The attacks on September 11th, 2001 were executed by an extremist organization called Al-Qaeda. It involved the hijacking of four airliners that were filled with passengers.

1. The changes in the foreign policy of USA after September 11
The attacks on September 11th, 2001 were executed by an extremist organization called Al-Qaeda. It
involved the hijacking of four airliners that were filled with passengers, two of them were crashed
intentionally into the two World Trade Towers centers in New York and one into the Pentagon in
Washington, D.C. Another, the fourth seemed to be headed for a site in Washington, D.C. but it was
overtaken we believe by passengers and the airliner crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Al-Qaeda is a
violent extremist terrorist organization that was really part of a political protest movement against the
United States and the West and the role that it has played in the Middle East politically and an overall
protest against the way Muslims have been treated historically and in the modern world. Al-Qaeda is
what we call a non-state actor which means it was not affiliated with any specific nation-state much of
his leadership was located in Afghanistan but there were other parts of Al-Qaeda that were located in
many different countries in the Middle East and South Asia and in Asia. Since the leadership of Al-Qaeda
was believed to be located in Afghanistan the United States initially demanded that the Afghan
government at the time which was known by another fairly radical organization called the Taliban turn
over the leaders of Al-Qaeda- Osama bin Laden and others to be arrested and prosecuted. The Taliban
refused to do that they had a similar view about the world, an ideology as Al- Qaeda and they were
essentially harboring them keeping them safely inside Afghanistan. Therefore the United States
essentially declared war against Afghanistan and eventually the Taliban government fell. However much
of the leadership of Al-Qaeda ended up escaping principally to Pakistan. The United States and its allies
around the world helped to essentially bring a new government to Afghanistan, yet the fight between
the United States and allies in Europe and the Taliban and Al-Qaeda has continued for over 15 years
leading to essentially the longest United States involvement in an international conflict in history. Now
since Al-Qaeda was present in many other countries besides Afghanistan President George W Bush
called on other nations to join with the United States in fighting what he called "the global war on
terror" not only against Al-Qaeda, but against other like-minded organizations willing to use violence
against civilians to pursue their political agenda. Many nations join together to share intelligence to fight
together for example in Afghanistan many other nations sent troops and military to Afghanistan and
remain there to this day. This alliance of nation-states against these terrorist groups in many ways has
been very successful over the past decade and a half because it's helped to keep these groups under
control and in check. Here inside the United States the attacks of 9/11 showed many weaknesses in the
United States security system that the United States Congress and President Bush and of course the U.S.
people wanted to address. One of the principal first things that was done was to create a new federal
agency called the Transportation Security Agency we now know as the TSA and it changed a lot of things
about airport security that many you see have any time you go into an airport and while a lot of people
don't like the inconvenience and those questions about whether the x-ray machines are invading our
privacy the fact of the matter is we haven't had a major attack using airplanes at least in the United
States so airport security has improved. Another question is our immigration system and whether it was
not secure enough whether people who were planning on doing harm were able to come in to the
United States for that purpose and so that led to a lot of changes in our immigration policies. It became
harder to get visas and a lot of other changes to tighten up who could get a visa or a passport to come
and visit the United States. Another question was did our organizations like the FBI have enough power

2. to do investigations into terrorist organizations. So there is a question about what can we do to try to
infiltrate these organizations learn about what they were going to do and that requires what we call
different forms of surveillance. In a little over a month, after the 9/11 attacks Congress passed a new
law called the USA PATRIOT Act that had many many different provisions that made it easier for our
agencies to gather information principally about foreign nationals or others living in the United States.
This was very controversial, but many people felt that it gave the government too much power and that
those powers could possibly be abused and used to gather information about American citizens that
would make our country in many ways less free. The 9/11 hijackers were all from other countries they
were all foreign nationals. Most of them fifteen out of the nineteen hijackers came from Saudi Arabia
the others came from other countries in the Middle East. However, they were all Muslims. They were
followers of the Islamic faith and part of their ideology is that their ideas is that they believed that their
religion Islam justified these violent attacks against civilians in order to bring about a new kind of society
and also as a reaction to some of the historic grievances that Muslim people had against both the United
States and other Western countries. The vast majority of Muslims around the world do not agree with
Al-Qaeda and do not believe that violence should be used either as a reaction or to change society. They
believe that we should you know have a peaceful resolution of all of our problems. So, unfortunately
what we have seen in the United States since 9/11 because of this connectivity between 9/11 and Islam
and a lot of misunderstandings among Americans about what American Muslims believe there's a lot of
unfortunate discrimination hate crimes both by the government andin society and in the media that has
made a life more difficult for Muslim Americans unfortunately thenit should be. So, going forward we're
looking at questions of civil rights and civil liberties and how Muslim Americans can use the protections
and the laws that we have in the United States to ensure that they are protected from this
discrimination. So, looking in sum, 9/11 has had a major, major impact on the history of the world and
the United States. It allowed for the first time for a non-state actor to affect a super power and impact
international relations andit led to a lot of changes in U.S.laws and customs and the the way our society
holds together. So, the core message is that while 9/11 and the Al-Qaeda terrorists were able to impact
history and lead to some of the changes we've discussed inside the United States they their ideas have
been rejected by countries around the world and here in the United States our government has changed
laws and practices so they really have not been able to fundamentally alter our society. The terrorists
can gain a lot of attention they can cause a lot of violence, but it's very important that we as a society
and as a world work together to make sure that these actions of very few people do not alter and
fundamentally change our society and that we continue to work together for a harmonious society and
one where we have peace