An excellent analysis. However, 9/11 still is the most important event of the last decade because it took our minds off all the other issues listed in this article.

More than half of the so called "events" mentionned are actually processes, that did not occur suddenly, so I'm not sur you can compare, nor call them events
Also, as notices in the beginning of the article, the US might have overreacted to 9/11, but still, it is still this event that is the cause of the perspective biais in US foreign policy. So it seems to matter quite much after all, and I could not find a many events that could challenge 9/11.
it feels like the way to sell the article is misleading, to make people look at it

Does the author really believe the "Arab Spring" would have been possible without Iraqis having free elections? Say what you will about the wars in IRQ/AFHG being "wars of choice" but you can't deny that the Iraqi elections had a direct impact on the Arab Spring. I find this piece to be quite over-wrought. The author calls 9/11 a "distraction" from the "real" important events of the last decade, which he claims, amoung other things, is the rise of Facebook? Give me a break. It's quite easy to forget just how scared everyone was after 9/11, hindsight is 20/20.

Why did the economy collapse in 2008? In part due it was due to economic moves to get us out of a Recession post 9/11.

Why is China and India growing in influence? In part because the US and European economy has been sinking since 9/11 and the US has made enemies with a host of countries.

The Arab Spring was caused by 9/11 in the sense that post US invasion brought Democracy to Iraq. Some Iraqis who fled the invasion stayed in Egypt, Jordon, Syria, etc. Seeing Iraqis vote for their governemnt and even being able to freely protest the US military and thier own government, was new to other in the middle east. Hence the movement.

America response to 9/11 was actually weak. It should have been a crushing attack against al-Qaeda and the Tailban in Afghanistan.

Social media was more important than 9/11? that is debateable.

Global Warming in a farce. Its actually Global Climate change now since drastic warming seems to be inconclusive. Ever notice why post 9/11 we felt the need to invade Iraq,an oil producing country, and now all of the sudden Obama, a supposedly anti war president, is at war in Libya, an oil producing country. Perhaps all this talk about reducing the need for fossil fuel has nothing to do with the enviroment and more to do with a global milkshake that is running dry.

If 9/11 was a world changing event, then the signs today are of another world changing event of much greater magnitude.

Unfortunately, you don't weave the events together to give us the big picture. I will do that for you.

A. The rise of China
B. The decline of the American empire

C. The danger of a collapse in China and Russia

D. The danger of an economic collapse in America, Europe and Japan
3. The Eurozone Crisis and the Crash of 2011-2012
4. The Crash of 2008
7. The Stagnation of the U.S. and Other Developed-World Economies

E. The danger of war with Israel
9. The Arab Spring

The rise of China and the decline of America means there is a high probability of war based on history. Over the last 500 years, when a rising power meets an empire then war occurs 6 out of 7 times.

An empire in decline is a bad sign about the future.

The fact that America, Europe, Japan, China, Russia and the several Middle East countries are in a distressed state and may experience some kind of collapse means that the world we know today won't be around much longer because it's coming down.

The harbingers of war: Empire in decline, economic volatility and ethnic conflict (Middle East and Israel). These are all present today.

What about all the other "failure to address" catastrophes. There is the failure to address world poverty, world inequality, hand gun proliferation, Palestinian rights, gay rights, and more. How can we call ourselves thinking, loving, emotionally balanced human beings while leaving these other catastrophes off the list? I do have to congratulate the author for putting GLOBAL WARMING on the list at all. Normally I am disgusted by the sheer rationality that goes into the news these days. Happily the "we have to be a legit publication" editors at FP missed this one completely. Congrats!

Look most of the things on your list occurred as a response to 9/11 (Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan/Iraq, even most of the economic issues), but Social Media were around long before 9/11 and can't count as something new in the last decade. My social media sites -- not as vapid, er, sophisticated, as Facebook, I'll admit -- were how I kept abreast of 9/11 and its repercussions on the day it happened. The New York Times and The Washington Post were only intermittently available so the second one of us connected we copied and pasted the latest news at the site.

I will always remember exactly where I was at the time of the first building strike, and I'm sure that many people will remember where they were as well. The amazing thing to me is that any time I see 9:11 on a clock or see it used in anything else, I immediately think of the terrorist attacks that happened that day. The children of today have no correlation between the number and what happened that day. In the mean time I'm going to play my newestflight simulator game. And, like I said I'll never forget that day.

You can't separate the attack on 9/11 from America's response. Sure it was the bait, but the intention wasn't just to bring down the towers, the intention was to bring down a way of life. And it very well may have succeeded. There's a phrase used in fencing: stuch and bruch– for every move there's a counter. Well, our counter move was to get our cowboy on and spend every last dollar chasing the boogie man in a cave. They knew that. For all that is right with the American psyche, that is our Achilles heel. The subsequent collapses of the stock market which you have also listed are direct results of overspending and then borrowing to the hilt and beyond to continue making munitions that blow up sand dunes in the middle east. It also elevated China to world status as keepers of America's bank. It emboldened the east. Everything that's transpired in the last 10 years is directly relatable to that on fateful day in September. To say anything less is to not understand that it was indeed "Mission Accomplished," however from the opposing point of view.

May one point out that the United States responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor with a war effort focused on Nazi Germany, and managed to address Communist aggression in Korea nine years later without letting that conflict spread into global war with the Communist states?

Had "we" -- the American public, by plebiscite -- chosen how to respond to either of these breaches of the peace, Pearl Harbor would have led to a war effort directed primarily at Japan, and Communist aggression in Korea would have produced either abandonment of the peninsula or warfare against the Soviets and Chinese everywhere from Europe to the South China Sea. Nor were these the only instances in our long history in which American administrations responded to unfortunate events without sending the country charging off in the wrong direction.

Alone among human systems of government, representative democracy requires a great deal of responsibility to be assumed voluntarily by the ruled as well as by the rulers. It requires so much, actually, that we do not even refer to citizens and the government in this country in that way. There are many subjects, though, that are properly and necessarily the sole responsibility of government. National security is one of these. Foreign affairs is another. When egregious mistakes are made in these areas, blame must be assigned with specificity and force, or the country is liable to see similar mistakes made again.

It is idle and fatuous to speak of the decision to let Afghanistan drift and invade Iraq instead as a decision "we" made. Neither did "we" fail to plan for the post-invasion work required to reestablish government in Iraq, or to pay for the war other than by borrowing, or to conduct it that the entire attention of the national security establishment did not end up focused on the state of one, mid-sized Arab country for years at a time. "We" were mightily spooked by 9/11, and gave the benefit of the doubt to elected officials and their appointees with respect to the response to the events of that day. On balance, that response was badly conceived and ineptly executed, producing multiple, costly failures for which the relevant officials have to be held directly, and solely, responsible.

Incidentally, the same principle applies to the monumental failures of domestic government policy, and specifically in the area of financial services regulation, during that period. It applies with equal force to legislators and executive branch officials, to open advocates of the policy choices that contributed to the financial crisis of 2007-08 and their listless, ineffectual, and occasional critics. No more than in the foreign policy field is the national interest served by shrugging shoulders, turning palms up and talking about policy mistakes as mistakes "we" made -- because if we are all responsible for them, nobody is.

May one point out that the United States responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor with a war effort focused on Nazi Germany, and managed to address Communist aggression in Korea nine years later without letting that conflict spread into global war with the Communist states?

Had "we" -- the American public, by plebiscite -- chosen how to respond to either of these breaches of the peace, Pearl Harbor would have led to a war effort directed primarily at Japan, and Communist aggression in Korea would have produced either abandonment of the peninsula or warfare against the Soviets and Chinese everywhere from Europe to the South China Sea. Nor were these the only instances in our long history in which American administrations responded to unfortunate events without sending the country charging off in the wrong direction.

Alone among human systems of government, representative democracy requires a great deal of responsibility to be assumed voluntarily by the ruled as well as by the rulers. It requires so much, actually, that we do not even refer to citizens and the government in this country in that way. There are many subjects, though, that are properly and necessarily the sole responsibility of government. National security is one of these. Foreign affairs is another. When egregious mistakes are made in these areas, blame must be assigned with specificity and force, or the country is liable to see similar mistakes made again.

It is idle and fatuous to speak of the decision to let Afghanistan drift and invade Iraq instead as a decision "we" made. Neither did "we" fail to plan for the post-invasion work required to reestablish government in Iraq, or to pay for the war other than by borrowing, or to conduct it that the entire attention of the national security establishment did not end up focused on the state of one, mid-sized Arab country for years at a time. "We" were mightily spooked by 9/11, and gave the benefit of the doubt to elected officials and their appointees with respect to the response to the events of that day. On balance, that response was badly conceived and ineptly executed, producing multiple, costly failures for which the relevant officials have to be held directly, and solely, responsible.

Incidentally, the same principle applies to the monumental failures of domestic government policy, and specifically in the area of financial services regulation, during that period. It applies with equal force to legislators and executive branch officials, to open advocates of the policy choices that contributed to the financial crisis of 2007-08 and their listless, ineffectual, and occasional critics. No more than in the foreign policy field is the national interest served by shrugging shoulders, turning palms up and talking about policy mistakes as mistakes "we" made -- because if we are all responsible for them, nobody is.

Perhaps then - within this context - the election of the Bush Administration served as the most significant event of the last decade.

Alongside their reaction to 9/11, the policies of the Bush administration were catalysts to much of the forthcoming events.

FOrever, the memory of 9/11 will be in us. The story will be told to the next generations of how the Bush Administration screwed up. That day, when America was under attack, my daughter and I were searching in the internet to order watches online. Both of us were shocked when we saw the video of the first plane hitting Tower 1. May the souls of those brave men and women be at peace now that Bin Ladin is killed.

I quite strongly disagree with this article. Here's why:

1) This easily "overestimated" event took the lives of almost 3,000 Americans in one day in a manner so unique that nothing comparable has taken place in all of world history. Most of those who were killed were innocent civilians, police officers, firemen, and military personnel who were merely at the wrong place at the wrong time. Current estimates are that at least 60% more rescue workers and Manhattan residents have died from asbestos exposure since the towers collapsed, which the government has worked quite diligently to sweep under the rug to cover up its flagrantly gross negligence concerning the public's safety. Not to mention most families of the victims were refused a decent burial for their departed loved ones, and many of them STILL engage in activism after feeling totally betrayed by a country they once loved unconditionally.

2) The political and economic fallback from the September 11th attacks were staggering.

As a result of the attacks, they justified:

- A war in Iraq (which, at this point, is now pretty much universally accepted to have been based fully upon lies, with perpetrating politicians getting off completely unpunished) that has cost precious American and Iraqi lives,
- A war in Afghanistan (probably also there due to our government's dishonesty... an overwhelming majority of the suspected hijackers were from Saudi Arabia--who we're certainly not invading any time soon) that has cost precious American and Afghani lives,
- Killing Osama bin Laden without a trial (illegally, within another sovereign country without its approval, by the way). The FBI *never* indicted Osama Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks. When reporters asked the FBI director about it, he simply stated "we don't possess enough evidence to link Bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks." We indicted him for attacks on our embassies in Africa back in the late 90's but we can't link him to 9/11, an event that made him a household name in the USA overnight? They even told the American public he died in an enormous firefight in Pakistan, only to later change the official story completely and claim that only one person within the entire Bin Laden camp was able to fire a single shot off. I bet you they killed him because they knew if they captured him, they couldn't successfully prosecute him for 9/11 thanks to that whole "lack of evidence" thing.
- The Bush administration's borrowing of a record-shattering 1.2 TRILLION dollars from foreign governments. It *surpassed* the amount borrowed from foreign governments by all previous U.S. presidents COMBINED (George Washington THROUGH Clinton) by 100 billion dollars. Why'd Bush do it? Well, he had to fund two wars you know.
- The stripping of American liberties. The Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security establishment, borderline molestation of airline passengers before they board aircraft, bestowing an unprecedented level of unbalanced power in the Executive Branch of our government that still exists to this very day, and God only knows what else we haven't even fully noticed yet.
- A dying economy that--like it or not--is significantly linked to being immersed in several highly unpopular wars.
- On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfield announced that more than 2 TRILLION dollars on the Department of Defense's books were "unaccounted for." I've been following that story ever since 9/11, and you know what? NOTHING has happened with it. There's *still* more than 2 trillion dollars missing. Oh well, who cares.

3) It created a culture of fear in America. I don't know if you remember what American life was like pre-9/11, but I sure do. It's a night & day difference as far as American psychology goes, and there was much less xenophobia back then as compared to what I've seen since.

4) It has brought on a large (and warranted) distrust of the American government that definitely didn't exist pre-9/11. When Clinton lied about a blowjob, there was an investigation in less than 2 weeks that got about $40 million in funding to conduct. 9/11 takes place with virtually the entire Bush cabinet having lied to us about multiple MAJOR issues, and the investigation for 9/11 took more than 400 days to initate and it received a mere $3 million in funding. More than 5,000 engineers & architects have formed a non-profit group devoted to getting an independent investigation of the towers’ collapse, putting their professional careers on the line due to their conviction that the government's explanation for how the 9/11 events occurred are overwhelmingly questionable. I could go on all day about how the event largely suggested that the U.S. may be infinitely more corrupt than the Indian and Chinese governments we tend to criticize for corruption, but I won't bother because I assume all of my points will be dismissed as hearsay by my dear fellow Foreign Policy peers. All I say to you is: Look up ANYTHING I just wrote here and tell me it isn't true. You'll be very, VERY surprised by what you find out.

So, David J. Rothkopf, I want to talk about a few points that YOU think are way more important than 9/11 was:

10) The American Response to 9/11: As if that's not completely related. Do you honestly think the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated because they thought we'd respond rationally to it? We're humans, we base all our actions off of our emotions. Anyone who's ever gone to war will tell you it's incredibly psychological. If you think the American response to 9/11 was some sort of unintended side effect of the attacks, you're kidding yourself. The consequences of the American panic was the whole damn point of going through with the acts.

6) I really want to send this article to the 9/11 victims' families. "What's more important, killing thousand of innocents or this f*cking website that many more living people use?" It's a sad day where someone feels the need to point out that a website is more important than the murder of thousands of innocent people. Why the f*ck are you a journalist exactly?

David J. Rothkopf, I pray you read the comments of your articles. This is one of the most poorly constructed articles I've ever read on FP. And if you really think we should care more about a website where you can 'poke' your friends, post pictures and write status updates than the mass deaths of innocent people, then you sir... probably belong in modern day, post-9/11 America. You'll fit right in.

You claim you're not trying to demean or downplay what happened to America on 9/11 nor the far-reaching effects that still plague our country to this very day, but that's exactly what you're doing. 9/11 was the "Great Distraction" according to you. All this other sh*t--cell phones, social networking websites, and diplomacy as usual with all these other countries that we DON'T want to wage war with, that's where true importance lies.

We shouldn't look at 9/11 as a lesson on how to conduct ourselves when we deal with Arab countries, according to you. We shouldn't be pressuring our government to answer our very basic and warranted questions about what exactly really happened on 9/11, or why WTC building 7 fell the EXACT same way as the twin towers despite never being hit by a plane, according to you. We shouldn't question why we've lost a lot of our personal rights, and we shouldn't learn what's happening and fight for those rights back, according to you. We shouldn't use it as an opportunity for social growth and creating greater governmental accountability and transparency... we should just keep our blinders on, act like nothing happened, and go back to business as usual, according to you.

The post-9/11 mentality, the one of overwhelming trust you're putting into those who have authority over you, THAT'S the exact mentality we should be avoiding. Instead, you're perpetuating it with an article like this.

And just for your information, I've lived in Egypt for the last 2 years. My American ass protested w/ these brave, strong-willed Egyptians in Tahrir Square on January 25th and everyday ever since. If you think Egyptians needed us Americans to create Twitter in order to overthrow Mubarak, you're both arrogant and delusional. Revolutions have taken place throughout history, for centuries, without this precious Twitter commodity everyone in America keeps making *TOO important*. A lot of people that commented on your article even think that Iraq's elections inspired these Middle East revolts. They have the exact same arrogance as you do. Believe it or not, but I haven't spoken to a single Egyptian here who views America's war with Iraq as "just" or that resulting elections were even remotely "free." If anything, America gave them more reason to revolt b/c of our foreign policies in the region, which do more harm than good to most of these people who just want a little peace and a little dignity.

America has ruined countless Egyptian lives through its support of Mubarak (which many people here viewed as an American puppet dictatorship) and his repressive policies. I'm ashamed of what we've done--and will continue to do--in the name of US interests. The truth is, I've learned way more about what democracy is in Egypt than I ever did in America. And guess what? It doesn't exist in Egypt. And it doesn't exist in America either. But at least the Egyptians are willing to truly fight for their rights when they've been wronged. Not us. I'd take their courage and resolve over our complacency and social media outlets any day of the week. Which one would you prefer, David J. Rothkopf? Write down your answer. Now THAT’D be an article I’d really want to read.

who is the strawman you're talking about who hasn't been talking/hearing about social media and the recession? or even the eurozone crisis, which wall street, despite it's location, is certainly paying more attention to than 9/11. the rise of china? OK, sure, but i'd say there's been Rising Attention. what would have been a more appropriate reaction from the "average" citizen? it's like you're faulting folks for being human beings. and as for number 10, the american response to 9/11 is part of what people are talking about when they speak of the significance of the event. i'll assume here that you mean politicians do not pay attention to it, which is true, but ... that's just part of the ongoing response you disapprove of in 10. that's part of the ongoing significance of 9/11. i think i understand what you intended, but think you erred to have framed this as 10 things that are more "important." begs the question of how you define "important" and all that.

I thought I might read an insightful article... then I see the author perpetuate the global warming hoax. People like Rothkopf must be disempowered.

If, they believe the global warming (or as they say now "climate change") crisis, they'll believe anything.

They are not fit to run a dog pound. Maybe David J. Rothkopf is fit to clean out septic tanks but he sure isn't qualified to opine on anything.

You did not mention some of the most worrisome post-9/11 phenomena:

The creation of an obvious Jobs for Inept-Redundant-Republican Political Appointees machine: Homeland Security.

The liar-labeled Patriot Act that a sane nation’s honest Supreme Court would have thrown out as unconstitutional.

The serial commission of crimes and misdemeanors for which Bush should have been impeached and all his minions thrown in jail. Thus enshrining them as valid precedents for the next pack of tyrant wanabees of the Taliban for Christ conviction.

Citizens United (the more popular-sounding the title, the more slimy the intent) designating paper corporations as human beings only incidentally chock full of cash, immortality and inhuman motivations. Declaring political graft a First Amendment obligation. One of many Supreme Court turds-in-the-drinking-well, gone unchallenged.

Corporate militarism and elite welfare run rampant and running everything into the ground. Weimar Germany has moved to D.C., lock, stock and swastika.

Distractions, indeed!

I was in NYC that day on business and visiting friends - and had it not been for my friends sleeping in that morning, I would have been meeting them at the top of the WTC Windows of the World restaurant for breakfast instead of trying to get on the subway half an hour later - before all the craziness broke loose.

Amazing to think how a small twist of fate resulted in in me being so dang lucky. I've never stopped counting my lucky stars since then!

Tavis Yeung - VancouverSEOConsultant

Funny happened on the way to 9-11. Cllinton's foot-dragging and dereliction, Inter-agency rivalries per Jaime Gorelick, intentional maligning of FBI's John O'Neill, someone who had usable info, the criminal obtuseness of Condi Rice, disregarded warnings from FBI agents re gross flight school irregularities by Arab students, immigration violations, intel from reliable sources both in and outside of the USand just plain alarm bells going off all over the place yet no one bothered to tell those with the most to lose; we the people. Then the real crime took place; the Nincompoop-in Chief, led by the nefarious Cheney and a complicit congress and press proceeded to drive the nation down the road to serfdom in the name of national security by leading the investigation of the events away from themselves, blaming bad intel, bad timeing and just plain bad luck. No one was fired, reprimanded, sanctioned, censured as one anti-constitutional act after another was passed in the night to 'protect the American people' while praising Islam as a religion of love.
Now we have the great 'half-white hope with change, his 'drone' diplomacy and 'kinetic action' picking up where Romper Room left off. As if we didn't have enough problems.

This is insulting and offensive and ridiculous. I hope this "writer" and "researcher" can get off of his soapbox long enough to become aware of this.

All this commentary on a very useful even though slightly flawed, article does not address an important aspect of the reaction to the horrible outrage perpetrated on the citizens of the US September 9, 2001. It is the inevitable working of what I term the GUSH factor, short for Glorious US Hype. The labels "9/11" and "Ground Zero" claim a uniqueness to the cowardly attack that belies the importance of outrages that have taken place previously on that particular date, and belittles what is the unimaginable inferno that lies behind the abstract technical term Ground Zero.

9/11:

September 9, 1857 is the date when 120 men, women and children travelling in a wagon train from Arkansas towards Oregon were massacred by Mormons in the southern part of Utah at a place called Mountain Meadows. 17 children under the age of seven were "spared". The Paiute tribe were blamed, the real blame only admitted by the Mormon Church 150 years later, despite Mark Twain's later, but rather accurate account of the outrage.

September 9, 1973 is the date when the democratically elected and constitutionally confirmed government of Salvador Allende, president of Chile, was toppled by a military coup encouraged though not instigated by the CIA. Allende killed himself, and at least 3000 extrajudicial killings together with an unknown number of "disappearances" followed in decades of brutal dictatorship.

Ground Zero:

is the technical term for the point directly under a nuclear detonation. On August 6, 1945 such a detonation took place over the city of Hiroshima, and on the 9th another over Nagasaki. A combined estimate of 150 000 people evaporated or got cremated instantly, up to a million had their lives destroyed and shortened from secondary or tertiary effects of radiation, caused by the US Air Force. The closest Manhattan came to this carnage was the Manhattan Project, the research that created what has been called "the light of a thousand suns".

So, please turn off the GUSH machine. Do not trivialize the horror of the Twin Towers by using terms that are either totally inappropriate, or show blatant ignorance of other parts of Amercan history.

For 9 read 11, Sigh....Freudian slip, my date of birth is 9/9

First off, I have to put in a big one that you missed. Like many of your choices, it's not an 'event', but it's extremely important:
The (Final) Rise of Oil
This is huge. It had a part in the '08 crash, has caused the sad triumph of several Oil Oligarchies (e.g. Venezuela, Russia and Iran), and distorted world economics and power greatly. If (as many strongly suspect) we're reaching 'peak oil', then this is probably the biggest matter, even bigger than China.

But secondly, I don't buy the unimportance of 9/11. The psychological effect on the US was crushing. We were not safe anymore. And one pundit has made the interesting point that George Bush was in serious danger of becoming a one-term president before 9/11. The Enron scandal had weakened him, and his polls were not good.

Oh, and at first I was surprised by Global Warming, because it was a 'non-action' rather than an action or event. But giving thought, it probably does belong, because being real (despite the mad ravings of Jakester), it will have a big effect on the world (indeed, already is), and the fact that we've ignored it for yet another decade will probably come back to haunt us.

Coups in the Middle East come and go, stock markets rise and fall, Asian economies do also (remember when Japan was going to surpass the US in the 1980's?). China and India will always be behind the curve of providing food, electrical power, and housing to their immense populations and thus will never schieve the standard of living that the US, Japan and Europe enjoy. On the other hand, attacks on US soil which kill 2500+ Americans are pretty rare. Japan attacked the US territories of Hawaii and the Phillipines not as part of a bigger war of conquest on America, but as a way of keeping us from interfering with their conquest of Asia. On the other hand, 9/11 WAS an attack designed to destabilize America for the glory of Islam, so it is far more important. Fortunately, we acted quickly to prevent further attacks.

David,

I enjoyed your article very much, as these are all very important events, but!

Firstly:
Your assumptions on climate change being able to be solved by humans is simply hypothetical, as consensus from all the scientists in the world is meaningless without irrifutible evidence backing up that consensus, however I do not doubt the devastating potential of natural climate change and I believe our inaction to adapt will be seen as the real story.

Secondly:
You have completely missed the renaissance of mother Russia, while China's rise over the past decade is significant, China's future over the coming decade is bleak, with their unending social, environmental & political problems, the decade ahead will see the fall of the Chinese miracle, China is far from a superpower and will never be a superpower, their impassable boarders and geography guarantees that.

Third & Finaly:
Your wrong about the importance of 9/11, 9/11 has being the most significant event of the past decade, but not for the reasons you think, it's domestic, political, cultural, militaryal, global and above all geopolitical implications must not underestimated! I'll share with you a impressive piece of investigative journalism that will answer why: From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil @ http://www.alternet.org/world/47489/?page=1

PS. Your on the money with the Eurozone crash of 2012, but don't think the USA suffer the same fate, it will crubble from within city by city, state by state, default after default.

9/11 was the beginning of the most prolific time in the last decade.

I bet they wish they had let the sleepingdog lie...

How about we let the data and the projection models percolate for a decade or two before we start ruminating about inaction on climate change? I'd prefer to just call it a Rumsfeldian "known unknown" and leave it for future retrospection.

Great list and important article otherwise.

Your comparing a world changing event to one that might happen many years from now? I'm not a denyer but I don't buy into all the alarmist nonsense either.

It's the time again to remember the 9/11 events. God bless the souls of those who died during 9/11. It's really painful to lose a loved-one, Hopefully the families, husbands, wives, and children of the victims of 9/11 already moved on.

Al Queda got its start as the brainchild of Osama Bin Laden after the Mujahadeen bogged down and wore down the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. From Saudi Arabia, to Yemen, to the Sudan, and back to Afghanistan, the group flourished and grew - almost ignored - as a growing threat to America. Starting with the World Trade Center in 1993, there were a long list of attacks Kohbar Towers, African Embassies, USS Cole, El Al airline desk at LAX, 9/11, and then Madrid, London, and even Jordan. Al Queda was a huge threat that not one single other country in the world chose to stand against, attack, and destroy.

How would any other nation in the world have responded to such an act of war? I doubt had it still existed the Soviet Union would have merely tried to sit down for tea and crumpets as some here have suggested. If our response to the 9/11 attacks was wrong, I as an American am quite happy to be wrong. No country should have to make excuses for keeping itself and its citizens safe. Ever.

Having studied history all of my life, the one thing I can say with confidence about 9/11 is that we are much too close to it and the transformations to which the author compares it to to fairly analyze their relative importance.

Another issue is that it is also impossible to separate 9/11 from the response to it however irrational the author judges that response to be. It is impossible for the simple reason that none of it could have happened apart from 9/11. 9/11 not only transformed the way people and governments thought about the world, it also transformed what was politically possible. Americans would not have accepted a full scale invasion of Iraq or the changes in airline security without it...and those are just two examples.

Finally, it will forever be impossible to assess how 9/11 influenced these and other events if only because we will forever be able to merely guess at the alternative realities.

Just a few short months before that awful September morning, I attended the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV / AIDS. I remember being filled with a tremendous sense of optimism that the US & the rest of the world would finally not only take strong collective action on HIV AIDS, but that the Millennium Development Goals might be genuinely achievable. Although the PEPFAR program helped with progress on HIV / AIDS, we are a long way from achieving most, if not all, of the MDGs & it is impossible not to believe that 9/11 played a role in this.

The needed and missing item was the mushrooming infestation of Congress by new members pre-bribed to refuse any new taxes or increases in the present ones one, regardkless of whether the republic needs more tax revenue or not. The bribing comes from funds donated to win Congressional elections and can be withheld at any point for any Congressperson or Senator who does not comply with the desires of the bribers-- who are evidently wealthy citizens and corporations. This wholesale Buy Congress program persists with no fear of curtailment or criminal prosecutions due to the Supreme Court view that it's nobody's damn business who's bribing Congress at the moment.

The Rothkopf list's reference to social media overlooks the fact that Facebook and other new such services have been using computers to achieve what has been on display in eastern Europe since the late 1980s, when monster anti-government rallies were called by posters pasted up on city walls that were the output of the fairly crude Microsoft Windows of the day, and HP and similar American printers. What those posters generated makes the Arab spring seem not all that much more than a storm in a coffee cup and led to lots of unexpected consequences -- including the disappearance of the Soviet Union. The US of course still stands ready in western Europe to defend against any attack that might materialize from, say, the Soviet Union. This seems something of a racket.

The US COCOM program did its best to ensure that western computers never made it past the Iron Curtain, and events of the late 1980s over there suggest that in the absence of COCOM, the Communist European bloc could have disintegrated earlier.

I will never forgot the 9/11 attack..
Marferiky.com

Fanatic obsession of Pakistani Army and Its spooky arm ISI to bleed India by 1000 cuts doctrine, did lay down the foundation of audacious 9/11 attack.

Had, the hijack of IC 184 not happened or was thwarted by Indian agencies, would we have been living in a different world?

There is no definitive answer to such troubling questions. The eventual interconnected events were to further establish, the important role by various actors in Pakistan towards incubating, nurturing, facilitating and export of terrorism.

Little more than eleven years ago on December 24, 1999, Indian Airlines Flight IC-184 from Kathmandu to Delhi was hijacked by five terrorists of Pakistani origin.

The passengers and crew were eventually released on December 31, after the demand for the release of jailed terrorists Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Omar Shaikh were accepted under great public pressure by the Indian Government.

The release of hardcore terrorists from Indian jail and their violent acts had pushed the troubled world towards new frontiers of devastation.

The dramatic terror attack of 9/11, loss of freedom and perennial fears of the unknown lurking around, ready to blast a bomb, has an established direct link with that plane hijacking.

While addressing a public meeting in Karachi Masood Azhar ominously thundered, “I have come here because this is my duty to tell you, that Muslims should not rest in peace until we have destroyed America and India.”
As he spoke, the Twin Towers were still majestically standing- symbolizing the power of American commerce and way of life, soaring up in sky.
The world was totally unaware of what was being planned in rugged mountain of Afghanistan and on Computers of Omar Shaikh.

How far Masood Azhar was privy to formation of the 9/11 plot and is activation, it would never be known.

Omar Shaikh got about $100,000 out of ransom money from Kidnapping of an Indian businessman. He promptly sent it ahead to the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta with help of an ISI honcho.

Omar Shaikh was caught from Rawalpindi, Pakistan from the residence of a Jamaat-e-Islami’s serving deputy mayor. After sustained interrogations, he confessed masterminding the September 11 attacks, the bombing attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and various foiled attacks.

Out of 13 hijackings in the history of Indian civil aviation, involving Indian Airlines aircraft, seven are believed to be carried out by groups with close links to the Pakistani ISI.

Well, comparing 9/11 with the appearance of facebook, twitter, or the use cell phones is incredible. If some member of your family or a friend had been in the World Trade Center that infamous 9/11 you wouldn't compare things like that.

With the exception of the technological items, a case can be made for each of the events described as "The sons of 9/11." It's hard to see the "decline" of American power, the Arab Spring or other events listed happening without 9/11 breaking the ice dam.

The "overreaction" to 9/11 had its own uses. Weapons of mass destruction, while a useful pretext, were never the real reason we went into Iraq. The real reason -- and certainly the lesson the rest of the world tool -- was "Don't F&%K with America." Right or wrong, don't for a moment believe that message is still not clear in capitals (and caves) around the world.

Climate Change Fact:
Over the past decade global average temperatures have decreased, this is despite a significant 5% increase in global carbon emissions.

9/11 Fact:
Osama Bin Laden was never wanted by the FBI for 9/11, when the director of the FBI was asked why this was the case his answer was "there is not enough evidence to link OBL to the attacks on 9/11.

Some people like to put there head in the sand and believe everything their politicians tell them is the gospel truth, but ignorance is no excuse when there is overwhelming evidence that condraticts their statements.

The only conspiracy theories about human induced climate change is that humans are the cause & the only consperiacy theory about 9/11 is that Osama Bin Laden was behind them. I ask anyone to show me conclusive evidence that would stand up in the court of law to prove otherwise.

please explain me more your statement :Before people get unjustly mad: every death is a tragedy for the families involved, and so a few thousand dead people in NYC are tragical for the families involved. But so is the heart attack of Mr. Miller for his family. That's personal life. We all have our tragedies, and nobody has the right to ridicule them.

But politicians are supposed to run a country calmly and with its best interests in mind (and not the best interests of their own and campaign sponsor's wallets). Politicians are not elected to run the country by emotional knee-jerk reactions. We wouldn't need politicians for that, we could toss coins for office at the local pub, if we wanted that sort of government.

So let's look at what it means for a politician "to save American lives":

- every year we have 10x 9/11 on the streets, because we have annually 30'000 traffic deaths, of which 15'000 are from drunk driving. So in the last decade we had more than a quarter million people die because of automobile traffic, bad infrastructure, bad signing, lax enforcement of DUI laws, etc.

- we have each year tens of thousands that die of preventable heart attacks from bad nutrition, people who suffer from diabetes due to bad nutrition, etc.

- we have easily tens of thousands who die prematurely because they lack health insurance and bear early warning symptoms and show up in emergency rooms when it's too late.(blackanddeckertools, blancokitchensinks, brauncoffeegrinder, braucoffeemakers, bunncoffeemakersparts, granitecompositesinks, italiancoffeemachines, krupscoffeegrinder, review777, glidersfornursery, indonesiadailynews

Now, as we are recovering our senses, withdrawing from Iraq, and soon starting to exit Afghanistan, having buried bin Laden and hosts of his henchmen, we are beginning to be able to see this. At least in theory we can. For the next couple of weeks, we will witness documentary after editorial mega-feature, interviews with victims and heroes, the American legend machine producing historical bumf at full blast.
Charles.Mysore Dasara

Celebrating the anniversary of 9/11 incident can be a heart-wrenching experience for the entire U.S. But the new outlook adopted by the country towards security and the new friendships it has forged over the last decade are proving to be the antiinflammatory foods that are propelling the Americans towards world-peace. The country has lost a decade in mourning, introspecting, stabilizing and sorting out what exactly went wrong. The country should let the people heal and do not misguide them to walk into the black hole of 9/11 from where there is no way back. It’s time for them to move on; nobody can mourn or bleed forever.

he only conspiracy theories about human induced climate change is the fact that humans are the cause & the only real consperiacy theory about 9/11 is the fact that Osama Bin Laden was in it. I ask anyone to show me conclusive evidence that would stand up in the courtroom of law to prove otherwise. sun hat boonie

That's cute, I'll give you some good reading material to help enlighten u:

From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil
http://www.alternet.org/world/47489/?page=1

Then watch the documentary Loose Change

And then watch the movie Fair Game

Hopefully that's enough info to make u want to know more.

911 was a tragedy in every sense of the world. And that tragedy changed the US, possibly forever. One has to wonder how Norman Rockwell would paint America today. Would it be flattering at all?

We have to move on from this, 10 years on, who would believe? But nevertheless we all have our lives and we should look forward. Google Plus One Plugin

The Taliban government in Afghanistan offered to present Osama bin Laden for a trial long before the attacks of September 11, 2001, but the US government showed no interest, according to a senior aide to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, Taliban’s last foreign minister, told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview that his government had made several proposals to the United States to present the al-Qaeda leader, considered the mastermind of the 2001 attacks, for trial for his involvement in plots targeting US facilities during the 1990s.

"Even before the [9/11] attacks, our Islamic Emirate had tried through various proposals to resolve the Osama issue. One such proposal was to set up a three-nation court, or something under the supervision of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference [OIC]," Muttawakil said."But the US showed no interest in it. They kept demanding we hand him over, but we had no relations with the US, no agreement of any sort. They did not recognise our government."

The US did not recognise the Taliban government and had no direct diplomatic relations with the group which controlled most of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 Affiliate Programs Review.But proposals by the Taliban were relayed to the US through indirect channels such as the US embassy in Pakistan or the informal Taliban office for the UN in New York, Muttawakil said.Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Pakistan at the time of 9/11, confirmed that such proposals had been made to US officials.

It really pains me to remeber seeing on the TV how two airplanes struck the twin towers in New York. I was shaken to think at that time if this can happen to America how much more the small countries? Luckily after ten years we have recovered and move on with our lives. We are now enjoying sports like getting to Watch Pacquiao Vs Marquez 3 and making our assignments by visiting
Cool Math sites and even playing online social games and searching for Cityville Cheats. No terror attacks can ever dampen the human spirit.

And Palestinian land will shrink, suicide bombers will respond, rockets will be launched and Israelis killed. Now Hezbollah and Sunnis have started up again in Lebanon. And Iran is powering up its nuclear capacity. Israel may feel impelled to react at some point if it calculates either Lebanon or Iran needs to be nipped in the bud. Add Syria to the toxic mix in Lebanon; and if things boil over there then Palestine will be left to sit and stew on the perennial international back burner. Hope, at this point, is not even a diamond in the rough. porno porno porno porno sikiş web tasarım