September 11th, 2001 - Essay Example

The events of September11th were a series of suicide arracks committed by Muslim fundamentalists. The attackers hijacked four airplanes and directed two of them into the Twins Tours in New York. The third plan was directed into the Pentagon and the forth one was crashed in Pennsylvania. In spite of different conspiracy theories, the undeniable fact is that Al-Qaida and bin Laden officially confirmed their involvement in these attacks (Chomsky 54). Bin Laden states: "we calculated in advance the number of casualties who would be killed" (The Top September 11 Conspiracy Theories 2006).

On September 11, TV viewers watched the United Airlines Boeing 767 approach the South Tower of the World Trade Center and ram into it at 9:03 am. Cameras had been set up around the site following the crash of an American Airlines plane into the North Tower some 15 minutes earlier. The main claims promulgated by al-Qaeda against the USA also included: unauthorized use of the Arabian national resources; unlawful intrusion into political affairs of those countries, support of the abusive regimes; military bases in Arabian countries, etc.

Before the attacks, the USA stood in opposition to Arabic countries providing aggressive international politics, and these attacks became a response to its international politics and aggressive actions towards global terrorism. In these attacked, 2,974 people were killed. "The completely unexpected action of an airliner being deliberately flown into one of the world's tallest and most symbolic buildings, followed by the massive loss of life, shook journalists' and viewers' cognitive foundations of reality" ("One Nation: America Remembers September 11" 2001).

September 11 has decisively transformed the everyday contexts within which many journalists routinely operate. From the perspective of today, of course, it is easier to discern the emergence and embodiment of the responses they crafted and the interests they sought to advance. Far less clear, however, is what their lasting impact will be for journalism in a post-September 11 world. "On September 11 2001, at around eight o'clock in the morning eastern daylight time, four passenger planes took off from various East Coast cities in the United States bound for destinations on the West Coast" (Crockatt.1). The Northern mass media have the tendency to declare manifestations of Muslim belief such as wearing the hijab and performing the communal Muslim prayer as certain signs of "Islamic fundamentalism, " whereas the wearing of Christian religious apparel or attending church in their own countries are not usually considered signs of fanaticism.

The generalization and polarization of all Muslims as "fundamentalists" and "moderates, " "traditionalists" and "modernists, " "fanatics" and "secularists" serve to distort communication. They tend to make the Muslims who are interested in constructive dialogue with non-Muslims apologetic about their beliefs or, contrarily, disdainful about any interaction (Chomsky 76).Investigations of trauma typically connect its emergence to large-scale cataclysmic events that shatter a prior sense of what it means, in moral terms, to remain part of a collective All routines-the stability of life-stopped.

Sirens were there instead. The sheer genius of the terrorist strike as strike, its