9/11: Wake Up Call To A Global War

Kurk Dorsey
Professor of History
University of New Hampshire





1. Without the events of 9/11 or some similar event, American citizens would have continued their drift into isolationism and there would have been no support for US military action in Afghanistan or Iraq.  We would still have  terrorist attacks like the attack on the USS Cole and the embassy bombings in  East Africa, but most Americans and Europeans would not have noticed any  effect.

2. The most important consequence of 9/11 is that it provided a rationale for the Bush Administration to advocate war to remove Saddam Hussein.  We do not yet know the long-term consequences of that war, but the short-term  consequences include a drastic decline in American prestige in the world and the risk of a humiliating defeat in Iraq.

3. Yes, there is still a threat, but the increased attention to al Qaeda and similar groups has made everyone in the west much safer than we were on 9/10.  And yet, we would be foolish to discount the possibility that a terrorist organization could buy a nuclear weapon and transport it to the United States.  That has been my greatest fear since 1994 or so.

4. In the United States it will be like Pearl Harbor day, a date that will  always be taught in school and one that future generations will hear about from people who were alive on 9/11/01.  It will be seen as the wake up call to a global war with many fronts, just as Pearl Harbor forced Americans into a global war that they had resisted (and some of the decisions in World War 2 were as risky as invading Iraq).  But I am less certain about the rest of the world.  I suspect that each European country will tend to focus on some deadly event in its own land or a neighbor's territory, Arab states might place 9/11 in the context of the Iraq War, and who knows what will happen in China.  My guess is that in the long run, the really important event of 9/11-12/01 was that China joined the World Trade Organization.

© AIF 2006

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