9/11 Terrorism Case Study

This paper seeks to analyze the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center’s North and South Towers, the Pentagon, and the attempted attack on the White House, on the morning of September 11th, 2001. Using two different theories, that both offer an explanation as to why organizations employ terrorism, this paper will attempt to offer possible explanation as to why Al-Qaeda chose to employ terrorism, as opposed to other tactics, to further its goals as an organization.

Ultimately, I argue that Crenshaw’s Rational-Strategic approach should be used to better understand why Al-Qaeda decided to implement these attacks, and that Abrahms’ Social-Psychological approach should be used to better understand why some individuals might have volunteered to participate as hijackers. Due to the differing levels of analysis in each theory, and the complicated nature of the case, choosing one theory as more applicable than the other to this case would be impossible. Rather, parts of both theories should be used together to glean a better understand of the rational behind the decision to implement these attacks.

In New York City, the morning of September 11th, 2001 dawned brilliantly blue

and clear. Throughout the morning, at various airports, 19 men boarded commercial airline Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93, hijacking them shortly after takeoff. Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 AM and Flight 175 struck the South Tower at 9:03 AM. It’s
estimated that 2,819 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center (not including the 19
hijackers). Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37 AM, and Flight 93 crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to take the plane back from its hijackers. Approximately 230 people died as a result of these two crashes, bringing the total of deaths or disappearances in the 9/11 attacks to around 3,000. It is, to date, “the most devastating terrorist episode in U.S. history” (“9/11”, Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2016).
Soon after the attacks, it was discovered that the 19 hijackers were agents of Al-Qaeda, a “Sunni Islamic terrorist organization with the stated goals of uniting all Muslims and establishing a transnational, strict-fundamentalist Islamic state” (“Al-Qaeda”, Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2016). The organization was founded by Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in the late 1980s, and “its membership originally consisted of Sunni Muslim Arabs who had come to Afghanistan to fight a holy war against occupying Soviet forces”. At the end of the Cold War, when Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda shifted its focus to responding to the United States’ interventions in the Middle East, most notably the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia, the “Land of the Two Holy Places”, in the 1991 Persian Gulf War (“Al-Qaeda”, Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2016).
The 9/11 terror attacks made Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden household names overnight, and the U.S. used the attacks as justification for intervention in the Afghan Civil War and the removal of the Taliban regime there, as it harbored Al-Qaeda training camps. The U.S. also used 9/11 as justification to start a war in Iraq, claiming that the Iraqi government had
something to do with the attacks (even though no evidence, whatsoever, was ever found to support this argument). (“9/11”, Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 2016)
Crenshaw’s Rational-Strategic approach to explaining why organizations employ terrorism offers many insights into why Al-Qaeda chose to implement these attacks against the United States, mainly because this approach correctly labels Al-Qaeda, in the years leading up to 9/11, and even after the U.S. began their War on Terror, as a rational and strategic organization. Indeed, “despite al-Qaeda's unconventional fighting style, its strict command structure [makes it one of] "the most bureaucratic terrorist organization in history," complete with application forms and volumes of paperwork typical of a movement run from an office, not a cave” (“The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America And Al-Qaeda”, Jason Tushinski).
It is this organization and infrastructure that challenges, like Crenshaw, the idea that organizations that employ terrorism are irrational actors. Contrary to being irrational actors, Al-Qaeda had explicitly defined political objectives they hoped to achieve with the 9/11 attacks, they simply chose irrational means (terrorism) to meet their rational ends, which were: “to force the United States to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia”, “to dissuade the United States from supporting military interventions that kill Muslims around the world”, “[to compel] the United States to stop supporting pro-Western Muslim rulers that suppress the will of their people”, and “to destroy the ‘Zionist-Crusader alliance,’ which enables Israel to maintain its ‘occupation of Jerusalem’ and ‘murder Muslims there’” (“Al Qaeda's Scorecard: A Progress Report on Al Qaeda's Objectives”, Max Abrahms). The documentation of these concrete political objectives also illustrates Crenshaw’s argument that terrorist organizations “have relatively stable and consistent political goals” (Lecture, 4/14).
The 9/11 attacks, in the rational cost-benefits analysis undertaken by Al-Qaeda as a rational-strategic organization, were the best way to communicate these demands to the United States. Indeed, in examining Al-Qaeda’s discourse, in publications, on TV stations, and in communications written to each other, it becomes clear that Al-Qaeda members felt that
terrorism was the only option, because it is a “‘message with no words’ that is ‘the only language understood by the West’” (Abrahms, 513). Why would Al-Qaeda employ anything other than terrorism, if they rationalized that terrorism was the only thing that would cause the United States to meet their demands? In effect, Al-Qaeda used terrorism because they realized that it pays, another aspect of terrorist organizations explained in Crenshaw’s theory. One individual seems to have played a major role in pushing Al-Qaeda in this direction.
Osama Bin Laden, a crucial agent in planning and facilitating the execution of the attacks on 9/11, “made a rational choice to adopt terrorism as a shortcut to transforming the political landscape” (“What Were the Causes of 9/11?”, Peter Bergen). In fact, as its founder, Bin Laden had a huge influence over all of Al-Qaeda’s operations. As Bergen puts is, “Bin Laden’s total dominance of Al-Qaeda meant the organisation was hostage to his strategic vision” (Bergen, 6).
This is one of the aspects of the 9/11 case that doesn’t fit Crenshaw’s theory well, as Crenshaw argues that organizations will use terrorism only as a last resort. Bin Laden, and by extension Al-Qaeda as a whole, skipped over other tactics, and jumped straight to terrorism to achieve their goals. This is probably due to the fact that Bin Laden assumed, after seeing “the withdrawal from Lebanon in 1983, after the attack on the barracks that killed 241 American servicemen, and from Somalia in 1993 after 18 US soldiers were killed in Mogadishu”, that the U.S. was “capable of withstanding only a few strikes before it would withdraw” (Bergen, 6). It was these experiences that probably influenced Bin Laden, and thereby Al-Qaeda’s, viewpoint that terrorism was the only language the West understood.
An “astute tactical leader and rational political actor”, Bin Laden made two key decisions
to ensure the success of 9/11, which both revolved around managing the Al-Qaeda agents chosen
to carry out the dark deed of hijacking the commercial airliners. One such tactical decision was to reign in the scale of the operation: one agent proposed hijacking 10 planes, and flying them into targets in Asia and on the East Coast of America simultaneously. Bin Laden argued this would be too hard to coordinate. He also picked the right agent to be the lead hijacker: Mohammed Atta “would carry out his responsibilities with grim efficiency”. (Bergen, 5-6)
Crenshaw’s Rational-Strategic approach explains many of the whys behind 9/11, but only Abrahms’ Social-Psychological approach can shed light on a very important aspect of the case — why did some of the hijackers willingly agree to participate in such heinous acts? In his approach, Abrahms argues that individuals who participate in terrorist organizations are often lonely and marginalized from the larger society they’re living in. A few of the hijackers, and two crucial planners of the 9/11 attacks, appear to fit this profile. While living in the west, these men became more militant, and “perceived discrimination, alienation and homesickness seem to have” influenced this shift in ideology (Bergen, 5).
In this way, the men probably were participating in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks to maximise social solidarity with other members of Al-Qaeda. This illustrates another argument made in the social-psychological approach to explaining why individuals participate in terrorist organizations. These terrorists may not have been acting as political utility maximizers at all, they may have been acting as social solidarity maximisers.
The 9/11 attacks may have also built up the sense of social solidarity between terrorists working outside of Al-Qaeda as well, as the tactical success of 9/11 for Al-Qaeda spawned a “violent jihad movement”.

“‘Leaderless jihad,’ or compartmentalized terror cells acting independently, has created chaos on multiple continents,” and there are multiple major terror attacks in London, Mumbai, and Fort Hood that were all carried out by smaller terror cells, not connected to Al-Qaeda. (Tushinsk, 1) Any or all of the individuals participating in these terrorist cells could have seen the attacks on 9/11 and felt solidarity with Al-Qaeda and their mission, influencing them to seek out other lonely or marginalized members in their community, and do something they saw as helping the movement in some

way.
In conclusion, though flying commercial planes into symbols of Western financial and military strength, subsequently killing thousands of people, is certainly something people want to instinctually label as “irrational”, the rational-strategic and social-psychological approach both point out that though a terrorist organization’s means may be irrational, their ends often aren’t irrational at all. Crenshaw’s theory seems to explain more aspects of the 9/11 case as a whole, such as why Al-Qaeda chose to use terrorism to achieve their goals. However, Abrahms’ social-psychological approach offers an analytical framework to determine why individuals might engage in acts of terrorism. I argue that these two theories should be taken together to explain the events behind September 11th, 2001.