CJ Onelli
Ms.Porter
U.S History 11
November 29, 2017
National Security and The War on Terror
What occurred in Lower Manhattan and Washington D.C. on September 11th, 2001 will be a day forever remembered in history. The terrorist group, Al Qaeda was led by Osama Bin Laden trained and recruited several terrorists in order to proceed with their operation (9-11 and Its Aftermath Update). Within the terrorist network, nineteen of them hijacked several commercial airline planes. Two were crashed into the Twin Tower buildings, one was sent to the pentagon, while the other was crashed into a Pennsylvania field by courageous passengers (Richard and Campbell). Close to 3,000 were people killed because of this event. September 11th was a major turning point in history as it led to increased national security and the war on terror in order to protect the United States.
Prior to the tragedy, airport security was not remotely close to how strict it is today. Before the attack, private security oversaw airport security and not the Transportation Security Administration. Within these private organizations you were able to bring blades up the four inches, the Federal Aviation Administration did not see the blades and several other items such as, Baseball bats, box cutters, darts, knitting needles and scissors as dangerous objects (O’Connor). Appearance and racial profiling was also not an issue, “American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the TSA to obtain records about its behavior detection programs, claiming they allowed for racial profiling and specifically targeted African American women, who said they were being subjected to excessive and embarrassing pat-downs of their hair.” (O’Connor). The Transportation Security Administration was created on November 19, 2001, shortly after the attacks (Smith). The TSA was created because of event and in order to further prevent an event from ever happening again. By the end of 2002, TSA had hired, trained, and deployed nearly 60,000 employees. It has been said that “this effort constituted the largest mobilization of the federal government since WWII” (Smith).
A couple years before the official attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigation were aware of Al Qaeda and that terrorists were using flight schools (Fainaru and Grimaldi). A government witness “Essam al-Ridi, testified that he had taken classes and taught at the now-defunct Ed Boardman Aviation School in Fort Worth. Al-Ridi also said that in the mid-1990s, he purchased a used Saber-40 aircraft on bin Laden's behalf for $210,000 in Tucson” (Fainaru and Grimaldi). Not only did national security become stricter but 9/11 sparked the war on terror.
The evening of September 11th at 9:30 pm, a what was called a War Cabinet was formed by several of top intelligence and military advisors. And at 11:00 pm, at the end of that meeting within the White House, what is now known as the “War on Terrorism” officially launched (Chossudovsky). The event of 9/11 provided reasoning to wage a war with very minimal opposition by the people of the United States. “Bush had the world’s backing when he led an attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 to topple the Taliban regime there, which had given sanctuary to al-Qaeda” (Tristam). President Bush began to set in motion his doctrine which stated that "Make no distinction between terrorists and the nations that harbor them — and hold both to account … take the fight to the enemy overseas before they can attack us again here at home … confront threats before they fully materialize … and advance liberty and hope as an alternative to the enemy's ideology of repression and fear" (Tristam).
September 11th was a major turning point in history as it led to increased national security and the war on terror in order to protect the United States. The creation of the Transportation Security Administration is one main example of increased national security as the agency is in place in order to prevent terror attacks in the future. The act put in place for this was the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, signed by President Bush (Transportation Security Timeline). Aside from the TSA, the war on terror officially begun. In 2001, President Bush declared authorization for use of military force against the Taliban; one of the events which began the war on terror. On October 7, 2001, the first U.S. bombs fell in Afghanistan (Brooking). It has been said that the 9/11 war on terror has become the longest-running conflict in American history. However, there are some believe that the efforts made after 9/11 have not really made us safer.