Divisions over Afghanistan, Libya and Syria show that it has not yet been rebuilt. The attack gave birth to an unprecedented universal coalition of revulsion. Fortunately, they failed to provoke our societies into closing their borders and hunkering down at home and instead we reacted with a greater willingness to engage internationally. Terrorists used the tools of a modern global society, the internet, open borders and hi-tech aeroplanes, to attack the west at home. The destruction of the twin towers graphically illustrated the dark side of globalisation. In retrospect, perhaps the west put too much effort into the physical battle against international terrorism and not enough into addressing the grievances the extremists were able to exploit, particularly the failure to advance peace in the Middle East.
The Arab spring has now rendered it almost irrelevant. The group has since been unable to mount so spectacular an attack again. Paradoxically, looking back, 9/11 may have been the high water mark for al-Qaida rather than the beginning of a new terrorist threat.
Huge new resources were thrown into the battle. The outcome was a new focus on combating global terrorism, particularly al-Qaida. It turned an administration with quasi-isolationist tendencies into one committed to robust intervention overseas. For Americans it genuinely was a new Pearl Harbour, an attack on the homeland that made them feel vulnerable for the first time in 60 years. Jonathan Powell: '9/11 may have been the high water mark for al-Qaida'ĩ/11 changed America fundamentally, far more so than outsiders realised at the time. The decade since 9/11 must rank among the most inept and counterproductive eras in the story of modern statesmanship. Bin Laden became a role model for fanatics everywhere. The peace dividend so eagerly awaited at the end of the 20th century evaporated as the security industry exploited counter-terrorism and seized every chance of profit and risk aversion. Civil liberties were curbed and governments reverted to cold war paranoia.
He saw widespread hostility towards the west and its aggressive behaviour in the Muslim world. Indeed the response to 9/11 was as Bin Laden must have dreamed. The billions of dollars expended on them was financed largely from borrowing, which in turn has destabilised the world economy.Īll this was out of all proportion to the attacks on 9/11. The wars cost tens of thousands of lives and caused mass destruction. The aggression led to a tide of anti-Americanism and surge of support for fanatical Islamism across the Muslim world. Yet by launching armed aggression, first against Afghanistan and then against Iraq, America wholly squandered this gain. It was a brief moment of American moral supremacy. Even the Taliban were known to have been shocked by 9/11, when almost the entire Muslim world came out in sympathy with America (including the PLO in Palestine). Had the world responded to his 9/11 attack on America with moderation he would probably have disappeared, expelled from Afghanistan or killed by his Tajik enemies. No single figure since the second world war has made so profound an impact on world events as Osama bin Laden.