The 9/11 terrorist attacks

In our English class last week, we saw a documentary about the fatal terror attack known as 9/11. The documentary is the only known footage from inside the twin towers during the attack. The film started out as a documentary about firefighters. At the first part of the movie we got to know Tony Newman, a firefighter rookie. He had finished his education in the early summer of 2001 and a co-worker followed his freshman period with a film camera. The documentary did not turn out as expected due to the 9/11 incident which occurred randomly in the same time period as the making of the documentary. At the day of the incident, the fire fighters were routine practicing outside the fire department.

When the first plane hit the eastern tower, they saw the crash from their practice spot just two minutes away. They had never experienced something like this before in their career and it came as a total shock. When they arrived at the scene, they discovered that the plane's flaming jet fuel had shot straight through the elevator. Due to this, they had to use the stairs. Taking into consideration that the building consisted of around 100 flats, this dramatically slowed the evacuation process. Shortly after the first plane, the second one crashed into the western tower. The fire the crashes led to caused both towers to collapse. A third plane hit Pentagon, but the damages were small in comparison to the twin towers.

Almost 3000 people lost their lives due to the terrorist attacks. Among the dead were mostly civilians, but 350 fire fighters also died in their attempt of saving others. This led to a shocked and grieving nation . Shortly after the terrorist attacks, George Bush declared that the United States were going in for an attack of Afghanistan, as their first step towards fighting against terrorism. This war led to the removal of the Taliban regime which had a close connection to the group Al Qaida, the terrorists who stood behind the 9/11 attacks.

For the Americans, the terror attacks came from nowhere. Americans have not experienced war on their territory since the civil war over 150 years ago. There have been two world wars since that time, but none of them have involved American territory. 15 years ago, there was a man who bombed a public building in Colorado which caused the death of a couple of hundred Americans. But the strength of this attack was something they had never seen before.

On the contrary, Europe experienced major sufferings from the two world wars. Tens of millions of people lost their lives in both wars. Major cities like London and Paris has been bombed to the ground several times. Hitler was close to his goal of an extermination of the European Jews in his time. In other words, Europe has experienced more warfare than America. Of course, the fact that the terrorist attacks struck America and not Europe also influenced how Europeans viewed the incident.

But neither Europeans nor Americans had seen an attack aimed solely towards civilians before. It was also the first time a terrorist group had high jacked a plane. If you look back in history, previous attacks have been aimed towards military installations or buildings that are bound directly to the government in a country. Both Europeans and Americans asks themselves the question: What was Al-Qaida's real purpose? They spread as much fear they could manage among the western world and desolated some of the most important buildings in the United States, but why? The question still remains unsolved. The most common view is that Al Qaida was showing off strength towards the leading superpower in the world today.