The Questions of 9/11

“Hussein Ali Hamdani,” someone asked me last year, “what if you don’t understand the ungodly events of September 2001?” This seemed like a reformulation of the same question by another observer trying to find a different explanation for the history of the decade after 9/11.

But I realized that the answers he wanted to hear contained underlying assumptions, in order to make sense of these events. Reading modern and contemporary history books shows us how the interpretation of a number of events greatly altered the path of world history and led to disaster. This includes, for example, the fabrication of an attack by Polish soldiers on the Germans on the eve of World War II, which gave Hitler the legitimacy to sweep into Poland and signaled the beginning of the global war, claiming millions of lives and ending in disaster in nuclear bombs. If we go back in history we will be able to re-examine our assumptions and ultimately find the answer to our question, based on a correct history of events. This is what leads us to certainty, because if we leave it to the imagination it will interpret those events the way it wants, the way you want to see them and not as they really happened.

Although it seems better to ask ourselves this question before anyone else, why did Sept. 11, 2001 happen? Certainly the events of that day were not the product of the heat of the moment, and more likely the inevitable result of the accumulation of repression, abuse and tyranny practiced by many regimes of our region against our own people, with the blessing and support of America. This is how the idea of rebellion against reality and the attempt to take revenge not only on America, but on America’s puppet authoritarian regimes in the region, took root among the perpetrators of the attacks.

America played a very large role in fomenting al-Qaida’s thirst for terrorism, such as through Washington showing support to (the holy war) in Afghanistan, against (the infidel Soviets). Subsequently, we find that America had used Islamic religious terminology in the Cold War with the Soviets, employed to destroy its Soviet forces in Kabul in the 1980s, without being aware that it was developing ideas that Muslims were unfamiliar with before. The first and most prominent of the Muslim schools of thought considered terrorism under the category (jihad).

Certainly the idea that Arab warriors are fighting alongside Afghans to liberate the country from Soviet occupation was not an Arab or Muslim idea, because this idea did not originally inspire anyone in the day for the liberation of Palestine. Nor did the religious schools that proliferated in abundance in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan even think to do so. Yet they received instruction and advice to fight the infidels in Afghanistan! Even some of the jihadists brought liberation to Jerusalem by way of Kabul.

This is how America contributed in very large part to the manufacturing of terrorism. But the strength America has shown and sustained was certainly premeditated, because it was manufacturing a new enemy after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which had dismantled the Soviet regime.

From here, we return to the question: What if you don’t understand the events of September 2001? Certainly, we should recognize that in order to have a world superpower, it is integral not to live without an enemy. Therefore, after the collapse of the eastern bloc, the world required a search for such an enemy, or more accurately, to manufacture an enemy of which America had envisioned for the new world order, which requires that there be no paradigmic shift. It is well known that there is a threat that endangers every one’s well-being, and this was confirmed by President George W. Bush, who said after the events of Sept. 11 that everyone who is not with us is against us.

This means that the entire world is to stand with America to fight terrorism, wherever it may be. Whether we’re talking about the war in Afghanistan or Iraq, this is what happened after, and what may happen in the near future, especially if the threat of terrorism is not over, or at the very least mitigated, even after killing bin Laden. Especially if there always persists such a danger that threatens the lives of millions around the globe.