Lies My Teacher Told Me

claim specifically for the World Trade Center:

The Twin Towers were meant to symbolize peace. Shortly after

they were finished in 1973, the architect who designed them,

Minoru Yamasaki, said, “World trade means world peace. The

World Trade Center is a living symbol of man’s dedication to

world peace. It should become a representation of man’s belief

in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the

cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find

greatness.” The terrorists were striking at all of this.^15

Of course, this is nonsense. If on September 10, 2001, Frank had asked a
hundred visitors to the World Trade Center what the buildings symbolized to
them, none would have replied, “world peace,” “individual dignity,” or “the

cooperation of men.”^16 The building housed stockbrokers and investment
bankers, after all. As the editors of American Heritage put it in 2005, in an
essay commending efforts to restore and display the architectural model of the
Twin Towers, they were “internationally recognizable symbols of American

economic might.”^17

The notion that terrorists attacked us because of our values, our freedoms, or
our dedication to world peace is self-serving but shallow and inaccurate. Such
thinking might be termed nationalist but is hardly patriotic, to follow the
distinction made by Johannes Rau at the head of this chapter. Nationalism does
not encourage us to critique our country and seek its betterment. Therefore,
nationalism serves us only in the short run. In the long run, our nation needs
citizens who question its policies rather than blindly saluting them. Indeed,
knowledgeable Americans pointed this out to journalist James Fallows, who
summarized in Atlantic Monthly: “The soldiers, spies, academics, and
diplomats I have interviewed are unanimous in saying that ‘They hate us for
who we are’ is dangerous claptrap.” Fallows himself called the idea that they
hate us for who we are “lazily self-justifying and self-deluding.” Michael
Scheuer, first chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, agreed:

Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is

waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with

our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have everything to do

with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.

In November 2004, confirmation of this view came from an interesting source: