terrorism

I was sitting in my 6th grade natural science class, in Coral Springs FL, when 3 soliders walked in and took the teacher aside. My classmates and I were all curious what was going on as the look of shock and fear spread across our teachers face. My teacher walked over to the television and turned it on to the news, something that was very out of the ordinary. Usually turning the on T.V. meant a lazy movie day when our teacher didn't feel like preaching to a roudy class of 11-12 year old kids. Something was different today; We were all uneasy. As our teacher turned to the news, thick clouds of smoke, screaming people, soliders and firefighters filled the T.V. It looked like a battle scene from a movie. We sat quietly, but none of us understood what was going on. I slowly raised my hand to break the silence. "Whats going on Ms. Dover?", she slowly and carefully replied that the Untied States was under attack. Fear and terror quickly crept in all of our young minds. I began to think what "under attack meant" and why were there soliders? Am I in danger? Where are my parents? What about my little brother? Am I safe here at school?

Thousands of questions ran through my head, yet I still was unsure how to comprehend everything that was going on. About an hour after the attack, a solider escorted me to the front of the school, where my mom, and several other panicked parents were picking up their kids. 

The car ride home was silent. Even my 8 year old brother, who is normally irritating and always doing something buggy was quiet. Once upon arrival at our house, my dad was already sitting in front of the television, motioning us to sit down with him. We all, as a family, sat there in silence and watched as they replayed the twin towers crumble to shambles, while millions of New York civilians ran around like chicken with their heads cut off. Some people were on cell phones with their loved ones, other helping firefighters, but most in just shear panic, staggering to any safe place they could find. The worst of the scenes was watching people jump from the twin towers. Complete and utter hopelessness ran through their lifeless bodies as they pummeled down to the ground to meet their fate.

I will never forget September 11th 2001. It was a day when I learned the meaning of fear. This type of fear is not what I was accustom to; Like when my dad would jump out of the closet and scare me, or a spider on the floor, or a scary movie, or halloween tricks, or fear of jumping from a high tree or even fear of punishment when I did something bad. No this fear was different. This fear was something even my parents couldn't hide. 

Instilling fear within a population or group is the premise of what terrorism is. Terrorism is a systematic and tactical organized group or individual which use violence through criminal acts as a means of coercion. These violent acts are usually politically, religiously or ideologically driven to deliberately target and victimize non-combatant civilians, oftening leading to many deaths and eventually war. Terrorists provoke fear in hopes of establishing symbolic terrorism to oppress a nation or group to gain media attention in order to influence a short or long term goal for maximum economic damage and psycological affect. 

Basically, they are radical assholes. 

Whether you believe it or not, terrorism works. there have been many many forms of terrorism; bus bombings, ruining villages, sending threats of nuclear weapons, military force such as kent university or killing a global leader. The point of 9/11 was to send a message of hatred. Welllll.....we got it and then did something about it. It worked because it provoked a war. Besides the war, we still feel the effects of it today; Such as the airport, with its intense and tight security, phone tapping, american flags are EVERYWHERE!, cultural impacts, economic devastation, fear, racism against anyone who even looks middle eastern (racial profiling), islamic awareness, radicals are acknowledged and known, military dependency, strengthened border protections, the global hegemon is challenged and the world was nervous, I mean the list can go on and on.  The point is... we have all tightened our belts and acknowledged terrorism. AND THATS THE POINT OF TERRORISM, TO MAKE A STATEMENT. However, the U.S. as the global hegemony, shut that shit down real quick. Our resilience was quick and our efforts to terminate terrorism was a success (kinda).