I was in a global meeting and someone from Dublin told us that we had been attacked and what happened. You could see everyone’s jaw tense and the room got deathly quiet until one of the people said in a quiet yet somehow menacing tone “well that’s it then…. We’re at war”
I have never understood the common refrain of "now we're at war" as if we weren't waging war in the Middle East for a conservative decade before 9/11 and bin Laden hadn't declared war on US military forces in 1996 and US civilians in 1998
We were not that far out from the Cold War at this point. And a lot of people had been raised with
the understanding that if strikes on American soil were on the table, then nuclear war was on the table. I feel like a lot of people forget, there was not just a fear of war after 9/11 there was a fear of nuclear war. Which is exactly why that “weapons of mass destruction” lie worked so well.
In Britain I distinctly remember someone saying the US was going to turn the Middle East to glass. There was definitely a feeling of “what are they going to do now..?” about it, and what cascade events would follow.
Then Blair supported his boy’s invasion of not one but two simultaneous conflicts, one of which was unrelated. I trained up and served in one of them, and 25 years later the US is less stable as an ally than ever and even Iran is telling it to do one.
Bin Laden was killed, but he basically got his strategic victory of weakening US global hegemony. Sad times for all involved.
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u/kurimiq 15h ago
I was in a global meeting and someone from Dublin told us that we had been attacked and what happened. You could see everyone’s jaw tense and the room got deathly quiet until one of the people said in a quiet yet somehow menacing tone “well that’s it then…. We’re at war”