142 International Relations Theory of War
tower. An hour after the first attack, a third hijacked airliner crashed into
the Pentagon in Washington and caused part of the building to collapse.
At 10:05 a.m., the northern tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, and
at 10:28 a.m., the southern tower collapsed. At 10:10 a.m., a fourth hijacked
airliner crashed in Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh.^201 An analogy was
immediately made to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the U.S.
administration was on a way to make a complete change in U.S. foreign
policy and concerning the threats that Washington was facing.^202
This was not the first attack on American objectives. In 1998, the U.S.
embassy in East Africa was attacked, and 224 people were killed, including
12 Americans, and about 5,000 injured. On October 12, 2000, the USS Cole
destroyer was attacked, resulting in 17 sailors being killed. Aircraft hijack-
ing attempts were not new either. In 1995, an attempt to hijack simultane-
ously nine American aircraft over the Pacific Ocean was thwarted. The
World Trade Center itself was a target of a terrorist attack in 1993—six
people were killed and more than 100 injured.^203 What made the terror-
ist attacks of September 11 special compared with previous attacks was
the combination of the scale of civilian losses and the fact that the attacks
occurred in the West itself, and in the United States in particular, and the
comprehensive media coverage of the events.^204
The events of September 11 were shocking because they destroyed the
war model that had been formed by the system in the 1990s. In the preced-
ing decade, war was a phenomenon that occurred a safe distance away.
However, on September 11, the attacks were on home soil, against the capi-
tal of the United States, Washington, and against one of its most famous and
visited cities, New York. The U.S. president declared to Congress on Sep-
tember 20 that the American nation had discovered that it was not immune
to attack.^205 The attacks were described not only as attacks on the United
States but also as attacks on the “free world” and on the “civilized world.”^206
The InvasionThe Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) Wars were to a great extent a
result of the vicious terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. These events
had a significant effect on American public opinion, on the media, on the
two main political parties, and, of course, on the official foreign policy
makers.^207 The American military response to the terrorist attacks started
on October 7, 2001. The aims of the U.S.-Afghan War were unclear. Two
different options were raised. One was punishing the Taliban regime for
giving shelter to and cooperating with Al Qaeda and forcing the regime to
bring the culprits to justice. The other was collapsing the Taliban regime
and opening the way to an alternative regime that would allow direct
American access to Al Qaeda people who had hidden in Afghanistan. The
failure of the Taliban regime to cooperate with the American demands led