While I agree that 9/11 was a catalyst for the events that occurred afterwards, most of them were going to happen anyway. Bush had an axe to grind with the middle east after his father's failed attempts at bringing "freedom" to those lands and it was the perfect excuse to both shy people away from his terrible leadership and bring a lot of his corporate cronies a great deal of government money to build tanks we'd never use. The war in Iraq would have likely still happened and we would have probably picked a fight with a country with a lot more teeth.

Speaking of corporate greed, I fail to see how 9/11 changed things much less made it worse. Ever since the Reagan era politicians have been openly taking bribes and making policy changes for the elite and the income gap has been trending rapidly since the early 70's.

Honestly there's a silver lining to 9/11. It made a lot of Americans aware of a land outside their backyard and the youth of today don't see the world with rose colored glasses or assume that our country is the best in the world (in most cases we're aware how shitty we are). Would the US be a better place without the events on 9/11? Maybe. But if we need a terrorist attack to notice the damage we've made around us and make an effort to change things for the better then I guess I'll take it.

A few nuclear weapons across major Afghanistan cities would have solved this on 9/12.