9/11 Opinion Questions?

Question

Please answer (:

1. Why do you think the terrorists chose the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

Why did the terrorists choose to hijack U.S. commercial airlines and use them as weapons?

What should be the U.S. response?

2. Think of other terrorist attacks you can remember, either at home or abroad. Do any of them approach the magnitude of this attack? What similarities exist in how the attacks were carried out?

3. Visit the following Web sites for more information about terrorist acts worldwide over the past five years. Create a timeline or map-based representation of terrorist activity.

- http://www.usis.usemb.se/terror/index.html

- http://www.iacsp.com/terror-in.html

4.Using the above sites, and other sites like Frontline's Hunting bin Laden, create an outline describing characteristics shared by terrorist groups.

What motivations do they share?

How do they operate?

How do they elude capture?

Answer 1

This is homework! But I will give an opinion on the first part. They chose the twin towers because it was a civilian target, a symbol of financial power/wealth and it was in the most famous city in the US. The dense population of Manhattan ensured maximum deaths and news coverage. The towers has been a target a few years prior, only a few people were killed that time. They wanted average American citizens to die gruesomely so as to instill as much fear as possible. Men women and children were to die because they were American. There were several children under the age of 5 on the planes themselves.

The Pentagon was the symbol/seat of US Military power, and the third target was supposedly the Capitol - our seat of Government. That plane was forcibly grounded by it's passengers and did not hit. It would have wiped out the standing government.

They hijacked the planes because they were cross country flights heavy with fuel and would work as bombs - which they did. The reason it worked is that everyone thought it was a typical hijacking - no one imagined that they would fly the planes into buildings in a kamikaze style attack. It could never work again for that reason - people are aware of such a plan and would fight - as they did on the plane that crashed and did not hit it's target. That flight was delayed and people found out about the towers - and attacked the hijackers.

That's all I will say. I am from New York - this is not hypothetical to me at all. I have neighbors who suffered deaths in their families. It is extremely upsetting. No one deserves to die wen they are at their jobs because of someones political or religious agenda. The people who did this are not human, and their cause is not just. There is no possible justification for doing such a thing.

An example of the innocent victims killed by people who see themselves as "Moral" as opposed to the West/the US: One of the planes held the Falkenberg family - Charles, 45, of University Park, Maryland, was the director of research at ECOlogic Corp., a software engineering firm. He worked on data systems for NASA and also developed data systems for the study of global and regional environmental issues. Falkenburg was traveling with his wife, Leslie Whittingham, and their two daughters, Zoe, 8, and Dana, 3.

An entire family slaughtered - for what?