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Introduction: Attacks of “9/11”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

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Extract

On September 11, 2001, a sunny Tuesday morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four American passenger planes in coordinated suicide attack missions directed at landmark sites in America. The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. Seventeen minutes later, while all the world's media were covering the story without knowing exactly what happened, a second hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. At 9:37 a.m., a third plane crashed into the Pentagon. Passengers aboard a fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, fought back against hijackers who intended for it to hit a Washington, D.C. target, perhaps the U.S. Capitol; it instead crashed into farmland in Pennsylvania shortly after 10 a.m. In less than two hours, nearly 3000 people of several nationalities perished in the four coordinated attacks.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 14 , Special Issue S14: Course Reader No. 14. Japan and the American-led Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , 2016 , pp. 7 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

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References

Notes

2 Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957, and killed by the United States in Pakistan in 2011.

3 “Tony Blair's Corrosive Allegiance to George Bush Laid Bare for the First Time,” London Evening Standard, October 27, 2007, retrieved from www.standard.co.uk

4 Cited in “Bush says it is time for action,” CNN, November 6, 2001, retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2001/U.S./11/06/ret.bU.S.h.coalition/index.html

5 “The North Atlantic Treaty,” NATO, April 4, 1949, retrieved from http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official texts 17120.htm

6 “Kim's Nuclear Gamble: Chronology,” PBS Frontline, 2003, retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/etc/cron.html

7 George W. Bush, State of the Union (Washington, D.C.: The White House), January 29, 2002, retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html The key speechwriter, Canadian David Frum, wrote that he was given an assignment specifically “to provide a justification for a war,” assumed to mean a war with Iraq. Frum aimed to analogize the new enemy with the “axis” of World War II, and his superiors instructed him to use the theological tone of “evil.” Iran and North Korea were added to the troika, perhaps, speculates Hendrick Hertzberg, to follow a “rule of three,” to broaden the global reach of the enemy, or, most likely, as “affirmative action”: North Korea was “bused in to lend diversity to what would otherwise have been an all-Muslim list.” See Hendrick Hertzberg, “Axis Praxis,” The New Yorker, January 13, 2003, retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/

8 Yukio Sato, “Statement by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Permanent Representative of Japan Mr. Yukio Satoh at the 56th United Nations General Assembly, Oct. 2, 2001. Cited in Michael Penn, Japan and the War on Terror: Military Force and Political Pressure in the US-Japan Alliance (London: I.B. Taurus, 2014), p. 171.

9 Michael Penn, Japan and the War on Terror: Military Force and Political Pressure in the U.S.-Japanese Alliance (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), pp. 2-3.

10 Brett Murphy, “Japan PM resigns amidst fight over anti-terror law renewal,” Jurist, September 12, 2007, retrieved from http://jurist.org/paperchase/2007/09/japan-pm-resigns-amidst-fight-over-anti.php: Norimitsu Onishi, “Prime Minister of Japan to Step Down,” New York Times, September 12, 2007, retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/world/asia/12cnd-iapan.html?ex=1190260800&en=3ba45a84c63534ae&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY&r=0

11 Daniel Bolger, Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014, pp. xiii, xvi, 442)

12 U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has formally stated that, “Article V of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands,” obliquely signifying U.S. support for Japan. U.S. Dept. of Defense, “Statement by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone,” November 23, 2013, retrieved from http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=16392

13 Takashi Oshima, “Japan Questions Whether It Can Still Rely On U.S. Alliance,” Asahi Shimbun/AJW, February 4, 2014.

14 Doug Bandow, “Americans Shouldn't go to War with China over Asian Territorial Disputes,” Forbes, August 5, 2016 (commentary).