This Sunday marks an entire decade since America faced a blow to
our national security when terrorists hijacked commercial aircraft
and used them to strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Ten years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I wonder if we
Americans have truly learned the lesson of that day. If it wasn’t
for our nation’s insatiable thirst for oil
– and particularly foreign oil from the Middle East – we
probably would not be mourning the 2,977 individuals who lost their
lives that awful day.
This Sunday marks an entire decade since America faced a blow to our national security when terrorists hijacked commercial aircraft and used them to strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ten years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I wonder if we Americans have truly learned the lesson of that day. If it wasn’t for our nation’s insatiable thirst for oil – and particularly foreign oil from the Middle East – we probably would not be mourning the 2,977 individuals who lost their lives that awful day.
The seeds of the 9/11 attacks were planted Aug. 2, 1990, when Iraqi forces invaded the oil-rich nation of Kuwait, an occupation essentially over oil. Iraqi president Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait of using slant oil drilling techniques to take petroleum from a disputed oil field on the border of the neighboring nations. He demanded compensation for this crude. Additionally, Hussein accused Kuwait’s oil industry of overproduction and flooding the global market with petroleum, thus keeping Iraqi oil revenue down and preventing Hussein from paying the more than $60 billion he had borrowed for the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
With the supply of oil from the Middle East imperiled if Hussein’s actions caused instability in the Arab world, the United States sent its military forces to liberate Kuwait. During Operation Desert Storm, American forces were stationed in Saudi Arabia. They remained on bases there for more than a decade after the Gulf War. The presence of American military service people in what Muslims consider the sacred land of the prophet Mohammed especially angered the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden. His perception of America as an invading evil force ignited in him a hatred for us. This hatred led him to train Al-Qaeda terrorists to attack the United States on several occasions. The most devastating of these attacks took place on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
The events of 9/11 propelled the United States into two wars. One war was legitimate, the other war was bogus. The legitimate war was with Afghanistan. It began Oct. 7, 2001, when U.S. armed forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom to uproot Al-Qaeda members using that nation as their operations base. The bogus war was with Iraq. It began on March 20, 2003, resulting from claims made by President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney saying Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction” that were a threat to America’s national security. The Bush-Cheney administration’s claims of WMDs played upon the American public’s mistaken belief that Hussein had served a supporting role in Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks. In the end, no WMDs were ever found and no direct link between Hussein and 9/11 was ever established.
The chain of events relating to 9/11 bear significantly on our lives today. The domino effect of Hussein’s decision 21 years ago to invade Kuwait brought about the Sept. 11 attacks, which in turn resulted in America entering two expensive wars. Combined those wars have resulted in direct government spending of roughly $2 trillion – or about $17,000 for every household in America. If you include the externality costs to the economy and the legacy costs (such as caring for veterans of those wars), the conservative computation for the wars will cost between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, according to Joseph E. Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank.
America’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars are the first ever in history to be paid completely on credit. They’ll place a heavy burden on our national economy for many years. The debt we pay for these wars have contributed to our financial crisis, our current 9.1 unemployment rate and the deficit dilemma that has been such a hot issue of debate lately. The instability these wars have brought to the Middle East have resulted in higher oil prices, resulting in our citizens spending about $500 billion on total global oil imports. We’re exporting our dollars instead of using much of that money to purchase goods made here in the United States, and thus revitalizing our economy.
Additionally, the United States spends conservatively $50 billion a year in military expenditure protecting the supply of foreign oil from the Middle East that comes to our shores. The pollution produced by burning petroleum – particularly as fuel in our transportation systems – costs us another $60 billion a year in health costs.
 Ten years later, Hussein and bin Laden are both dead. Ten year later, America is still addicted to oil. This weekend, we remember those who perished on 9/11. The best way to honor their memories is for us to take real action during the next 10 years to dramatically reduce our high dependence on petroleum fuels from foreign sources by more efficiently using the oil we consume.
