Additional Exercise

One of the most tragic pages in the history of our country is September 11th 2001. There is no need to describe it, as the horror of the tragedy is well known and discussed worldwide. This even had a direct influence on my life, my personal values and my seeing of the world around me. It changed not only myself, but also my friends my family and a lot of Americans. In many respects it it\influenced the way I judge things and people, it changed my stereotypes and attitudes towards people. I can say that September 11th was a turning point in modern American history and its consequences made our government and our nation to revise and reevaluate a lot of things and change our life for the good of American people.
Before this date I could barely tell anything about Afghanistan or even couldn’t find it on the map, I nearly knew nothing about Muslims, their religion, culture and values, even though that a relatively big percentage of the American citizens are Muslims. After that day I had a lot of time and a lot of facts for rethinking my attitudes and stereotypes and change my views on a lot of things. Because I and my family started to pay more attention to current events, politics and simply started studying other cultures I got an opportunity to look with a sober mind on a lot of problems and a lot of events. I don’t feel fear, anger or mistrust to people who live in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Palestine or to those who live under authoritarian communist regimes. People are alike everywhere, in many ways their governments witness about their choice and their ideas, but at the same time it’s their vision of fair state and every other nation has to respect it. The roots of terrorism, the roots of civil wars in the Middle East and in Central Asia only convinced me that we can not judge people according to their nationality, religion, race or their heritage. People are alike, everyone is an individual and every one is a personality. Understanding and rethinking the horror and grief of the tragedy of September 11th I feel deep sympathy to the people of Afghanistan and other Muslim nations who are on the way in building civil and democratic societies as today I know for sure that Taliban regime and other authoritarian despotic regimes in Muslim countries have no support among civilians and they rely only on the power of weapon and terror.
Another very important conclusion, which I made, was subjective judgment of the events through the prism of personal views not blindly relying on what media is telling. During last three –four years a lot of changes took place in American society and in media, especially in the way events are covered. Today it’s reasonable to talk about hegemony of mass media, as media influence our reaction on the events, which are covered, commented and discussed. In such situation it’s important to have a firm position and make own judgment on the base of personal knowledge and personal ideas. September 11th can be called an awakening of the nation as after this day everyone got sure that we are not protected from the evils of terrorism, which cannot be eliminated by traditional military methods. The only way to influence the situation is to be informed about the events and have independent position. In this case people won’t be in panic in critic minutes and won’t be influenced by false attitudes and false ideas. Knowledge and information and of course cooperation is the only weapon against terrorist from the side of civilians.
After September 11th, a number of global problems became obvious for every American: gas and oil crisis and shortage of oil, terrorism, corruption and military campaigns in Middle East. All of them had affected finance of common Americans, which had never happen in the history of the nation before. In this context we understand that today’s processes of globalization are closer to us than ever, today any accident in the Middle East may lead to the increase of oil prices and changes on the stock market. Americans themselves felt the influence of inhuman fanatical ideas of Muslim fundamentalists, which were only spread in Arabia on September 11th. These events make us to understand that stability of the entire world is in the hands of everyone, that’s why today we have to rethink and revise our attitudes and become more responsible at least in following the duties of civilians.