¶ … violence against non-combatant populations to increase the psychological effects of warfare has been a mainstay of human aggression for millennia. As Russian revolutionist Leon Tolstoy once said: "kill one, intimidate one thousand." In the modern world, the idea of terrorism has moved from the overt spark that caused World War I to the events of September 11, 2001. Just after 9am Eastern Standard Time, most of the world watched in horror as the global media replayed the events surrounding four passenger planes that were high jacked in the United States. Two of these aircraft were flown into New York's Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the final one crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Even though the damage was confined to the physical and geographic area of the United States, the image and aftermath of the attacks were global. American conservative columnist George Will, never a master of understatement, noted that these events were "the most lethal terrorism in...
Besides the civilian casualties, the attack destroyed billions of dollars in property. Billions more in economic losses were caused by the slow-down in economic activity in the weeks following the attack. More important than the economic losses, and perhaps even more significant than the tragic loss of life, was the damage that the terrorists inflicted on the most important symbols of American economic and military power, and the manner in which the attacks changed the perception of not only the United States to the rest of the world, but the world looking to the United States. Indeed, this is the very crux of the images of 9/11 -- it is not simply the fact that these attacks occurred, but that humanity has come to a place in which it takes events like this to bring populations together; in both shock and awe, in trying to understand the human conception of violence.
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