The early morning of September 11, 2001, remains historic to many of the Americans who woke up to a terrorist attack in a country long believed to be the superpower. Nineteen hijackers from the middle east took control of four US commercial American airlines. Two of the airlines, flight 11 and flight 175 crashed on the North and south tower of the World Trade Center respectively in the early morning. The two other flights, flight 77 and flight 93 crashed into the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania respectively (Ronczkowski, p. 21).
The attack on the US by al-Qaeda has been related to a lot of conspiracy theories. It has been suggested that the attack could have been an inside job by some individuals within the United States. The individuals have been accused of having known of the attack beforehand but they chose to do nothing about it. They are also suspected of having assisted the terrorist in performing a planned demolition of the world trade center (Heymann, p. 13). The investigations that were published by the National Institute of standards and Technology dismissed these allegations and the community engineers supported the move by stating that the building was brought down by the impact of the jets. The theory of the jets collapsing the building can be more upheld since the jets were at very high speeds. The impact of the jets on the building also led to subsequent fires in the building. The resulting fires caused the melting of the steel holding and the building became very weak. As a result, the building collapsed as the steel reinforcements could not support it.
It is very important to note that the impact of the jets and the damage resulting from the fires did not have to necessarily bring the building down immediately for people to believe that the jets brought the building down (Heymann, p. 30). The fact that the building came down seven hours later did not mean that there must have been other forces that enabled to bring the building down such as thermal combustion. The investigation that was recently completed in August indicated that the fireproofs of the steel structures of the two towers were destroyed by the impact of the two Jets. An independent investigation by Purdue University indicated that if the fireproofs of the steel building had not been blown off the building would not have collapsed (Glanz, p. 10).
The fact that the US government did not attract the Al-Queda by booming them did not in any way indicate the just system of the American government was on the rocks. The US government led by President Bush did not have to follow the same suit as the attack on the Japanese in pearl harbor. Terrorist bombing results in the killing of multitudes of innocent people. If all the countries were to respond to terrorism by placing parallel bombings, then this would be a great threat to human rights and justice. The response of President Bush was very brave and was supported by many other nations (Higgs). President Bush declared war on terrorism and in my opinion; I consider this as a better and long-lasting solution than revenge.
Works Cited
- James Glanz .City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center. Times Books, 2003, pp. 6-24
- Michael R. Ronczkowski.Terrorism and Organized Hate Crime. CRC, 2003, pp. 20-42
- Philip B. Heymann. Terrorism and America. The MIT Press, 1998, pp. 12-33
- Robert Higgs.Another 9/11 – in a Long Series. Web.
- The Editors of Popular Mechanics .Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts. Hearst, 2006, pp. 18-36