goods and services across the border was halted for a while. This resulted in a massive drop in the economy. Communication and movement of people between the USA and other countries were hampered for a while as the FBI and other security agencies intensified their operations along borderlines and in monitoring communication among the Americans and foreigners living in the country. In response to the 9/11 bombing of the USA, America responded by combing and bombing Iraq and leaving the country in total destruction. In 2001, the only form of communication left in the country was a small battery-run radio and this is a clear indication of how the country was completely destroyed. These were the outcome of the activities of the US government in foreign lands where they were never wanted to be.