9/11 Didn't Change the World

Over the past 10 years, there has been no more memorable an event than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Other developments that had nothing to do with terrorism, however, were far more cataclysmic.

It’s a standard cliché often heard these days: 9/11 changed the world. But is that statement true? Did everything really change dramatically after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon? And did everything have to play out as it did afterward?

The “attack on the United States,” as it was quickly tagged, was undoubtedly a monstrous crime. There had never been such a comparable deadly act of terrorism before. The 19 suicide assassins killed nearly 3,000 people. Not only was America wounded shocked and angered, the entire (western) world was and remains today deeply affected by the incident.

Sept. 11 was doubtless one of the most memorable days in recent history. Nearly everyone today can still recall when and where he or she first learned of the tragedy. That alone justifies the historic significance of that Tuesday in September. The date, 9/11, quickly became a symbol in its own right.

It would be absurd to claim the event didn’t have any significant consequences. But if something really did change the world, it was the reaction to the attack and not the attack itself. The cause didn’t lead inescapably to the effect. The United States could have reacted differently to the attacks — more deliberately and more prudently.

Let me make it perfectly clear: Every U.S. President after 9/11 probably would have reacted, rightly, as George W. Bush did with an attack on the Taliban regime that provided Osama bin Laden refuge in Afghanistan after the attacks. But nowhere is it written that the invasion had to degenerate into a justification for the return of the Taliban due to a lack of international military troops and sufficient investment of money and resources to rebuild the nation.

Of even less necessity was the invasion of Iraq following 9/11. Saddam Hussein had neither contact with al-Qaida nor weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. government used the post-9/11 trauma as an excuse to repay old debts. The reason America became bogged down in the Iraqi and Afghan swamps had less to do with 9/11 than it did with poor military decision making and planning. Their enormous monetary costs weakened the U.S.’s preeminent position as a superpower, and that was certainly avoidable.

Sept. 11 provides an historic starting point for all possible subsequent developments. One may, if one is so inclined, make a connection between 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008: In order to avoid a recession, then Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan flooded the markets with dollars in order to keep interest rates low. That inflated the housing bubble to the point where it finally burst in 2007 and 2008. But in the final analysis, such mono-causal models or the events of a single day are of little use except to the al-Qaida propagandists.

As an event, 9/11 was spectacular and will therefore persist in mankind’s collective memory. It did not, however, catapult history into a new orbit. The major developments that were accelerated by the shadows of the “war on terror” haven’t changed. While the United States and Europe became obsessed by Osama bin Laden and radical Islam, China, India, Brazil and others were playing catch up. That portion of the world formerly referred to deprecatingly as the “Third World” has improved its contribution to the global economy from 20 to 34 percent. Meanwhile, Europe and the United States have stagnated while the developing nations have grown.

That has changed the world and will continue to change it. The opening of China, the collapse of the Soviet Union and globalization have had far greater impact than Sept. 11, 2001, regardless of our fascination with it 10 years later.