Forgetting 9/11?

My name is Maximilian Knoth and I am a Visiting Graduate Student in Political Science. For the last three years I have been studying Political Science, American Studies and International Law at the University of Bonn. My main focus has been on Transatlantic Relations, German and European domestic and foreign policies. This semester I am taking four courses in International Relations which will be the field I am planning to write my M.A. thesis in next year. I have chosen to take this particular course because it will hopefully provide me with a better idea of how the many theoretical approaches towards International relations have shaped and are shaping IR thinking. Evaluating future threats on a theoretical basis is something I would also like to learn a lot more about.

Why should we get beyond 9/11? This is the question we raised in class. I would like to differentiate a little: 9/11 is a marker in history. It has shaken the US and the Western World and has had massive and immediate consequences – large numbers of human casualties, a sudden awareness of the deficiencies of security measures, and a moment of incertitude on how to respond. It may be hard to evaluate these three factors all at once but I think they should not be forgotten: They present a reality, they are part of history and maybe even important in the sense that they introduced a new type of attack – not by a state, not by military means, not caused by a really determinable source. For these reasons it would be wrong to “forget” 9/11.

On another level however, maybe we actually need to get beyond 9/11. The event itself has been politically used to justify political actions that otherwise may have caused important domestic and international debates. 9/11 has sometimes been employed as an all-out event. If you disagree with the measures taken as a response to 9/11, you lack patriotism or underestimate the importance of security. Maybe – in this sense – 9/11 has kept people from debating more openly. Terrorism has seemed like the number one enemy to the US and the international system (and I am not saying it is not a threat) but it may not be the only one; it may not even be the most pressing one. Getting beyond 9/11 in this sense could mean: Including other challenges into the discussion and opening up a debate on how to meet these threats. Apart from that, today’s official response to 9/11 should not be to keep reminding the public that a constant threat exists but to meet this threat as effectively as possible (which apparently works if we look at intergovernmental cooperation in order to prevent future attacks from happening). 9/11 should be memorized for what it was. It should not be utilized politically but lead to better methods of prevention.

Posted by Maximilian Knoth on September 18, 2007 09:32 AM | Permalink

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