:
How has the world changed?

Before and after

View from space

Ground Zero

Locale : Mapping Ground Zero

Location :
U.S. regions pulled together
• Attacks took place on East Coast, we did not experience them directly in our backyard.
• Yet empathy and fear spread throughout the U.S.
• No more New York jokes.
• More identification with government workers
(firefighters, police, mail carriers, etc .)

Sense of place :
Hallowed ground

“Sacred” sites
Shanksville,
Pennsylvania
Washington, DC
New York

Reconstruction plans on 16 acres

Reactions to reconstruction plans

Reconstruction plans

Freedom Tower
Rising 1,776 feet (tallest on Earth) with wind turbines on top
WTC Memorial
“Reflected Absence” fountains in footprints of Twin Towers

Reconstruction priorities
Skyscrapers vulnerable, provocative target
Pentagon functional, expected target

Has September 11
“changed the world”?
• The attacks affected the entire world.
• The attacks primarily changed the
United States.
• But changing the U.S. can in turn change the world.

Distance and might no longer protect the United States
British burn White
House, 1812
Pancho Villa raids
Columbus NM, 1916 Japanese bomb Hawaii, 1941
Japanese fire balloons, 1944

U.S. civilians have experienced the pain of war
Rwanda, Africa,
1994: 800,000 dead
Srebrenica, Bosnia,
1995: 7,000 dead
United States, 2001:
3,000 dead

Victims of the attacks were from 60 countries
(including many undocumented workers)

Muslims
Targeting of Muslim immigrants and other religious minorities
Sikhs
Jews

“Clash of Civilizations”:
Lumping of the Islamic world vs . the West

Human Rights under fire

Use of Islamist terrorism to justify crackdowns
Russians flatten capital of Chechnya

Conflicts intensify in
Muslim regions
(though not necessarily centered on religion)
Indians in
Kashmir
Chinese in
Xinjiang
Israelis in West
Bank and Gaza

Al-Qaeda as a product of globalization
(Bin Laden exploiting and manipulating Muslims’ alienation)
Foreign domination
Poverty
Corruption

Al-Qaeda as an example of globalization
(Bin Laden the multinational CEO)
Internet cafe
Translated U.S. military leaflet dropped on Afghanistan
Saudi bank

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”?
• U.S. aided Islamic fundamentalists to fight Soviet Union in Afghanistan:
"What was more important in the worldview of history? The
Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred-up
Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the
Cold War?” (President Carter’s national security advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1996).
• Who are our new friends against Al-Qaeda? Are we now risking the same backfire effect (or “blowback”) again?

War in Afghanistan
• Bin Laden provoked U.S. to launch ground invasion?
• Bin Laden thought he would
“fight the last war” that the
Afghans had won against the
Russians.
• Taliban were easy to defeat in war, but the “peace” can become more difficult.

Complex Afghan ethnic geography
No matter which ethnic“warlord” we support, someone else feels we are taking sides

Caspian
Basin oil and gas pipelines
Plans for route across
Afghanistan

New U.S. military bases
New U.S. “Sphere of
Influence” in region.
Bases built to wage the wars, or the wars waged to build the bases?
1. Gulf War,
1991
2. Yugoslav Wars,
1995-99
3. Afghan War,
2001
4. Iraq War,
2003

Current debates
• Does the “War on Terror” justify a permanent role for U.S. military bases and oil companies?
• Carries the risk of “overstaying our welcome” and causing a new “blowback”?
• Iraq War justified by linking Bin Laden, Saddam
(though they hate each other)?
• Resentment/recruitment increasing since occupation of Iraq (Self-fulfilling prophecy?)

Confronting hatred at the roots
“There has been a remarkable reluctance in
America to confront the more complex historical dimensions of this hatred. The inclination instead has been to rely on abstract assertions like terrorists ‘hate freedom’ or that their religious background makes them despise Western culture.
To win the war on terrorism…. begin a political effort that focuses on the conditions that brought about their emergence.”
(President Carter’s national security advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 2001).

Geographies of September 11
DOMESTIC
• Boundaries violated in attack on “homeland.”
• U.S. regions have a common grievance & experience of war.
• “Sense of place” of
9/11 attack sites.
• New phase of antiimmigrant sentiment
FOREIGN
• Islam vs . West geopolitical simplifications.
• Al-Qaeda as a product & example of globalization.
• Ethnic complexities of
Middle East/Central Asia
• Natural resources (oil).
• New U.S. military bases
• Shifting international alliances