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In-Depth Information
In addition, business was disrupted in New York City, the financial
capital of the world, for months. The American stock market, already reel-
ing under the collapse of the tech stocks, was further hard hit, as were
global markets. Some estimates attribute more than 40 percent of the
current economic downturn to the attack on the World Trade Center. No
terror attack in history had ever created the same amount of widespread
damage or generated such a powerful response.
Compare these far-reaching effects to the results of the attack on the
Pentagon. Certainly the damage done was far more localized. While the
pain and suffering of the families who lost loved ones in the Pentagon is
no less than those who lost relatives at the Trade Center, comparatively
little attention has been paid to them. The nationally televised interviews
always seem to focus on the surviving family members from the Twin Towers.
Civilian deaths and injuries always create a stronger reaction in the gen-
eral public because the death of an ordinary citizen is far easier for the
average person to relate to. Terrorists have, to be sure, grasped that fact
and are focusing the bulk of their assets and abilities on planning addi-
tional attacks on U.S. civilian and economic targets. In October 2002, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning that Al Qaeda
might have been specifically planning attacks on U.S. economic interests.
Al Qaeda leaders, the report stated, “aim to undermine what they see as
the backbone of U.S. power, the economy.” The FBI said that “an attack may
have been approved” and that “Our adversary is trying to portray Amer-
ican influence as based on economic might and therefore seeks to strike
an economic target prominent enough for economic aid and symbolic rea-
sons that it would have immediate resonance around the world.”
2
This
analysis is actually quite correct. The economic might of the United States
is what allows it to remain the most influential force in the world. Our
system of democracy, with all its attendant personal freedoms, would not
have captured the imagination of the oppressed people of the world were
it not for the prosperity and economic success it has produced.
The State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Counterterror-
ism has documented this trend in its “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report
dated May 21, 2002. Exhibit 1.3 shows a comparison of the number of
anti-U.S. attacks for the year 2001.
More attacks targeted U.S. economic interests during the year 2001
than all other attacks combined. Furthermore, the trend exactly mirrors
the statistics of terrorist incidents worldwide shown in Exhibit 1.1, which
showed that the overwhelming numbers of terrorist attacks were directed
