9/11 Anniversary

It has been 25 years since 9/11.

Each terrorist attack doesn't just happen. The immediate objective is the death and destruction of the enemy. But there is also usually a big picture objective that tends to get overlooked.

The 9/11 attack involved four passenger aircraft that were hijacked and intended to be flown as missiles into prominent buildings in the U.S. What was interesting is that it was easy to find out the identity of the hijackers. Then the nineteen hijackers were not from countries that are usually considered as hostile to America, as we might expect. They were all from countries in the Middle East that are considered as America's allies.

This was done on purpose. The objective was to turn Americans against countries in the Middle East that are friendly to them. This would help to get American and western influence out of Moslem countries. It would definitely turn Americans and Europeans against Moslems that live in the west, and so they would be less inclined to go there. The use of aircraft might make people afraid to fly and would diminish globalization.

Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis, as was Osama Bin Laden. Mohammed Atta was the only Egyptian among the hijackers, yet he was the ringleader. Why would they choose a foreigner as the ringleader of the operation, and make it easy for authorities to find that out afterward? Because Egypt is the largest country of the Middle East, and a close ally of America, and they were trying to turn Americans against it.

The 2015 and 2016 attacks in Paris and Brussels happened when the battle against Islamic State was going on and there was civil war in Syria. Refugees were being taken in across Europe. There were those who wanted to stop Moslems from going to Europe. The way to accomplish that was for some among the refugees to commit horrible massacres so that Europeans wouldn't take them in anymore. A female Belgian television news anchor was even sexually assaulted by a refugee while she was on air.

The immediate purpose of the attack on the Munich Olympics of 1972 was to exchange Israeli athlete hostages for certain prisoners in Israeli jails. But the overall objective was to get the world to shun athletic and cultural exchanges with Israel by showing that inviting Israelis into your country might mean a lot of trouble.

The Government of Egypt was friendly with the west, and western tourists often visited. The objective of the 1997 massacre of tourists in Luxor was to get westerners to shun Egypt so it might be moved toward being an Islamic Republic.

Attacks on and hijacking of aircraft were common at the time and, when the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre happened the Israelis were naturally looking out for Palestinian attackers. The attackers got around this by recruiting members of the Japanese Red Army. The overall objective was to deter people from visiting Israel, by making it seem that flying there was very unsafe and forcing onerous airport security on travelers from all over the world.