What were the terrorists reasoning for what happened on 9/11?

I am asking this question because I really dont know the answers.

What I do know is that terrorists and their followers use the foreign policy of the Western world as their reasons for wanting to rage war on the West and its citizens. The other night in the UK a documentary was shown on C4 following British jihadists ("The Jihadist Next Door) (the documentary deserves a thread of its own as it raises all sorts of questions). One of the things that stood out was that all the people interviewed blamed foreign policy on their reasons for such hatred against the west (although they were all born and bred here).

Trying to look into their mindset I can understand resentment with regards to Libya and Gadaffi (I dont believe we should get involved with regime change), I understand resentment with Iraq and the WMD I didnt agree at the time and marched with over a million people to try and stop it. I also understand to a certain extent with Afghanistan but I dont understand with regards to Syria now. A civil war was the start of things in Syria and our involvement only started weeks ago but then when wr come to what happened on 9/11 I fail to understand where that hatred was coming from.

I do remember we went into Iraq several years earlier because Kuwait was being invaded and we went to give our support but after this and before 9/11 what actually happened to lead to terrorists such as Al Qued carrying out such terrible acts. What was their mindset then and how did they get the following. Were they again saying it was foreign policy.

Im just really interested in finding out what lead up to 9/11 because I think that moment was what triggered where we are today and as faras I know except for the Gulf War there wasnt really anything else although I do admit to walking around with my head in the clouds in those days. 9/11 was what woke me and a lot of people up.

Al Qaeda means "the database" and it was where the CIA kept information on the insurgents they paid and trained to fight Russia in the 80's. From their you can draw your own conclusion really.

a reply to: anxiouswens

From what I remember this was one of the reasons

Laden wrote a letter to USA to retrieve troops because they were too close to Mecca and they have been active and occupying the area for 7years

Here it is .. Letter to American people

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.From Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin to the American people,I speak to you about the subject of the ongoing war between you and us. Even though the consensus of your wise thinkers and others is that your time (TN: of defeat) will come, compassion for the women and children who are being unjustly killed, wounded, and displaced in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan motivates me to speak to you. First of all, I would like to say that your war with us is the longest war in your history and the most expensive for you financially. As for us, we see it as being only halfway finished. If you were to ask your wise thinkers, they would tell you that there is no way to win it because the indications are against it. How will you win a war whose leaders are pessimistic and whose soldiers are committing suicide? If fear enters the hearts of men, winning the war becomes impossible. How will you win a war whose cost is like a hurricane blowing violently at your economy and weakening your dollar?The Bush administration got you into these wars on the premise that they were vital to your security. He promised that it would be a quick war, won within six days or six weeks; however, six years have passed, and they are still promising you victory and not achieving it. Then Obama came and delayed the withdrawal that he had promised you by 16 more months. He promised you victory in Afghanistan and set a date for withdrawal from there. Six months later, Petraeus came to you once again with the number six, requesting that the withdrawal be delayed six months beyond the date that had been set. All the while you continue to bleed in Iraq and Afghanistan. You are wading into a war with no end in sight on the horizon and which has no connection to your security, which was confirmed by the operation of ‘Umar al-Faruq (Var.: Umar Farouk), which was not launched from the battlefield and could have been launched from any place in the world.As for us, jihad against the tyrants and the aggressors is a form of great worship in our religion. It is more precious to us than our fathers and sons. Thus, our jihad against you is worship, and your killing us is a testimony. Thanks to God, Almighty, we have been waging jihad for 30 years, against the Russians and then against you. Not a single one of our men has committed suicide, whereas every 30 days 30 of your men commit suicide. Continue the war if you will.(TN: Two lines of poetry that say the Mujahidin will not stop fighting until the United States leaves their land.)Peace be upon those who follow right guidance.We are defending our right. Jihad against the aggressors is a form of great worship in our religion, and killing us means a high status with our Lord. Justice is the strongest army, and security is the best way of life, but it slipped out of your grasp the day you made the Jews victorious in occupying our land and killing our brothers in Palestine. The path to security is for you to lift your oppression from us.

a reply to: anxiouswens

My guess is that there is some truth to the speculation, that the terrorists wanted an excuse wage wars against states in Middle East and that there also might be some truth to the speculation about acces to and control oil.

*wink*

a reply to: anxiouswens

Oh that is simple, they sat down and envisioned a plan for something called the New American Century.

Within this plan they called for something called a "New Pearl Harbor" in order to rally support to implement their agenda.

Then they put together a ludicrous story and used Joseph Goebbels method of making a lie big enough, repeating it over and over and relying on it to work and people to believe it.

This combined with the trauma induced mind control of replaying the horrific events live on television inevitably lead to a horrific rally around something called "Shock and Awe" complete with depleted and enriched uranium raining down upon innocent civilians all through Iraq. Millions have died and the death toll continues to rise as the never ending war drums continue to this day.

a reply to: anxiouswens

This excellent short (5 minutes) video from James Corbett answers your questions I think...

the islamofascists hate Israel. they consider it offensive to have a non-islam nation in their midst. they believe 'The West' stole part of their land to put the Jews in.
the USA is the Great Satan for their support of Israel, as well as the foul and offensive lifestyles / entertainment it pours out onto the world.

there is also a belief that the 12th Imam, al-Mahdi, will return/appear soon, and some muslims think that if they stir up the pot enough they can make that happen, hence they desire to cause havoc.

a reply to: anxiouswens

It's definitely because of America's foreign policy in the Middle East. The U.S. continues to involve itself in matters that have no direct threat to America's homeland. The U.S. covertly tries to influence regime changes.

If the shoe was on the other foot and we had a country who was trying to influence America's ideology, I think the majority of Americans would want revenge on that country. The Middle East is not our neighborhood! We need to stay out of regions where we have no business being there. Let the countries in these regions settle these disputes! Why should we sacrifice our sons and daughters when their internal problems don't have a direct threat to America's homeland? We create our own enemies.

a reply to: anxiouswens
1. They wanted target the US due to it's involvement in the middle east as perceived by them.
2. They wanted to make a big statement so the target had to be a major city, New York, Washington etc. They probably pulled New York out of a hat!
3. They needed an obvious target.......well nuff said on that point.

There is also the fact they already targetted the buildings before with a failed car bomb in the undergound car park (a highly inconvenient fact for the conspiracists wanting to blame US gov although I'm 100% certain they can invent a contrived explanation). NB the intention of the car bomb was to bring down both buildings. So in actual fact 911 was successful attempt number 2.

a reply to: anxiouswens

Your mistake is misunderstanding their definition of "foreign policy." You're looking at it from the mindset of wars, etc.

They are referring to ANY encroachment into their culture by the west, i.e. McDonald's, Walmart, etc.

However to be blunt, it's all just excuses to try and spread their religion through whatever means necessary. You are an infidel, so unless you believe in their specific version of Islam, they are going to hate you.

Very good question.

They certainly did hate the US/Western military presence in the region, specifically Saudi Arabia.

However, as far as anyone knew, immediately prior to 9/11 Al Qaeda was attempting to gain fissile material to keep the West OUT of the region.

Then 9/11 occurred, supposedly to draw the West INTO the region - the exact opposite of what they were attempting to achieve.

The fact that Bin Laden took so long to claim responsibility (and initially denied it) speaks volumes.

see. anyone can be a terrorist depending on where you are standing

OP, there is a book written by a prominent journalist that explains one view of it - it goes back decades to the history of Al-Qaeda's development, and as Goobero said, it is tied to the formation of Israel and the West's (not just the USA) actions to give the Jews a bunch of their land without permission.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
by Robert Wright, who won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

The Looming Tower is largely focused on the people involved in the September 11 attacks, their motives and personalities, and how they interacted.

The book starts with Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian religious scholar who visited the United States in the late 1940s and returned to his home to become an anti-West Islamist and eventually a martyr for his beliefs. There is also a portrait of Ayman al-Zawahiri, from his childhood in Egypt to his participation in and later leadership of Egyptian Islamic Jihad to his merging of his organization with Al Qaeda.

Highly recommended reading. My mom gave each of us kids (now in our 50s) a copy of it when it came out, and she wrote on the frontispiece - "To understand the future." It explains things really well.

Also - Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill is an important piece of journalism.
Neither is particularly "fun" - in fact they are the opposite - but both are must-reads, in my opinion.

Im just really interested in finding out what lead up to 9/11

numerous individuals have gone down that rabbit hole and never made it back out

Corbett Report - Al Qaeda

reasoning? terrorist? these two words do not belong in the same sentence.

It is refreshing to see this question raised on ATS without any insinuations but rather out of pure interst.

As the above member has said the book the looming tower will provide you with lots of information. I will try to give you the short answer but there have been entire books written on this very question so I would encourage you to read them.

First of all if you think of Al-Qa'ida as much of a ideological cult as a organisation it can make a bit of sense OP. This ideology was not just something that started on 9/11 but slowly developed over generations.

The core members of Al-Qa’ida followed a very brand of extreme Sunni Islam called Wahhabism which is follows a very strict interpretation of Islam. In addition to this they also followed the teachings of a man named Sayyid Qutb who was a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1950’s. Whilst in prison Qutb began to develop a philosophy based around the idea of Jahiliyah, Jahiliyah is an Islamic term to describe turning away from God or being Ignorant of God. Qutb believed that Islam was essentially under attack due to Jahiliyah he believed that man should not rule but that god should rule and that it was the duty of Muslims to fight for gods rule. He believed that there should be a “revolutionary vanguard” to take up Jihad against the leaders of man to bring about the rule of God to ensure the freedom of his people. (his philosophy is much more complicated than that but you get the idea)

Anyway the founders of Islam were pretty big fans of his, Bin laden was also heavily influenced by some early Al-Qa’ida members such as Abdullah Yousef and in particularly al-Zawahiri. These men believed that the Great Satan (America) was the cause of the Jahiliyah, they had backed Israel’s fight against the Palestinians then abandoned Iraq and Afghanistan but worse than that they had started to inject western culture into the people of Islam.

America was attacking Islam something had to be done.

Interestingly Bin believed that the way to do this was to lure America into a full scale war, he believed that if he done this he would bleed America dry as perpetual war would eventually make America bankrupt and so it could no longer fund Israel and support a whole range of other foreign policies that they did not agree with.

The plan then was to launch a spectacular attack against America that would lure the Americans into a perpetual war that would eventually cripple America economically and thus remove it as a world supper-power.

Its all very messed up!

Now like I said there is way more to it than that.

ohhh if you can find it watch the full documentary series called "the power of nightmares" the first episode gives a really good explanation of this stuff.

Reasoning ? what reasoning ?

i just came back from a 24h shift in the hospital and i saw a interesting scene : a 20yr old boy rushed his 60yr old mother to the ER who suffered from a mayocardial infarction . the young man was so upset that we thought he could have an MI of his own if he didn't calm down . he was jumping up and down while bursting into tears - a very common scene in hospitals all around the world . i mean everyone loves their moms more than themselves .

BUT :

here (in syria for lord's sake) you have a young jihadist killing his own mother who gave birth to him , in front of everyone , because she asked him not to kill others .

reasoning ? are you kidding me ?

these animals kill their own mothers , you think they'd give a shyte about civilians in twin towers ?

a reply to: haman10

Oh really? Ghastly.
Where was this, please? Is it a scene we're likely to hear about on the news?




Iran? What a mess.....



sickening

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
a reply to: haman10

Oh really? Ghastly.
Where was this, please? Is it a scene we're likely to hear about on the news?

Iran? What a mess.....



sickening

No bro . i said a jihadi , thankfully there is none of those in Iran.

ISIS is present in Syria and Iraq .their members are mainly Syrian and Saudi. ISIS has no presence in Iran

They are wahhabis : an off-shoot extremist version of Sunni Islam . their numbers are limited compared to the whole muslim population (100,000 in one billion) but man !! they can spill blood !!

www.dailymail.co.uk...

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
It is refreshing to see this question raised on ATS without any insinuations but rather out of pure interst.

I second this, it's very refreshing to see someone be open and honest and want to seek out new info with no pre-concieved ideas of what the answer may be - that's the best approach to learning possible and hopefully people will respect the thread and have an enlightened, adult debate.

According to Bin Laden it was due to the building of American military bases on Islamic holy territory, which he appears to have viewed as a desecration. However that's going off tranlated video transcipts - and a video inteview with him from a US journalist a few years prior to 9/11 here where he highlighted his reasons for attacking the 'far enemy.'

www.youtube.com...

According to experts on the rest of Al Qu'aeda, they thought of Bin Laden as a useful idiot, he had no power/leaership but a lot of money so after a few years in fighting finally let him do the attack

I recommend this documentary for a decent overview of the last 60 years on the subject - www.dailymotion.com...

My personal opinion - I don't have a clue and don't think people evil enough to commit such attrocities can really be understood as they're a special kind of fruitloop and none of us really have any idea if his reasoning was just a front or propoganda for more personal reasons - we simply don't know - though many brilliant journalists have spent years on the subject - the books/profiles mentioned so far are a good start though and most of that is news to me.