Was the U.S.A. Shaken by 9–11?

 The United States isn’t generally attacked at home. President Clinton had bragged after creating a new military intelligence super-agency that it would not be possible for anyone to attack America without us knowing about it first. Meanwhile his administration allowed Muslim terrorists to learn how to fly jumbo-jets in the U.S.A.

The United States has transformed its government into a large bureaucracy that is essentially unreformable. When the machine doesn’t work its idea of itself as competent and authoritative is shaken. New agencies are promulgated, more power is given to the government by political sycophants in Congress. That is the usual response of an ossified democracy that needs reform yet cannot even allow creativity to arise in high office.
The urban infrastructure of a major city was shown to be vulnerable to attack. The lessons from that could be applied to every city on Earth with many rises; they are not too difficult to bring down with the right technology.

Models for World War Three used in the Cold War era had many scenarios about cities being used for war-even if collapsed and Stalingrad-like fighting proceeded in the rubble to stop advancing Soviet forces. In the case of the collapse of the World Trade towers, it is debatable about Americans being terribly shaken though not stirred by the event since the media reports that after all and they are sensationalists. The government seems to have been looking for a replacement for the lost Soviet enemy since the end of the Cold War and the Muslim terror problem arrived in a timely way.