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AAI in the News

Analysis: September 11 - Five years later

By Claude Salhani
UPI
Posted on Monday September 11, 2006

WASHINGTON—The following article was written on Sept. 11, 2001, a few hours after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania.

War on America

Someone declared war on the United States Tuesday.

The largest and deadliest assault on American territory since the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that dragged the United States into World War II occurred Tuesday morning as a number of simultaneous terrorist actions paralyzed and terrorized much of the nation.

The number of casualties from the two airplanes that flew into the New York World Trade Center twin towers is still unknown at this time, as is the toll from the other attacks, including one on the Pentagon—from where the United States plans and controls its military infrastructure around the world.

What is certain is that casualties will run high.

What will also be high is the mental toll these attacks against the very infrastructure of the country will have on the nation. And this is precisely what terrorism aims to do: to hit where it hurts the most, and to leave fear in the hearts of those it attacks.

“This is beyond belief; this is the stuff of nightmare movie scenarios,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, to United Press International.

What is also certain is that the reply to these deadly attacks – the worst ever in U.S. history—will have to be powerful and decisive.

To coordinate four airline suicide hijackings, and three successful assaults, requires an awesome feat of planning, finances and resources.

What is more alarming in this case, is that such a vast operation was carried out without the nation’s intelligence services—the CIA, the FBI, or the NSA—being able to breach the terror network or sound any alarm.

The big question that will be burning on the lips of intelligence officials all along the Potomac as they sift through the debris and analyze the aftermath of this grim day in American history will be: who is responsible for these attacks?

Though the investigation to finger the culprits will be a huge and complex undertaking, the list of suspects is likely to be a relatively short one, given the intricate planning and great resources required by the attacks.

Osama bin Laden—the man most wanted by the United States—will appear at the top of the list. He was, after all, responsible for the first attack against the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.

Bin Laden has the resources, the manpower, the finances and the resolve it takes to confront the United States head-on. He has made threats in the past against the United States.

The other suspect, of course, is Iraq, whose leader, Saddam Hussein, begrudges the United States for the role it played in the Gulf War forcing him out of Kuwait in 1991.

Since Desert Storm Saddam has continued to blame George Bush, the father of the current president, who built the international military coalition that ousted Saddam from Kuwait and that continues to impose military restrictions on Iraq.

What repercussions will come from today’s attacks is still largely unknown, and it is too early to say. But as Zogby told UPI earlier Tuesday, “all the calculations and landscaping one has done before gets thrown out the window.”

But it would be safe to predict that just as Pearl Harbor brought the United States into a major conflict, this declaration of war against America cannot be left without a reply.

America lived through one day in infamy, on Dec. 7, 1941. Today, Sept. 11, 2001, will be remembered as another black day in this country’s history.