I was very young when the attack on 9/11 occurred. I remember little about the attack itself. What stands clearer in my mind was the constant replays on the news and the fact that it seemed to be the only thing adults wanted to talk about. When I asked why the terrorist attacked occurred, I was told that the bad guys didn’t like America and wanted to kill Americans.
As I got older, I started thinking about the 9/11 terrorist attack as less simplistic than simply an attempt to murder as many people as possible. The terrorists could have chosen any location to crash those planes, and they specifically chose the World Trade Center. According to Harvey, this was a deliberate attack on the symbol of the New York-dominated world trade system. Obviously, there is no way to justify the attack; it was a cold-blooded murder of innocent people on a grand scale. However, to say that it was simply an attack on “America and all things good” is to oversimplify the matter. 9/11 was an attack, not only on American innocents, but on American-dominated globalization as well. Until we acknowledge this, the resentment of other groups will continue to grow– with potentially explosive results.
