WI: 9/11 happens during Great Recession

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Deleted member 96839

What would have happened if the events of September 11 were delayed by ten years, and happened in 2011 while the world was reeling from the Great Recession? Assume that the Arab Spring still occurs slightly beforehand as in our timeline, and the point of divergence being bin Laden dies sometime before the late 1990s.
 
The timing of the great recession might have changed without the terror attacks on the Pentagon and WTC in 2001.

To say nothing of the fact that the political environment of this TL's 2011 will be radically different as a result. We can't possibly answer this question without more details
 
What would have happened if the events of September 11 were delayed by ten years, and happened in 2011 while the world was reeling from the Great Recession? Assume that the Arab Spring still occurs slightly beforehand as in our timeline, and the point of divergence being bin Laden dies sometime before the late 1990s.


Sunsummer7 – don’t be discouraged. You can make this work, just specify it is not the exact same great recession for the exact same reasons at the exact same time as OTL’s great recession.


Just go with the idea that no 9/11 scale event happens to the US. Meanwhile at some point in between 2007 and 2010 there is a housing bubble that bursts, that leads to a broad financial crisis (just not exactly in September 2008), the US goes into agreat recession, and in the recovery period or while it is at bottom a 9/11 style event occurs.


I suspect that the political trajectory absent a 9/11 is Democratic gains in 2002 and victory in the 2004 election. Whether the Democrat elected in in 2004 gets releected in 2008 depends on whether the housing bubble has burst in that time.


So you could play your scenario with either a hypothetical Democratic or Republican administration in office.
 

Agreed, the POV just needs a bit more caveats. It's not like he asked what would happen if a micro-asteroid hit NYC. It's just vague.
Assume that the Arab Spring still occurs slightly beforehand as in our timeline

That said, you cannot assume that, under any circumstance. The impetus for the Arab Spring can't be removed from the geopolitical context of the middle east created by 9/11, the manhunt for Al Qaeda operatives, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Without 9/11 you have an entire generation of unblooded young Iraqis that's not coming of age or being born in the middle of a massive insurgency. This is an Iraq, that barring another POD is probably still under the control of the Baathist Party, if not Saddam himself.
There are so many variables at play here, and they all need to be respected even if you can't take them all into account.

and the point of divergence being bin Laden dies sometime before the late 1990s.

This also has consequences, but I'm willing to handwave that for the sake of the POD. So long as the above poster's critique is taken into account. You can't do a one-for-one 9/11 analogue 10 years into the future in by an Al-Qaeda that is presumably staffed by a completely different set of people than the ones in power in either OTL 2001 or OTL 2011.
That's a really long time to just say "Yadda Yadda, bing bam boom. Oh no! Where'd the towers go?"
It's always more complex than that.

Although it might seem like it, this stuff isn't always straightforward cause and effect.
How much recruitment/support does Al-Qaeda have in a world where they don't successfully attack the strongest state in the world on its own soil with less than 30 people? A world where that country isn't invading and occupying muslim countries and massacring arabs in the hundreds of thousands (whether or not you think it was "intentional" or "malicious", the body count in Iraq could get anyone with even the flimsiest attachment to Iraq or a wider Arabian identity's blood to boil)
 

Deleted member 96839

I understand that the Great Recession would likely not strike at the same time as it otherwise would. But it still would have, as the underlying causes of deregulation of lending and the housing bubble made its arrival a when, not an if. Additionally, if it had come in 2009-10 and not 2007-08, it is still in full swing by 2011; the year of this hypothetical scenario. Similarly, the Arab Spring had underlying causes that were completely unrelated to 9/11, such as authoritarian governments, political corruption, and struggling economies. The latter may have been exaggerated by the recession, but this also was predetermined if causes were not altered.

In short, the Great Recession and Arab Spring were still going to happen because of the causes already in place, and although the exact timing would change, they would remain highly likely to happen within the 2008-11 frame. The perpetrators of a possible attack may not be al-Qaeda, but some other organization already in existence such as the one founded by Zarqawi in 1999, or another extremist group that emerges in the midst of the Arab Spring angered by America's presence in the Middle East (which was a motive of 9/11).

With all of that in mind, here is the new scenario: America has a Democratic President in 2011, likely whether or not Bush is re-elected due to a delayed recession, and economic recovery is slow. With the Arab Spring having erupted at some point in this time period, and a radical Islamist group conducting a 9/11-like event in reaction to American presence in the region, what is the aftermath of such an event? How do the 2012 elections go, and what is the reaction of the United States and its people?
 
The biggest question is: will a 9/11 event help speed up the recovery or slow it down? I would like to imagine that this 9/11 would bring the country together and see greater sympathy and cooperation domestically and internationally. At the same time, a 9/11 during the Recession may trigger widespread financial panic due to the fact that the economic capital of the US has been attacked and the fact that the public is already fearful of a full economic meltdown. Seeing the Twin Towers, literally icons of American prosperity and economic strength, might deal a severe blow to confidence in the American economy and be portrayed as a symbolic image that represents the end of American economic dominance.

However, I personally think the US would recover faster. Whoever is in power would be able to push through legislations with bipartisan support relatively easily for a few years (similar to Bush) and the government would attempt to prop the economy back up ASAP as they would want the world to see the US prospering and doing well even after the terrorist attacks. Even if a Republican is in office at the time of the attacks, I don’t think they would go off rail and invade Iraq/Afghanistan so recklessly. So instead of 9/11 causing the US to go into massive debt, cause mass instability in the Middle East, and lose support, 9/11 ITTL could be seen as a Rallying call that helped the nation turn around economically and emerge stronger than before.
 
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