Image by Aidan Bartos.
Imagine a world where 9/11 didn’t happen.
If the TSA had considered box cutters a dangerous weapon and the hijackers never got them on the plane. If the CIA and FBI coordinated on intelligence. If the passengers were successful in subduing the terrorists as they seemingly were on Flight 93. 3000-plus Americans would then not have been murdered that day, and the world and the United States would be a profoundly different place.
To an extent, ruminating about alternative histories is an exercise in mental masturbation because, of course, the past and present cannot be changed. However, such a defining moment of the 21st century and American and world history occurred because, ultimately, a FAA rule didn’t disallow knife-like objects under 4 inches on airplanes. Therefore, it might be useful to consider a world where this horribly momentous event never took place.
A thwarted terrorist attack by Islamic extremists would have, unfortunately, caused increased racial profiling of Muslims or those thought to be Muslim, but it would have been unlikely to cause the creation of the Department of Homeland Security or its subsidiary agency, ICE, in 2003. There probably would have been more occasional attacks on Iraq for some reason or another, similar to Bill Clinton’s 1998 bombing of the country. But George W. Bush, initially against nation building, would have had a hard time pushing for a full-scale invasion of the country, though Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz would have likely tried. There would almost certainly have been no invasion of Afghanistan or ousting of the Taliban.
The post-9/11 days of 2001 and 2002 were replete with a general sense of fear that an attack could happen at any moment. The trepidation and then hostility were directed toward people from outside, particularly from Muslim countries and brown immigrants. This helped fuel the development of ICE, DHS and a burgeoning far-right sentiment, as seen in the Minutemen who patrolled the US-Mexico border area because Bush was seen as too lenient on immigration. The post-9/11 zeitgeist and ongoing wars helped justify increased military spending (nearly doubling from 2000 to 2010) and a xenophobic hyper-nationalism that had been absent in the preceding decades. The DOD paid professional sports teams to honor fallen US soldiers before the games, to have US Air Force flyovers and performances of the national anthem before games. The flagrant flying of the American flag became a symbol of exceptional America under attack, mistrustful of foreigners. Trump’s policies during his first and especially his second term were a natural result of this hyper-nationalist xenophobia and militarism.
Internationally, there were mass-casualty/not-quite copycat terrorist attacks in the wake of 9/11, from the 2002 Bali attacks, the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the 2005 London bus bombings. These attacks would have been far less likely without 9/11.
Without a destroyed Iraqi state and civil society, there would not have been thousands of disaffected and unemployed men to attack Iraqi government. Nor would they have ended up in US prisons in Iraq that were “universities” for a future ISIS. And so, without a destabilized Middle East, ISIS would have been unlikely to be formed.
Israel grew closer to the US after 9/11, due to the idea that the countries were fighting the “same enemy.” Perhaps, and this is more speculative, Israel would have been somewhat restrained in Gaza and the West Bank by American leaders without the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. They may have been pressured to uphold the Oslo Accords and not expand settlements throughout the West Bank. And, just maybe, the Gaza genocide wouldn’t have been allowed to occur.
9/11 was the impetus and convenient, sellable excuse for two wars that resulted in creating a MENA chaos from which ISIS formed. It was also the catalyst of reawakened anti-immigrant, hyper-nationalist sentiment seen in the public and realized in DHS, ICE, Trump and the far-right mainstream GOP.
While we don’t know what would have happened if the 9/11 attacks never occurred, it’s hard to imagine the world and the US would be in this bad shape. Instead of wildly expanding military spending, leaders may have – even some Republicans – funded education, climate change prevention and healthcare. Perhaps a better American education would have included civics courses and prevented the rise of Trump and fake news.
Nearing the 25th anniversary of that horrible event, it is high time to pull ourselves out of the downward spiral we’ve fallen in since that day. Democrats like El-Sayed, Justin Pearson and Donovan McKinney winning recent primaries is a sign that the tide may have turned. That we have finally escaped the post-9/11 era of fear, mistrust and disdain for the outsider and all that is outside the United States, and the blind love of the flag. We shall see come November and in 2028.
