WI: French 9/11 (11/9)

qazse

Gone Fishin'
September 11, 2001.

Four aircraft are hijacked in Charles de Gaulle International Airport by al-Qaeda suicide operatives. One of the aircraft is flown into the Eiffel Tower, causing it to collapse.

The second is flown into the Luxembourg Palace, seat of the French Senate.

The third is flown into the Louvre Museum, justified by al-Qaeda as containing "un-Islamic" art.

The fourth, just like in OTL, is crashed into a field because of the passengers rebelling and attempting to take back control.

Does this mean France is more willing to support the US in the War on Terror?
 

Frodopatty

Does the original US 9/11 still happen? If so there would be a complete international shut down of aviation, even more so than OTL, since 2 "great" nations were attacked by planes simultaneously. This would put Russia, China, Britain, Germany, etc, on edge for any more attacks.

Some more countries would join in on the War on Terror since the Eiffel Tower usually (from what I saw when I visited) has a lot of tourists in and around it that would be killed.

France and surrounding European countries would be way more suspicious and against welcoming muslim immigrants/refugees.

The Eiffel Tower and the other 2 locations would get rebuilt with a memorials around them.
 

Curtain Jerker

overoceans said:
I think it was meant as a retort for the other guy supposedly getting pedantic about how the French would arrange the numbers.
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That's how I saw it for the record.

Back to the OP. As @Frodopatty asks, is this the only attack on that day? If so, France takes the lead in Afghanistan with NATO/Coalition support. But there's no war in Iraq like OTL.
 
Ukron

Ukron

Such an event would have terrible repercussions, probable election of conservative or ultra-conservative candidates to the presidential elections of 2002 (not 2004!) , massive deployment of French troops in aid of the United States (even if I do not see a big change concerning Iraq, France refusing for the same reasons as IRL an intervention by NATO, perhaps the center of gravity of the War of Terror would have changed to move more quickly to sub-Saharan Africa, a French-speaking area of influence, with a deterioration in diplomatic relations between NATO and neighboring countries such as Ghadafi's Libyia or Algeria.

So maybe we could have seen a greater participation of France in Afghanistan in exchange for better American support in Africa, which could have had the effect of blocking the development of Al Quaeda in northern Mali and Chad. I also see France joining the "Five Eyes", even if it means having German-French relations deteriorate.
 

Anneessens

Ukron said:
Such an event would have terrible repercussions, probable election of conservative or ultra-conservative candidates to the presidential elections of 2002 (not 2004!)
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I guess that, for the 2002 presidential elections, Le Pen sr. will go through to the runoff like in OTL. The main difference will be that it won't come as a surprise - which might change the dynamics of the presidential campaign. Who knows, maybe Jospin will be able to present hemself as the most credible anti-Le Pen candidate and thus become Le Pen's opponent during the runoff and president instead of Chirac.
 

Lord High Executioner

Frodopatty said:
France... ...would be way more suspicious and against welcoming muslim immigrants/refugees.
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I've been given the impression that France, even back then, was not entirely unsuspicious of
its Muslim citizens, many of whom by then third (at least) generation French.
The terrorist activities of GIA in the 1990s presumably did not help, even if they didn't reach that scale.

I'm not entirely clear on whether France hadn't already been fighting a War on Terror for some time
before 2001 - I've been lead to believe they had been up to things in Algeria.
 
Ukron

Ukron

Lord High Executioner said:
I'm not entirely clear on whether France hadn't already been fighting a War on Terror for some time
before 2001 - I've been lead to believe they had been up to things in Algeria.
Click to expand...
Yes, after all, French people and french interests were targeted during the Algerian Civil War by GIA and FIS.
 
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