Today I’ve decided to break one of the
unwritten rules I had set for myself when I started this blog, namely to not
touch any historical event after I was born (for those of who you have no idea
what that is, well, my Twitter handle should give you an idea).
At least, I don’t want to make a scenario
of events that are less than 30 years before the present. I have three reasons
for this: it’s hard to realize the full historical significance of certain
events the closer you are to them, either making them seem even bigger than
they really were or downplaying it’s significance at the time; emotions
regarding certain events are still fresh in everyone’s mind, and it’s difficult
for writer and reader to set aside the emotions of the event and look at it
from a more subjective viewpoint until time has passed; and it usually takes
about 30 or more years before most information, especially government
classified information, to be fully released, researched and presented, giving
hugely skewed views of those events to other sources, such as eye-witness
reports, news articles, hypothesis and sometimes even myths and fabrications.[1]
However, the 14th anniversary of
the worst terrorist attack on American soil is most likely going to be the one
exception to this rule, at least for right now. The attacks that are now known
as 9/11 has had such a huge impact on the world, it’s hard to say if that even
30 years from now we will know the full scale and scope of what happened when
Islamic extremists high jacked four commercial airliners, with two crashing
into the New York landmarks of the Twin Towers, another into the Pentagon in
Washington, D.C., and the forth going down in a field in Pennsylvania when the
passengers tried to reclaim control of their plane.
Point
of Divergence
There are two ways this could go about:
either Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, doesn’t sanction the attack, or
somehow the FBI, CIA or some intelligence or law enforcement agency gets wind
of a possible attack. The second scenario is the more likely in my opinion, so
I will say that in mid summer, 2001, some of the hijackers are apprehended, and
the plot is foiled. The news of supposed attacks on the US is made public, but
much like the foiled Millennium Plot to blow up aircraft from Los Angeles on
New Years Eve, it quickly leaves the headlines, and life resumes to normal.
What
Happens Next?
There are several immediate effects that
take place, not the least of which being that nearly 3000 people who would have
died, either in the plane crashes or the collapse of the buildings, make it
home that night, including hundreds of firefighters and policemen who’s heroics
that day possibly saved many more. First of all, there is no economic downturn
or recession as in after the 9/11 attacks. The attacks on New York resulted in
a shutdown of the New York Stock Exchange until September 17, at which point
major losses were reported: the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost over 14%, or
close to $1.4 trillion dollars value in a week. Air travel would also continue
as normal, without US airspace being closed, and the nervousness of passengers
to actually fly in the months and years to come. However, the Great Recession
of 2008 (a name I’m not sure will stick in 20 years time) will still happen, if
deregulation that started under Ronald Regan and continued right up until the
burst of the US housing market bubble continues as it does IRL.
The biggest change would be the lack of a
War on Terror. No invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and no the overthrow
of the extremist Islamic Taliban government that provided shelter to Al-Qaeda.
And without the new focus, or rather outright paranoia of the American people
to protect themselves, their family and their nation from future terrorist
attacks, the Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t be established. It’s
really hard to see how without the War on Terror there could be the Iraq War
(or the Second Gulf War, or the Invasion of Iraq… I don’t know if anyone really
knows what to call that now). The reason for the war as given by the US, namely
that dictator Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction,
flaunting UN sanctions, or harboring terrorists - all of which has subsequently
been discovered as false - would be insufficient to an American people who
didn’t have such a jolt to the national conscience as 9/11 would provide.
If anything, without two partially
successful wars (at least, in 2004) and the remnant of good-will after the 9/11
attacks, I’m unsure if George W. Bush would be second term president, though
I’m pretty sure it would be another close one. “Dubya” wasn’t doing so well in
the polls before 9/11, with a stagnating economy (no recession until 2008
though) and several gaffes and blunders, it’s hard to see how he may have won.
However, I’m not sure if the political gridlock that has come to dominate
Washington today would change at all. At the very least, it would be a couple
more election cycles before the worst effects of the hyper partisan politics,
such as threatened government shutdowns, Congress trying multiple times to
repeal a president’s signature piece of legislation, or otherwise just obstruct
the functioning of government. Now I’m not going to say which party will do it,
as both the Republicans and the Democrats have done it when they were in
control of one or both houses of Congress, and the President was another party.
In world affairs, the US wouldn’t have had
both the sorrow and shared pain of 9/11 and the resulting overwhelming support
for the invasion of Afghanistan, nor the ruining of that same goodwill in the
Invasion of Afghanistan. If anything the US just continues on, the strongest
nation in the world, but not yet involved in a Central Asian quagmire.
Now, would the US get involved in the
Middle East, or Northern Africa, or somewhere else in the world at some point?
Eventually, yes. The question is where, how, and why. Maybe it will be because
of Arab nations attacking Israel. Maybe Russia under Vladimir Putin starts
making moves on Ukraine. Maybe Afghanistan collapses after years of civil war
and unrest. Maybe the Arab Spring breaks out in Egypt or Tunisia or Syria and
results in Civil War. Maybe Boko Harram in Nigeria commits atrocities that
galvanize the world into action. Maybe Iran finally does get the bomb. Any one
of these possible scenarios would drag in the US, either as an interested party
in maintining the status quo or spreading democracy, or the leader of a UN,
NATO or “Coalition of the Willing” to militarily enforce actions that otherwise
would not occur.
Conclusion
It’s really hard to say right now if this
could have happened. The problem is not so much the lack of information
regarding 9/11 but rather the lack of the right
information. It has only been 14 years since the attacks, which is too soon to
make a fully fleshed out scenario in this case. Events started on 9/11 are
still happening today: the current Middle East crisis with ISIS is perhaps the
biggest one today. It will take years, after ISIS, after George W. Bush, after
Tony Blair, after Iraq, after Barack Obama, after Jon Stewart, after Vladimir
Putin, after the 2008 Recession, after the political gridlock in the US, after
a thousand other things that were all tied into the planning, execution,
tragedy, recovery and revenge that came to a head on September 11, 2001 is
either gone or, at least, far enough the in the rear view mirror for an
alternate historian to really consider what happened.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, were a tragedy
that will not be forgotten for decades to come, and not only in the US, but
around the world. I was only nine when it happened, but all I could really
remember of that day was after school, siting glued to the TV as the replay of
the airplane crashing into the huge grey side of a building resulted in a
massive fireball. I don’t remember teachers coming into the room crying, or all
the kids being let out for recess while the adults and older kids watched the
TV in the staff room, or being sent home early that day. I wasn’t old enough to
realize what happened, and how the world was about to change. I didn’t know
then about the thousands of Americans that landed in Gander, Newfoundland, and
remained there for weeks as fears of another attack gripped America. I didn’t
know that in just over a month, Tomahawk missiles and Special Ops troops would
sweep into Afghanistan and overthrow a vicious regime. I didn’t know that soon
tanks would roll across a land also known as Mesopotamia, the heart of human
civilization, to overthrow another tyrant. I didn’t know that a few years
later, on a stretch of land that straddles the US-Canada border known as the
International Peace Garden, that I would see a memorial to the tragedy that
included steel girders of the World Trade Center be established. I didn’t know
that new rules would require me to get a passport to go twenty-five minutes
south.
However, maybe because I was young and can
barely remember the day will make it easier for me to write about it again, and
do it from a perspective of having living through the effects of 9/11. In that
way, history continues on, providing me and all the other Alternate Historians
out their new topics to explore.
You just need to do it at the right time.
PS: I apologize for the lack of pictures today. I honestly didn't feel now is the right time for jokes for an article like this. Maybe in 2031.
[1] The two biggest examples I can think of for this off the top of my
head involve two of my favorite historical subjects, the Titanic and World War Two. For years, it was assumed the Titanic sank in one piece, mostly due to
the testimony of Second Officer Charles Lightoller, with those that believed it
broke in two being either ignored or handwaved away. It was only in 1985, 73
years later, when the ship was discovered, that it was finally laid to rest
that the Titanic broke apart. The
second, even more amazing story was that, until 1975, most surviving German
officers believed it was superior Allied strategy, mass production, manpower and/or
sheer luck that resulted in their victory. Turns out that the Allies broke the
“Enigma” code, the supposedly unbreakable cipher used by Nazi high command (as
seen in the recent film The Imitation
Game, and mentioned in my own published story, From Enigma to Paradox. The secret was so well hidden that it was
only when the first “Top Secret” files of World War Two were released that
anyone outside of a select few heard about it.
