What Have the 10 Years after 9/11 Taught Us?

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is approaching, and it provides an opportunity for people to review how the world has changed in 10 years. Was our goal 10 years ago clear enough? What have we achieved?

Without a doubt, the U.S. has led the political winds around the world in this last decade and has even imposed thoughts and behaviors on a majority of people all over the world, even though many think that this has been America’s 10 years of depression. America is not a country that supports the idea that “the world is for all,” but it’s not fair to say that the U.S. is selfish in every aspect. The U.S. established the goal of counterterrorism in the past decade and many countries had no say in the matter. Every country has been touched by terrorism in some shape or form, but have been unable to ask the U.S. to pay for what they have lost.

However, is today’s world safer than it was 10 years ago? This question is tricky. If the answer is no, then do we need to fight against terrorism in the upcoming 10 years? The second question seems to be more difficult to answer. Ten years in the last century was long enough for two world wars, but to get rid of al-Qaida, 10 years seemed to have been too short.

Perhaps this is because al-Qaida is not just an organization, it is also a concept and induces emotion, so it’s easy for us to break but difficult to “clean up” its waste and debris.

This decade has taught us a few things. Firstly, armed forces are not omnipotent. Before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were launched, many people thought that America’s victory was absolutely guaranteed. However, when the wars began, the targets became unclear and the nature of the wars became vague. For the first time since World War II, it seemed that America’s modernized equipment was incompetent; its victory was stolen every time immediately after it won a fight.

Secondly, as the political leader of the world, America cannot pull itself out of other countries’ fates. The U.S. is so powerful that it enjoys resources around the world via different means; but it also cannot be detached from chaos in other places. In the Iraq war, more than 4,000 people from the U.S. Army died, the greatest military loss among big countries in recent years. U.S. embassies are heavily guarded in many countries. The risk of U.S. citizens coming under a terrorist attack was the highest in this past decade. A country can seek to be powerful, but the pursuit of absolute security is difficult.

Today, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are dead, but none of the major Western countries can declare that they are now safe. Every country needs to spare energy from the national machine to prevent a new terrorist attack and they will engage in endless rounds of preparation.

Perhaps terrorism cannot be eliminated; we may need to neutralize it. We have to co-exist with it, be annoyed by it and fight it, but not be misled by it. There are terrorists in the world, but huge terrorist groups may not exist and the world does not have to be divided into two factions that either support terrorism or fight against terrorism. The world is much more complicated than that, all kinds of political conflicts and ideological elements are intertwined together; a simple dichotomy is not a reflection of facts.

The world has invested heavily in counterterrorism measures, such a large scale of personnel and resources can achieve anything, but the cost-benefit measure of this looks to be the worst in human history. This tells us that there’s something wrong, or perhaps the goal we are after needs to be revised, or that the target we are combating is not the same as the original target we had in mind.

Of course, the world’s fate is not predestined; if this decade has highlighted one thing, it is that our ability to alter it is limited. This decade has counted the lowest number of conflicts among big countries, and every country has shared similar joys and sorrows in this decade. If this can introduce a new way of thinking to the world, who can say that the 10 years of suffering has not been worthwhile?