The date of September 11th 2001 will live on for
so many people. Not only in the US but also around
the world.

It was the day that suicide attackers seized US passenger
jets and crashed them into New York skyscrapers
killing thousands of people. This attack remains one of
the most traumatic events of the century for so many.

There were four planes. Two struck the Twin Towers of the
World Trade Center in New York. The third plane
destroyed the western face of the Pentagon. The 4th
was meant to attack the Capitol building in Washington
D.C. Passengers fought back.

al-Qaeda claimed responsibility. Bin Laden was later killed.
And the war began in Afghanistan not long after.

What have we learned from all this? And what actions
need to be taken to ensure it does not happen again?

What have we learned from all this?
Foxy,
I don't know what others have learnt (learned)from this but I have come to the conclusion that most haven't learned a damn thing !
Why ? Just look around & observe !

individual,

What we can all appreciate is that we saw
the many brave men and women the totally selfless
acts of firefighters, flight attendants,
co-workers, passers by, volunteers that came together.
We learned that heroes are everywhere.

I think we learned just how vulnerable we all are
and that air-lines are how much we depend on our
air-line (when they closed for a while).

We learned that airport security is vital. That
terrorism affects everyone.

And we learned that we are at our best when times are
bad.

One of the big lessons was that we need to implement
safety procedures - which I believe have been done.
Like protecting the cockpits of the planes by
reinforcing cabin doors. Making citizens more
aware of suspicious activity and doing their part
by reporting anything suss.

And so on.

I'd argue we have not learnt what should have been the most important item on the agenda. How to prevent extremists/ terrorists etc from wanting to commit such atrocities in the first place.
Our response has been retroactively vigorous, proactively bereft.

Hi VE,

So suggest what you think we should have done and
what you think caused it in the first place?

Hi Foxy

Asked "why" before releasing the hounds.

The belief that western democracy/ political systems and its money is what the entire planet needs.

Dear VE,

I think the "Why?" was made clear by the US in
their belief that they would go after the terrorists
and stop such actions in the future.
And being an ally - Australia supported
the US in this. I don't see how the US could have been
prevented from taking this action considering the September
11th attack.

My answer would have been quite different a few months ago. The events in Kabul have changed everything.

Prior to that it seemed clear that what had been learned is that west was at war with radical Islam - although I've argued that what is commonly called radical Islam is indeed true Islam. Its been called 'A War on Terror' but that was just a means to try to not say we were at war with Islam. (Terror is merely a tactic used by the Islamists - calling it a war on terror is like calling WW1 a war on trenches.)

To fight the war, we recognised we needed to carry the battle to the enemy in his homeland - consequently Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran. Islamists believe that Allah will grant them victory. We learned that we needed to disabuse them of that hope.

We learned that there were a large minority of Mohammedans in our countries sympathetic to the Islamists and that they needed to be separated from their most radical elements. It seemed that we had learned that this was going to be a long, generational conflict.

We seemed to have learned all that. Then came the Kabul debacle and it's clear that the west has decided to unilaterally declare the war and the effort over. All the efforts to defeat radical Islam are reversed. The Islamists are now reassured that so long as they remain in the fight, the west will eventually elect leaders prepared to surrender any gains.

So we learned and then forgot a lot. But we have learned some things that will remain. We have learned that radicals are in our midst and must be monitored and feared. We've learned that we need to be careful about the type of person we let in the country - 'Stop the Boats'.

The war on Islam is now morphed into the war against the authoritarian states allied to the Islamists. We learned and then forgot a lot. Over the net twenty years we are going to have to do it all over again.

Interesting topic.

After 9/11 the US withdrew most of its troops from Saudi Arabia as stipulated by Bin Laden in his manifesto.

What is interesting is that there is a fresh withdrawal going on right now of patriot missiles.

"The Pentagon is pulling missile defense systems and other military hardware and personnel from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East, according to a defense official, as it realigns its mission and forces to confront China and Russia."
http://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/18/politics/pentagon-remove-missile-defense-saudi-arabia-middle-east/index.html

Given the return of Afghanistan to the Taliban it may well be that the US isn't interested in maintaining an aggravation which may be a rallying cry for radical Islamist groups.

Indeed it may well be a lesson learnt.

One has to wonder if this wasn't part of the negotiations with the Taliban. Who knows?

And so on.
Foxy,
Yes, the trophy manufacturers are doing overtime as do the bravery certificate printers. The whole Hero industry is in overdrive.
The ones who did the selfless work will never get a mention.

It appears that we'll have to wait and see the end
results yet. We didn't have a choice in this
originally. What happens next - as Steele said -
who knows?

It does appear that this discussion is not going
to progress any further. Which is understandable.
What else can we do? And of course we would all
prefer to stop engaging in costly wars. Equally we
should be willing to negotiate an end to conflict
if we believe it might actually result in lasting
peace.

However, if we just walk away at all costs -don't
we send a signal to the Taliban and others a
message that they can return to their malicious
activity unabated? Didn't the Taliban sink
Afghanistan into poverty, violence, and religious
persecution and was also known to provide a safe
haven for al-Qaeda?

It is important to be attentive to the lessons
we've learned against terrorism moving forward.
We need to be on our guard - to try to ensure 9.11
does not happen again.

The question of "why we fight wars" is addressed by George Hageman- Military History Podcast- Philosophy of War 1 & 2.

http://militaryhistorypodcast.blogspot.com/2008/03/philosophy-of-war-1.html

http://militaryhistorypodcast.blogspot.com/2008/04/philosophy-of-war-2.html

"
Lawrence Keeley, "90-95% societies engage in war". What compels homo sapiens to kill each other?

War is Rational:
Sun Tzu- political struggles eventually lead to conflict. Clausewitz- extended this "war is a mere continuation of policy by other means". Machiavelli completed this entire line of thought by saying that war was the most efficient means of attaining any political goal.

War is Inevitable:
Hobbes- humans inherently violent. Raymond Dart and Robert Ardrey found a scientific basis for this by claiming that homo sapiens became the dominant humanoid through their martial prowess (and we have kept this prowess ever since). Another group of philosophers attributes reckless aggression by testosterone in males.

Sun Tzu's Art of War
Clausewitz's On War
Machiavelli's The Prince
Mao's Quotations
Hobbes' Leviathan

War is Necessary:
Aristotle- Nicomachean Ethics- "we fight war so that we may live in peace". Echoes famous thinkers including Marx (an advocate of a final proletarian revolution in order to establish a worker's paradise) and Zoroaster (the first monotheist to discuss the final battle of judgment between good and evil).

War is Logical:
Using Darwin's logic, mankind continues to fight wars because it is the means through which our species survives. Thomas Malthus adapted this into a population argument, stating that humans fight wars in order to keep populations small and manageable. Samuel Huntington took this one step further by saying that war negates massive youth bulges. Lastly, John Nash (the economist) proved, through game theory, that war is a more logical choice than peace.

War is Accidental:
AJP Taylor- all wars are unintended escalations of smaller conflicts. Warmongering is neither inherent nor unavoidable. Taylor's ideas link closely to the pacifistic ideas of Tolstoy and Gandhi.

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
Communist Manifesto by Marx
Holy Avesta, Holy Bible, Holy Qur'an
Origin of Species by Darwin
An Essay on the Principle of Population by Malthus
Environmental Science by Richard Wright
Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington
"

The following may be of interest:

http://en.unesco.org/courier/may-1985/why-war-letter-albert-einstein-sigmund-freud

AJP Taylor (mentioned above), in his ground-breaking book 'The Origins of the Second World War', tries, and in my view succeeds, in showing that Hitler did not want to fight a war against Britain or France. In effect the war was an error caused by misunderstanding and mistrust.

Very few wars are caused by deliberate aggression. Mostly the combatants want to avoid war but stumble into it because of errors in perceptions and fear of the other.

The biggest problem is that potential adversaries mistrust the motives and intentions of their eventual opponent. It is well accepted that WW1 was a war where almost none of the combatants want to fight. But they equally felt that they couldn't be seen to be weak in the face of what they saw as provocations.

It is often felt that wars are about disputes over resources but this is rarely true. But it is often about the fear of one side or both that the other craves resources or that resources will be withheld.

Avoiding war is about ensuring that the other side doesn't misunderstand our position. WW2 occurred because the democracies failed to make it clear at which point they would fight.

So the problem with the Afghanistan debacle is that it sends messages to the CCP and the Islamists which may not be true. At this point I would expect that they feel the west is a paper tiger, unwilling to defend its interests. And with the current regime in Washington, that's probably true. But it won't always be true and its likely they, or we, won't recognise the cut-off point.

The legacy of 9/11:

http://washingtonpost.com/magazine/interactive/2021/how-911-changed-tv-art-sports-education-more/

Keep Islam from becoming a force in Australia, we already have to many Muslims, and the vast majority will support Islamic extremists when the time comes.

Expect warfare on our streets in the future.

Is Mise,

And that is precisely why we need strong
gun laws in this country.

Foxy,

So you agree that Islam is a problem?

Do you think think that terrorists respect gun laws?

There are so many ways to obtain firearms that no terrorist is going to bother with getting one legally.
The internet is full of ways to make them and doing so is quite simple, machinists and fitters make much more complicated things as a matter of course in their daily jobs.

But what terrorist needs a gun?
There are cars, petrol, diesel, coal, electric timers for bombs and starting fires all freely available for purchase at your local legal outlet.
And your local supermarket sells bomb making materials; have a look on the net.
Then there are airplanes; remember the Twin Towers?

Is Mise,

No I don't agree that Islam is a problem.
Extremism and mental illness is.
And they have existed throughout history.

We certainly can't stop all fanatics
and extremists or people with mental illnesses.
But we do have laws to at least try to control
things and make things more difficult for the
mentally deranged. Gun laws have been put in place
for that reason. They are only one example to make
our society safer for us all.

Is Mise,

Here's something positive that came from Sept. 11th:

http://usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/09/08/gander-newfoundland-september-11-terror-attacks-kindness-came-from-away/631329001/

We still have selfish, greedy, incompetent, useless people whose voting power allows them to exploit the rest of us !
Not even several more 9/11's will change that !

individual,

We've always had those kind of people.
It has nothing to do with September 11th.