What if September 11th never happen?

Recently, the New York Times asked reporters, bloggers, columnist, politicos, and other worldly people to write on “If 9/11 never happened.” That got me thinking:
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Michael Moore would be little more than an answer on Trivial Pursuit.

24, a television show about a man working for the fictional “Counter Terrorist Unit,” may not have been as popular.

We would not have spent so much time wondering if Rudy Giuliani will run for president.

The opening credits of Sex and the City and Law and Order: Criminal Intent would not have been re-edited to remove all shots of the Twin Towers.

$2.99 plastic American flags that attach to your car would not have been so annoyingly ubiquitous. (Really, I never got the point of that. Is the terrorist on the other side of the globe going to get nervous because the guy in the F-150 and soccer mom in the 4Runner love America and aren’t afraid to show it?)

The search for Chandra Levy, the suspicion of Rep. Gary Condit’s possible involvement, and the media’s fascination with the story would have continued to transfix America's attention…at least for a little while longer.

Most Americans would still be woefully unaware of who Osama Bin Laden is.

“Let’s roll,” “Slam dunk” and “quagmire” would be less meaningful.

Joseph C. Wilson would have never refuted the Administration’s reasoning for the Iraq war. In a reaction to Wilson’s argument, columnist Robert Novak would not have revealed Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as an undercover C.I.A. As such, there would have been no investigation to identify Novak’s source; and Scooter Libby would still be the Vice-president’s Chief of Staff.

Joe Lieberman, one of the Democrats biggest and more vocal supporters for the Iraq war, probably would not have lost his recent re-election campaign.

Colin Powell’s national and international reputation as a trust-worthy and reliable man would remain untarnished.

Canada and Australia would not have recently elected more conservative leaders than the leaders that preceded them.

"The Dubai Port deal"—with its proposed control of US ports by an Arab nation—would have been approved with nary a whisper of opposition from Capital Hill.

The term “Axis of Evil” would not have been born.

There would be no Department of Homeland Security, Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping program, or color-coded scale of the terror threat.

Halliburton (without the contracts to rebuild Iraq) would not be as widely known, and its connection to the Vice President would be trivial.

Saddam would still be in power.

Iraq would not have a democratically elected government.

Iraq would not be besieged by insurgents, Al Qaeda, daily road bombs, beheadings, and mosque bombings.

The Taliban would still control Afghanistan.

Afghanistan (sans Kabul) would not currently be overrun by Taliban sympathizers, murderers, rampant opium growers and other persons hell-bent on disrupting order and change.

Without the restriciton of further military action placed on the US military due to Iraq and Afghanistan, either Iran or North Korea may have been dealt with via military force (and whichever one of those nations who wasn’t dealt with, would run back to its non-nuclear yesteryear with its tail between its legs).

The Bush presidency would have been remembered for No Child Left Behind, the Medicare overhaul, not signing the Kyoto Protocol, and would be a case study in how to win without the majority…until Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina would have been the defining moment of the Bush’s presidency. That would have provided the image of George W. Bush standing atop rubble saying “we shall overcome, we shall rebuild, we are Americans.”

George W. Bush may not have won a second term. Pre-9/11, President Bush was the whipping boy for a media intent on making him seem bewildered by his surroundings. Every picture of him seemed to convey a deer caught in headlights; seemed to communicate a man way over his head. There were many Americans who agreed with that view. But after 9/11, Bush became a “war-on-two-fronts” president; he was a president seeped in the atmosphere of 9/11, he had the entire nation behind him—he really was “the uniter, not the divider.” Yet, in the 2004 election, he got 51% of the vote. If 49% of the nation wanted to “change horses” in a post-9/11 America, how many would have been content to “change horses” without the terrorist attacks?

Excluding the 19 hijackers, 2,973 people would not have collectively and simultaneously lost their lives on September 11th (fyi, the above numbers, and ones I’m going to list below, are from Wikipedia.com; however, I’ve made a conscience decision to not hyperlink anywhere in this post).

Due to the Afghanistan war: 475 coalition forces, ~200 Northern Alliance forces, ~950 Pakistan military officers, ~1,100 Afghan security forces, and 3,485 Afghani civilians would not be dead. 6,273 Afghani civilians and 894 American military would not have been injured or wounded.

Due to the Iraq war: 2,885 coalition forces, 3,313 civilian citizens of coalition nations (included 428 contractors), 6,167 (Post-Saddam) Iraqi Security forces, and more than 50,000 Iraqi civilians would not be dead. 24,086 coalition forces would not have been wounded in action.

In sum, around 71,548 people would not have lost their lives from a direct, or indirect, result of the September 11th attacks (that number excludes the deaths of Taliban personal, Saddam forces, 9/11 hijackers, Iraqi insurgents, and other coconspirators).

The average American, even in the face of terrorist attacks in other Westernized nations (e.g. Britain, Spain, Jordan, etc), would be more-or-less unconcerned with Islamic extremist and their hatred towards the Western world. This lack of concern would last until a terrorist act as covertly planned, being executed with similar sufficiency, and having just as much shock-value and death toll as 9/11, would have been carried out on American soil. If, without a 9/11, America didn’t sit up and take notice of the going-ons of Arab world, some other act of terrorism (perhaps causing greater horror than 9/11) would have snapped us out of our reverie.

And finally, if September 11th never happen, the lyrics to Don Henley’s (of The Eagles) 1989 song “New York Minute” would not be so poignant:

Lying here in the darkness
I hear the sirens wail
Somebody going to emergency
Somebody’s going to jail
If you find somebody to love in this world
You better hand on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door

In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute
Things can get a little strange
In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute

And in these days
When darkness falls early
And people rush home
To the ones they love
You better take a fool’s advice
And take care of your own
One day they’re here;
Next day they’re gone.