The Suicide Attacks on September 11, 2001 Essay

The Suicide Attacks on September 11, 2001 - Essay Example By the end of the day, close to 3000 people had lost their lives and the government had declared a war on the terrorist groups, in what could be termed as a paradigm shifting moment in US history (David, 2007). This paper is a critical evaluation of the events which occurred on this day and the aftermath. The suicide attacks on September 11, 2001 September 11 attacks, also known as 911 attacks, will always linger in the minds of Americans, who were the direct victims of 4 coordinated suicide assaults, which took place in two cities i.e. New York and Washington, in the morning of September 11, 2001 (David, 2007). At first, there were beliefs that the attacks were orchestrated by the al-Qaeda terrorist network but these were later confirmed by the then leader of this network, Osama bin Laden, who had denied those allegations at first. This was a unique occurrence based on the fact that they defied the norm with regard to the manner in which the network carried it out. The most common s uicide attacks involved individuals delivering explosives and detonating them once they were at the enclosure of their target. In this case, they opted to utilize hijacked air planes as their weapon of destruction. 4 planes were hijacked by the terrorists meaning that they had already identified 4 possible targets and as it later turned out, they included the Pentagon, the world trade center which had twin towers i.e. the north and south towers, and another target, which was alleged to be the white house (David, 2007). The hijacked airplanes comprised of; American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, which were traveling from Boston to Los Angeles, American Airlines Flight 77, which was travelling from Dulles to Los Angeles and United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco (Lee, 2002). According to reports, these air planes combined had a total of approximately 246 passengers, 19 hijackers and approximately 33 crew members, figures which are said to be extreme ly low based on the fact that the planes had a total carrying capacity of approximately 694 passengers. Some reports tend to suggest that there was a possibility that the booking process had been manipulated allegedly to reduce the number of casualties (Spiegel, 2002). At approximately 08.46 hrs local time, flight 11 was crashed into the 96th floor of the north tower, killing all those on board while flight 175 was crashed into the south tower at around 9:30 am, which was about 44 minutes after the first crash. Flight 77 on the other hand was crashed into pentagon at around 9:37 am while flight 93 clashed in Pennsylvania at around 10:30 am. Apparently, passengers aboard flight 93 wrestled with the hijackers in an attempt to seize the control of the flight as they had become aware of the crashes that took place earlier during the day but on realizing their mission had been compromised, the terrorists decided to crash the plane so to avoid losing its control and probably get arrested by the US government (Lee, 2002). The north tower of the world trade center succumbed to the crash and collapsed after approximately 1hour 20 min from the time of impact, while the south tower burned for approximately 1 hour before giving in and collapsing. The result of these attacks was that 2996 people lost