Research Paper on:
Why Was America Targeted on 9-11-01?

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
things "right," as the US did in World Wars I and II. Therefore, many US citizens were totally mystified when it became clear after September 11, 2001 that much  of the Arab world hates America and all it stands for. Immediately after the tragedy of the World Trade Center, the media was filled with pundits saying that the Islamic  terrorists were attacking Western civilization, or abstracts such as "freedom," however, other voices soon criticized this sort of commentary as simplistic. Susan Sontag in an essay published in the  September 24 issue of The New Yorker, wrote, "Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a cowardly attack on civilization or liberty or humanity or the free world  but an attack on the worlds self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions" (Tugend 24). There are, in fact, multiple reasons why the Arab  world is anti-American. For example -- --a decade of bombing Iraq is looking increasingly "gratuitous" considering how little this bombing has done to change anything significant; --many Arabs resent the  fact that the US appeared more eager to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait than it ever has toward ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and  Gaza; --the US has been openly hostile toward the very concept of Islamic government replacing secular ones. --the US is perceived as having failed in its obligation to help  Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, when the Cold Wars end reduced their usefulness to Washingtons policy makers (Tugend 24). As this indicates, why the Arab world hates the  US is a complex and multi-faceted issue. Therefore, rather then attempt to explore all of these issues, this discussion will focus specifically on the resentment that surrounds the US