8:46 am

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men from the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes. They flew two of the planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Another plane was flown into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States military. A fourth plane crashed in an empty field. The attackers killed 2,977 people.

Osama bin Laden was the Al-Qaeda leader who planned the attacks. In 2001, he was living in the country of Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban. The Taliban are a conservative Islamist political and military group that ruled most of Afghanistan. U.S. President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban surrender bin Laden, but they refused. An American-led group of troops invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. US troops remain there today, in the spring of 2020.

The 9/11 attacks killed thousands. Then, new wars and laws reshaped American policy at home and abroad.

Why do they hate us?

After the attacks, millions of Americans wondered: Why do they hate us? Many Americans turned their attention to the most obvious difference between themselves and the attackers: religion. Many Americans knew little about Islam, let alone the extreme forms of Islamist thought followed by only a small group of Muslims. In a climate of fear and anger, it was easy to blame all Muslims for the attacks.

The idea that the attackers and all Muslims hated America because they hated Americans’ “Western-style” freedom was comforting to some people. The argument went like this: “Islam does not share Western values. They hate us because we’re a free society.” However, blaming an entire religion for attacks committed by a much smaller group of extremists was not an accurate response. Islam is a diverse religion.

Why do we hate them?

The belief that 9/11 was a result of a war between Islam and the West was too simple, but it had deep roots. Political scientist Samuel Huntington wrote “The Clash of Civilizations.” Huntington divided the world into different civilizations, such as “the West” and the Islamic world. Huntington believed that Western civilization must clash with Islamic civilization. In the months after the attacks of 9/11, Huntington’s book became a bestseller. It was also very popular in the Bush White House.

A disturbing trend emerged after the attacks. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Muslims surged. On September 17, President Bush called Islam a religion of peace. Yet the day before, he had announced a global war on terror. Bush called it a “crusade.” The crusades were a series of medieval wars in which Christian European armies invaded Muslim states.

New enemies and old conflicts

The causes behind the 9/11 attacks were complicated. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, fighting a war through the 1980s. The United States funded and armed the opposition forces. Many of them, including Osama bin Laden, would eventually join Al-Qaeda. A lot of people in the Middle East objected to U.S. and Soviet interference in the region.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States was the only remaining world superpower. That year, the U.S. military led a large military group in the Gulf War. Many Middle Eastern countries allied with the U.S. The war was waged against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Half a million international troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is home to the holy city of Mecca. Bin Laden believed that the presence of foreign troops in the land of Mecca was an insult to Islam. He began to hate the United States and Muslim leaders who allied with the U.S.

Al-Qaeda began targeting Americans with terror attacks after the war ended. These attacks were part of a larger strategy. Al-Qaeda believed that by attacking America, they could provoke the U.S. government into an extreme response. This would turn public opinion in the Islamic world against Americans. Moderate governments would fall. Then, bin Laden and his allies could create an extremist state in the Middle East.

Forever war

The United States did react to the events of 9/11, but the results were not exactly as bin Laden had imagined them. In October 2001, the American military and allies invaded Afghanistan. The Taliban was quickly defeated. Yet the global conflict was just beginning. Bush said that terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda were part of an “Axis of Evil” that included unfriendly states like Hussein’s Iraq. However, Iraq had not been involved in the events of 9/11. By incorrectly connecting terrorism to Iraq, the government created a justification for another war. The Americans and a small number of allies invaded Iraq in 2003. The invasion went against the wishes of the United Nations.

American leadership sought to overthrow unfriendly leaders like Hussein and replace them with democratic governments. However, the war dragged on after Hussein’s death. Iraq quickly plunged into civil war. The American invasion allowed extremist groups in the Middle East to recruit more people.

American special forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 under President Barack Obama. However, this did not end the global war on terror. By 2011, new threats had arisen in the Middle East, including the Islamic State (ISIS). In Afghanistan, the Taliban maintains power and influence.

The cost

Two decades of war have transformed life in the U.S. Measures to combat terrorism have increased government powers. The war in Afghanistan recently surpassed the Vietnam War as America’s longest conflict. Funding these wars has changed the American economy. In 2014, the U.S. government spent more money on military spending than the next nine nations combined.

Almost 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks. Thousands of soldiers have died in the wars that followed. Yet by far, the largest group of casualties have been civilians. Estimates differ, but we know hundreds of thousands of civilians have died in these wars. American military occupation of several Middle Eastern nations has created hostility to American presence. This has done lasting damage to America’s influence around the world.