The Tragedy of September 11 - Essay Example

After September 11, 2001 the the tragic loss of human lives which were caused by preemptive terrorist attack on the of New York the U.S.government declared war on Afghanistan and Iraq. The war labeled and still is as “The War on Terror” whose strategic goal according to the government is to protect the United States and its allies against terrorist threats worldwide targeting groups such as Al-Qaeda and other terrorist group living in the Middle East. After 9/11 the US residents were supportive of president’s Bush declaration of war. Americans had suffered a great human loss as a result of a cowardly attack on American civilians. The American citizens were outraged and wanted action and retaliation against the perpetrators that destroyed downtown New York. There was no clear target as far the attack coming from typical enemies such a war declaration from another country. The government decided that the entire Middle East region was at fault because many terrorist organizations loomed in the area. This characterization of an entire race was a carefully plotted plan which utilized imaginative geographies to justify a full blown attack against Afghanistan and Iraq which were perceived as the epicenter in which the terrorist were located and planned their attacks against western nations. This paper analyzes how the “War on Terror” has utilized imaginative geographies as an effective strategic tool to continue its presence in the Middle East for nearly six years. Imaginative geographies refers to the dramatization of the differences between a dominant culture and another culture, ‘us’ and ‘them’, employed by folding difference in distance as the key to create made up perceptions of events occurring in a place based on prejudice, racial disparity and other generalization of an opposite culture (Gregory 2004). The U.S military and its allies including the British regime utilized imaginary geography as the key tool to justify their actions and gain support for its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The strategy involves deceiving the general masses and utilizing various psychological operations and information warfare to convince the population that the action against the enemy are necessary and justified to protect the national security of the people (Graham, 2006). The government utilized social theories such as ethnocentrism to reinforce a sense of superiority in the minds of its western residents. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own way of life is superior and properly serves as the standard by which all others are evaluated (NesSmith, 1995). The military was very effective at portraying the Iraqi as barbaric creatures that are constantly fighting and killing each other for their primitive religious wars. This type of behavior was prehistoric and a lost cause which westerns people advanced past these type of behavior over 500 years ago. In simple terms the military wants people to believe that the Arabs are an inferior race in need of a savior such as the US and its allies to bring peace into the region by taking control of the cities in order to serve the double purpose of investigating and eliminating terrorist threats while at the same time teaching Arabs how democracy could save the region. Controlling information was very important in the military’s imaginative geographic campaign. The majority of the media wrote in favor of the war or did not dare get into too much detail about the actual human suffering in the area. Journalist from allied nation place their perspective on what the public wanted to hear and wrote stories relative to their audience; for example instead of calling it the US invasion which is the term utilize by the Iraqi press they referred to the occurrence as the “War on Terror” (Conway, 2007). Those who tried to tell the truth about the types of horrors that are occurring in this conflict such as the ten of thousands of civilians that died as the consequence of the war were classified as enemies and eliminated as part of collateral damage strategies. In 2004 an Iraqi television news station started televising visual images of the death of many civilians after attacks from US soldiers in the targeted city (Graham, 2006). The station was immediately eliminated in the line of fire after a US bombardment near the premises as the troops were fighting terrorist threats. The imaginative geographic campaign is very effective at implementing a perception in people minds that the cities bombarded are asocial physical locations. The cities are illustrated in the military media coverage as strategic targets and coordinates. The military provides information about coordinates and targets to make it seem as if they are simple playing a battleship desk game in which the two players choose coordinates in the Cartesian plane to eliminate a threat in a specific location. The military enhances these imagines in three-dimensional format utilizing advanced technologies such as global positioning systems, advanced imagery sensory, algorithms, automated software among many other tech-science solutions. The military strategy utilized in this war follows a network centric warfare style. Network centric warfare is derived from the effective linking or networking of knowledgeable entities that are geographically or hierarchically dispersed (Alberts & Garstka & Stein, 2000). The geographical region of the enemy in the imaginative geographic theme is transformed into the profile needed to justify particular actions. In the “War on Terror” the Middle East cities are portrayed as dark, exotic, labyrinthine structures that require the utilization of high tech military force presence in these cities to unveil the hidden secrets and hidden places of terrorist activities and eliminate the enemy from its natural habitat (Graham, 2006). The constant illustration of maps and targets within computer images of the military grabs the audience attention to their high tech delivery of the information and makes people forget about the actual physical realm of the cities and most importantly the human civilian presence within these cities targeted by the US military. The overall strategy has been reinforced utilizing other techniques among the American civilization. The government has utilized techniques such as making people believe the country is under constant threat of terrorist attacks, thus events such as power outages, suspicious mail, entrance of unknown immigrants, or computer virus are utilized to instill fear and anxiety among the general population. The spatial dimension and strategic objective of dehumanizing the war and instilling a sense of aggression against the enemy is passed on the population within the video games showcasing the military power in the new powerful realistic game consoles (Kitchin & Kneale). These games are very similar to the press conferences that utilize GPS coordinates to identify targets without any resource or reference to huge loss of human lives among the Arab population. Imaginative geographic is a strategy the United States military and its allies has effectively utilized to control the masses and create a false reality of what is actually occurring in the so called “War on Terror”. The types of high tech attacks in bombs are released against entire cities at times possibly killing thousands of Iraqis including many civilians despite the government denial of the action. The government does not even count the death toll of the opposition simply stating that they are unaware of the data to create the statistics and the death of its solders is accurately tallied. Imaginary geographic is a technique that has been used in the past by military forces, but in the war in the Middle East this tactic has been taken to another level and has helped the US and its allies to continue the war for six years without a legitimate forecast of when this will all end. References Alberts, D., Garstka, J., Stein, F. (2000). Network Centric Warfare. Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority. 2nd edition. CCRP. Available from [Accessed 10 October 2007] Conway, K. (2007). Translating Iraq: Journalism as Hermeneutic Enterprise. Bad Subjects. Available from [Accessed 10 October 2007] Graham, S. (2006). Cities and the War on Terror. International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, 30(2). p255-276. Gregory, D. (2004). Who’s Responsible. ZNET. Available from [Accessed 10 October 2007] Kitchen, S., Kneagle, J. (2001). Science Fiction or Future Fact? Exploring Imaginative Geographies of the New Millennium. Progress in Human Geography, 25(1). P19-35. NesSmith, W. (1995). Social Sciences: An Introduction. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace. Read More