9/11 as One of the Most Impactful Terrorist Attacks on the US

9/11 is seen as one of the most impactful terrorist attacks on the US since Pear Harbor. 9/11 has changed things such as airport security, how people live their lives, and the fear that another terrorist attack may occur (CNN). On the day of the attacks, 19 members of the terrorist group, Al -Qaeda, hijacked four US planes and planned to commit suicide to complete their mission.

They crashed two of the planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. A third plane hit the pentagon and the fourth failed its mission and landed in an open field in Pennsylvania (CNN).

Almost three thousand people were killed during the 9/11 attacks which included the 19 hijackers (CNN). The attacks took minutes to get out to the rest of the world. People were on lockdown everywhere and were fearing for their lives because they didn’t know how many planes were attacking and they didn’t know where they were attacking.

To this day, people can still remember where they were when the 9/11 attacks took place. Innocent, hardworking people lost their lives that day as they were sitting in their offices working and all of a sudden were killed by the plane. Their families never got to say goodbye and they never got to live their full life.

Al- Qaeda the group responsible for the attacks, was led by a Saadian Arabian man named Osama Bin Laden. Osama was a Saudi fugitive who was responsible for the planned attacks on September 11th. Al- Qaeda was angry about Americas support of Israel during the Persian Gulf War and their continued military presence in the Middle East (CNN). They decided that the best response to this was to attack on American soil so they could get revenge.

During the planning for this attack, many of the hijackers lived in America. Here they took flying lessons at commercial schools so that they could learn how to fly the planes. Others came over right before the 9/11 attacks to join the hijackers on the plane.

September 11th during the morning before the attacks, the hijackers boarded the planes that were headed to California which were chosen because they had the most fuel in them so they could go across the country (CNN). The men who came over closer to 9/11 were responsible for bringing over box cutters and knifes to help them hijack the planes.

After the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin laden went into hiding. He did not want to be found and killed because of the plan he had put together. It took years for American soldiers to hunt down Osama. They eventually were led to a custom-built house in Pakistan after a film director was told it was a forbidden house.

The house was valued around 1 million dollars and had a 12-foot fence built around it that also had barbed wire on it. The news that they were almost certain that this house was where Osama was being kept away for so many years was shared with Obama (CNN). He sat down with national security five different times discussing a plan to have the compound invaded.

On Friday, April 29th, 2011, Obama gave Navy seals permission to go invade the compound and find Osama and kill him. Obama chose this date because the royal wedding was taking place so no one would really be paying attention to what was going on in the pollical world. They attacked the home on May 2nd, 2011 and Bin Laden was finally killed ten years after the attack (CNN).

One of Bin Laden’s brother, his son and a woman were also killed during the attacks as well as the couriers house where he had been staying. The search for Osama was finally over. It had taken ten years. People could finally stop living in fear that he was going to attack again one day.

This has impacted America during the past decade because people were always living in fear after the attacks. No one was certain that Al- Qaeda was never going to attack again. We believe that this had a positive outcome for America because the search for Bin Laden was finally over. It had taken years and countless attempts to find him, but their job was done.

It was a successful mission that helped Americans out. For the future, America will not be ready for terrorist attacks because there’s no way to really do that, but they will be prepared on how to find the terrorists who were responsible for the attacks.