A quarter of a century has passed since Al Qaeda's hideous Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The 25th anniversary is an appropriate moment to reflect on that horror's historical impacts.
The morning of the attack, I was outlining a "futurist" column addressing new space-based weapons programs and the increasing militarization of space. My wife phoned me about 8:30 a.m. Central. She had heard about the attack on her car radio. I immediately scrubbed the space column, turned on a TV news channel and began scrolling the internet.
The column I wrote between 9 and 11:30 began with these sentences:
"Make no mistake our world has changed. The smoke of September 11, 2001 will settle quickly but the fire of war lit by our common catastrophe will rage for years. Terrorists used civilian aircraft as kamikazes to blast American centers of commerce and destroy global symbols of American power.
"Here's what we, the American people, must understand. Closing Wall Street, sealing off Manhattan, evacuating the White House, attacking the Pentagon — these are terrorist victories. Toppling the twin towers of the World Trade Center is terrorist poetry for destroying America's world."
I'll stand by that introduction.
The column then discussed America's great intelligence failure, arguing U.S. intelligence agencies were "living off tech investments made in the 1980s." Moreover, American "human intelligence" capabilities (deploying human spies) had also decayed.
A bitter irony: Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld addressed this issue during his January 2001 confirmation hearings. America's "intelligence problem" was what kept him awake at night.
Americans can learn quickly. New airport and airline passenger security measures were immediately imposed. Within two months, the U.S. was doing a much better job of "intelligence fusion" — sharing information sources and information analyses.
Americans can act quickly. By mid-October 2001, U.S. forces were targeting Al Qaeda's Afghanistan sanctuary. Yet those attacks may have been late by three years. Fact: Osama bin Laden declared war on America in February 1998. In August 1998, terrorists bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In response, President Bill Clinton declared a "war on terror" (his words) with bin Laden as a known bad actor. The Clinton administration took limited military action. U.S. cruise missiles hit Al Qaeda-linked targets in Sudan and Afghanistan (Operation Infinite Reach).
But in 1998, Washington didn't treat Al Qaeda's global terror threat as the highly nuanced form of transnational war it is. Cruise missiles fired at caves in Afghanistan were a media quick fix, not a political and military solution.
In retrospect, Al Qaeda's 9/11 massacre taught Americans that anarchy in even the world's most remote and impoverished corners provided anti-American terror cults with a base for global operations. If you read anti-American as also meaning anti-modern and anti-personal freedom, we're in complete agreement.
In fall 2021, bin Laden made it clear that Al Qaeda's attacks (and 9/11's in particular) intended to spark a "globalized war of Islam against America" (his words). Nineteenth-century European socialist anarchists called their attacks "propaganda by the deed" — radical violence designed to spark revolutionary action against so-called oppressors and oppressive systems.
Bin Laden stated a key Al Qaeda goal was destroying "the myth of American might." Relying on global digital communications and video of burning skyscrapers, bin Laden revised that script to appeal to the Arabs' and Muslims' sense of historical grievance. Blasting the Pentagon was supposed to demonstrate America's weakness and rally the world's "disaffected" to his cause.
Al Qaeda attempted to stir simultaneous "Muslim uprisings" in the aftermath of 9/11. However, no significant mass actions occurred. On May 2, 2011, American special operations forces killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In 2026, a skeletal Al Qaeda network still exists, with nodes in Africa and Yemen. A majority of Arab Muslim nations support the U.S. against Iran.
On Oct. 9, 2001, bin Laden pitched his 9/11 attacks as the active "defense of Palestine." In 2026, America's revived socialist left openly supports the Palestinian terror organization Hamas. Democratic Socialist candidates rely on bin Laden-infused grievance propaganda to motivate their base, railing against various American/Western/capitalist/militarist oppressors. Democrat Socialist "opinion leader" Hasan Piker even claims the U.S. deserved 9/11.
It appears bin Laden's 9/11 propaganda still has ugly echoes, even within the U.S.
COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM
