Ad Astra Podcast
Legacy of 9/11
23 years later, we look at the global impact of September 11, 2001
Legacy of 9/11. 22 years later, we look at the global impact of September 11th, 2001. All of us know where we were on September 11th, 2001, when we heard the Twin Towers in New York City were hit by planes. I was in middle school in McPherson, Kansas, and the PA system played the news through the school halls. The events that day transformed the world and its impact is still felt today. This post is about how 9/11 affected the world of the last two decades. Prelude, in 1996, Osama bin Laden, the son of a wealthy Saudi construction family, was kicked out of Sudan by the government. He moved to Afghanistan, a weekly governance state in Central Asia. He was building an organization called Al-Qaeda. He used early internet chat rooms to recruit like-minded volunteers to his cause. Few Americans noticed when Al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 in 1998. Likewise, few noticed when Al-Qaeda rammed the USS Cole with a boat full of explosives, killing 17 American sailors while at Port and Yemen in October 2000. Eight days after September 11th, CIA officers picked up 3 million dollar cash in three cardboard boxes. This money would enable them to pay the local militia in northern Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance N.A. The N.A. commanders would use the money to pay their troops and convince other tribes to rally to the N.A. The N.A. fighters, other local warlords, and U.S. Special Forces rode on horseback to take the capital Kabul from the Taliban, aided by U.S. military airstrikes. By November 12th, 62 days after September 11th, Kabul fell and the Taliban were removed from power. The U.S. would stay in Afghanistan for 20 more years and the Taliban would retake control of Afghanistan in 2021 upon our departure. President Bush's approval would surge after September 11th and the administration would use this bipartisan support to rally America to invade Iraq in 2003. The argument was for preventative war to remove Saddam Hussein, a potential sponsor of terrorists from power. It was insinuated that Iraq helped plan 911 and possessed WMDs, though neither claim was ever proven. America invaded Iraq in March 2003 and took control of the capital, Baghdad, 20 days later. The American occupation would incite a civil war, indirectly kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and become a domestic political liability that led to the rise of Barack Obama. The U.S. would leave Iraq eight years later in 2011. Chaos In 2011, the Arab world erupted into mass protests during the Arab Spring after a cell phone video from Tunisia went viral. The demonstrations were loudly encouraged by the U.S. and facilitated by the chaotic wake left by the U.S. intervention in Iraq. The demonstrations spread to Libya, where the U.S. intervened to support the protesters by imposing a no-fly zone. The leader of the country, Muammar Gaddafi, was killed by protesters, and the country slipped into civil war in 2014. As a side note, Libya, Iraq, and Ukraine possessed, and then later relinquished nuclear weapons programs and were later invaded. Around the same time, Syria fell into civil war between dictator Bashar al-Assad and protesters as a result of the Arab Spring. In 2014, the Islamic State IS began to control vast swaths of land in war-torn Syria and the vacuum of post-invasion Iraq, its neighbor. The U.S. commenced another intervention. Today, Syria is destroyed and Assad is still in power. Europe destabilized. All this chaos generated a wave of migrants, which crested in Europe in 2015. All told, at least 7 million migrants arrived in Europe between 2010 to 2020. The rapid influx of immigrants overwhelmed many countries' social services and generated a backlash of outsider, anti-immigrant political parties, destabilizing politics. Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and others have all seen a surge in outsider, anti-immigrant party support, costs of war. There has been no major terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, but at great cost. As a result of the global war on terror, over 7,000 American soldiers have died and 20 more take their own life daily after returning home. Chaos and botched drone strikes have created the next generation of terrorists and Middle Eastern attitudes have turned sharply negative towards the U.S. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria have cost $8 trillion and counting. We're still in Syria. The federal debt on September 10th, 2001 was $5.8 trillion, and today it's $31 trillion, a 434 percent increase. Reflecting on the two decades following 9/11, it's evident that the ripple effects of that day have cascaded throughout the globe in ways both overt and nuanced. Nations have risen and fallen. Millions have migrated, and the socio-political landscape of entire regions has been altered. As we remember the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, it's important to also acknowledge the interconnectedness of our global community and to strive for a world where understanding takes precedence over division and conflict.