Al Qaeda Won: Seventeen years after the 9/11 attacks, the terrorists have definitively won the battle for the American mind.
This article made me ponder more about the real purpose behind 9/11.
It was a symbolic attack, we all knew that; even if the attack on the White House had been successful, it would not have paralyzed the U.S. into inaction. So the symbolic attack brought Al Qaeda and its aim into the news. But was that all they were hoping for?
Maybe it was really more diabolic. Maybe they had studied the U.S. long enough, as the article suggests, and knew that the fabric holding American society together is a very thin piece of cloth that can easily be ruptured. Maybe the aim was to create a small tear in that fabric, so that eventually, the cloth rips apart.
If so, they have succeeded. They have brought racial and religious suspicions, something which took decades to suppress, back to the surface of American society. In a land which proclaims that all men are equal, they have sowed the seeds for resentment along racial and religious lines. And each day, that seed grows as the U.S. continued its fight against terrorism in the Middle East, and could not afford to look inward to address this issue. Support the troops, support America, for to do otherwise is unpatriotic. Meanwhile, people become accustomed to the bad guys being Muslims and Arabs. The seed for racial and religious discrimination continues to grow.
Obama tried to win the real war. He tried to bring the U.S. back to a society without racial and religious hatred. But eight years is a short time compared to the decades required to close Pandora's box. If someone who recognized the problem had continued Obama's work, and a string of successors continued to hold on to this stance for the coming decades, Pandora's box may just be closed. But enter Trump with his rhetorics, and his exploitation of those seeds. He did what he needed to win. But at what cost?
Will American society ever recover from the seeds planted by Al Qaeda?
This article made me ponder more about the real purpose behind 9/11.
It was a symbolic attack, we all knew that; even if the attack on the White House had been successful, it would not have paralyzed the U.S. into inaction. So the symbolic attack brought Al Qaeda and its aim into the news. But was that all they were hoping for?
Maybe it was really more diabolic. Maybe they had studied the U.S. long enough, as the article suggests, and knew that the fabric holding American society together is a very thin piece of cloth that can easily be ruptured. Maybe the aim was to create a small tear in that fabric, so that eventually, the cloth rips apart.
If so, they have succeeded. They have brought racial and religious suspicions, something which took decades to suppress, back to the surface of American society. In a land which proclaims that all men are equal, they have sowed the seeds for resentment along racial and religious lines. And each day, that seed grows as the U.S. continued its fight against terrorism in the Middle East, and could not afford to look inward to address this issue. Support the troops, support America, for to do otherwise is unpatriotic. Meanwhile, people become accustomed to the bad guys being Muslims and Arabs. The seed for racial and religious discrimination continues to grow.
Obama tried to win the real war. He tried to bring the U.S. back to a society without racial and religious hatred. But eight years is a short time compared to the decades required to close Pandora's box. If someone who recognized the problem had continued Obama's work, and a string of successors continued to hold on to this stance for the coming decades, Pandora's box may just be closed. But enter Trump with his rhetorics, and his exploitation of those seeds. He did what he needed to win. But at what cost?
Will American society ever recover from the seeds planted by Al Qaeda?
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