Name___________________________________ Directions: For the ...

09458

Sujets

• Arts

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• Publié par: ycyzadom
• Nombre de lectures: 87
• Langue: English

Extrait

Name___________________________________

Directions: For the following questions(s), use this passage adapted from Mark Kishlansky’s,

Patrick Geary’s, and Patricia O’Brien’s text,

Civilization in the West

.

September 11, 2001: A Turning Point

On September 11, 2001, four U.S. passenger planes were hijacked and used as flying bombs in a coordinated action

that targeted the World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside of Washington, DC.

Two of the four hijacked planes

slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and a third plane hit its mark by diving into the Pentagon.

The fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, its suicide attack

foiled

by passengers who opposed their

captors.

More than 3,000 people were killed, thousands more were wounded, and the loss of property was

unprecedented

in the worst terrorist attack in history.

The events horrified people around the world who understood that two symbols of American global, financial, and

military dominance had been singled out in a carefully planned and executed mission of destruction.

Osama bin

Laden was identified as the source of terrorist devastation.

The event was immediately compared to the Japanese

attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which provoked the entry of the United States into World War Two.

President

George W. Bush declared, in the wake of the terrorist attacks, that the United States was entering “a new kind of

war,” one not waged between nations but one whose

stateless enemy

would be sought out and hunted down.

Terrorism had long plagued Europe and the Middle East, but the September 11 attacks marked the first time in

history that an act of terrorist warfare by an external enemy took place on American soil.

This terrorist attack event

marked a turning point in the struggle against terrorism and a new focus in state security measures of western

governments.

It also marked the beginning of a new war.

Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian millionaire, who had been trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, had

fought against the Russians in Afghanistan between 1980 and 1989.

In June 2001, bin Laden called on the Muslims

of the world to mobilize themselves into a general

jihad,

or holy war, against their enemies.

It was three months

after this call-to-arms, that terrorists dealt their most extreme blow against the United States.

Because of this new threat, the Americans and their allies in Europe and throughout the world joined forces in

pledging to eradicate terrorism.

Stringent security measures in airports and public places were instituted worldwide

as nations faced harsh new political realities, including incidents of bioterrorism—��germ warfare against civilians—��

that took

place in the United States in the months following the September terrorist attacks.

When the European

Union and the United States passed new laws and directives to combat terrorism, critics feared the curtailment of

civil liberties.

Racist incidents against Muslims and Arabs mounted, even as European and American leaders

stressed that bin Laden and his network was nonrepresentative and fanatical fringe within the Muslim world.

In

October 2001, less than a month after the attacks, the United States and Great Britain began massive bombing of

Afghanistan, the small mountainous country said to be

harboring

bin Laden, after the Taliban, the fundamentalist

Muslim ruling group, refused to hand bin Laden over to the United States.