9/11 Terrorism Impact

Terrorism can be described as any act of violence intended to cause death or serious bodily harm in order to intimidate the population or to compel a government and international agencies from doing something. To the United States, the most horrific terrorist attack to happen occurred on September 11th 2001 when terrorists hijacked four planes and crashed them into the twin towers and the pentagon. It not only resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, but it would change American policy for decades to come. In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States started a policy of a global war on terror(GWOT) which would end up costing an unimaginable amount of money and hundreds of thousands of deaths. In this paper, I will review four
The journal examines the cost of the programs and agencies that were created in the post 9/11 era and the existing agencies that saw an increase in funding. In the post 9/11 era the United States saw a dramatic increase in funding to the war on terror. The FBI received an $30 billion to combat terrorism, the TSA has spent $70 billion since 9/11 , the creation of the department of homeland security which receives $200+ billion a year and let's not forget the amount spent on the actual war on terror which is in excess of $3 Trillion dollars. Many of these agencies and programs saw huge increases in funding in order to combat the threat of terrorism but the results cannot always be seen. A study found that “nearly 50 percent of the of the federal counter terrorism convictions since 9/11 resulted from informant based cases” which means the informants job was to trick people into terrorist plots that they most likely would not have committed without the influence of agency informants (Bovard, 2016). The TSA received funding for whole body scanners and behavior detection officers(BDO) whose job was to observe individuals who had the potential to be a terrorist. Since the implementation of the programs, they have seen more controversy than success, the scanners failed to detect 96% of weapons and mock bombs while being tested and the BDO’s have led to minority groups receiving the brunt
I learned that under the leadership of President Bush, we implemented a global war on terror policy that involved going after all parts of terrorism instead of going after the group and individuals that were responsible for 9/11. I took from it that the war on terror has not been successful in keeping the United States safe or even giving the perception that we are safer now than we were during 9/11. Even with all the funding and foreign policy, little success can be shown. We have seen the emergence of more extremist groups such as ISIS who are more aggressive in their tactics than groups in the past. President Obama has tried to end the war of terror that Bushed passed down to him, but often times his hands are tied. I also took from it that we can see the origins of the war on terror back in the 1980’s when the United States took the wrong approach by thinking that terrorism was a part of the cold war and being sponsored by the Soviet Union and not taking into factors that would later have dire consequences. The main thing I took from all these journals together was that the US failed to understand the enemy that they were fighting in the global war on terror, they didn't know back in the 80s and they didn't know in the post 9/11 era. This inability to know who they were fighting and why they were fighting led to trillions of dollars being spent wastefully and