9/11

The Attacks on 9/11 were a pivotal point in American policy. Americans had wanted a limited government but with the attacks on 9/11 led to a new reconstruction in America.

Jihad, militant Islam, Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had all been behind the attacks on 9/11. It was a retaliation for American intervention in the Middle East. Four planes were hijacked but 1 didn’t get to its destination which is thought to be either the Whitehouse or the capitol. An hour and a half after the first plane struck the towers both collapsed. About 3,000 people were killed in the attack all together. This new threat proved that the US needed to have additional national-security because this threat was very different, unlike communism and fascism, terrorists could be coming from anywhere in the world. Which left the US unprepared. As a result the Department of Homeland Security was created as well as the Patriot Act; it  gave the government new surveillance powers; they could now access private records and information, wiretap citizens and listen to their conversations. Tensions in the US began to grow and they traded away their Liberty and privacy in order to be safer.

The war in Afghanistan led to the Bush Doctrine which meant that if a country was harboring terrorists then they would have to surrender them to America or the US would invade this also led to the invasion of Taliban. Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2011. The US went to war with Iraq as well because of Saddam Hussein; Iraqi dictator, The US believed he had WMDs ( Weapons of mass destruction). He had even used poisonous gas against his own people the u.s. went into Iraq, captured him and he was put on trial the Iraqi government executed him however after the invasion u.s. struggled to keep peace with Iraq. Terrorism came with many new complications shut down the u.s. to know how to successfully fight these threats when they didn’t know what specific place they were from. The US didn’t know whether they were right . The US didn’t know whether Iraq wanted democracy because the u.s. I tried to put democratic governments in Iraq before. The US didn’t know what the objective was for terrorists. Very many new strategies such as drones and the Special Forces.

This tragedy revealed that the U.S. was vulnerable to new threats terrorism was a domestic threat like no other. The US struggled between security and principles, principles such as the Freedom and privacy of the average US citizen.