Decade's Top News Stories: 9/11, War on Terror, Obama, Bush

For the decade's top 10 news stories in the United States, a failure to rate Sept. 11 as the decade's top story would be seen as sacrilege. Al Qaeda's 9/11 terror attacks, after all, were on "the day everything changed," and were the first attacks on American soil since Pearl Harbor and the impetus of the "war on terror."

This focuses on the decade's top 10 news stories in relation to U.S. citizens. While various Americans may mentally register the tragedy of 40 million AIDS death in Africa or 230 million victims in the 2004 Asian tsunami, for instance, Americans are no different than anyone else. We most closely feel what hits closest to home.

In that respect, the impact of Sept. 11's 2,752 sudden-death fatalities goes beyond the mere number. A comparable toll of death and carnage was extracted four years later within Hurricane Katrina, and in this case American society could find plenty of cause for self-recrimination. Furthermore, for just one example, roughly 3,500 sudden deaths occur per month on United States highways and byways, but observe how dangerously some among us still drive. The difference in these comparative death tolls is that Sept. 11 raises the specter of total annihilation - what if the terrorists ever obtain major nukes? - and this is why the 9/11 tragedy is the decade's top U.S. news story.

(1) Sept. 11. The World Trade Center's twin towers and the Pentagon were al Qaeda's targets, and so might have been the nation's capitol if not for the heroics of passengers near Pittsburgh on a fourth hijacked plane. The impact of a heightened security environment continues. Meanwhile, feelings of national unity prevailed for several months after 9/11, although this would be difficult to recognize nowadays in many places.

(2) Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A clear majority of Americans supported going into Afghanistan within weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, and most considered the mission a success, even as Osama bin Laden escaped. Then the venture into Iraq prompted sharply mixed opposition, and ultimately majority opposition. More time passed and Iraq no longer looked like a complete failure, but now the Afghan mission is drawing more foes. Put it this way: World War II's status as the virtually unquestioned "Necessary War" or "Just War" hasn't been threatened among this decade's top news stories.

(3) President Barack Obama's 2008 election. The great sin of United States history never will be erased, but few would have believed even at mid-decade that the election of an African-American president would become one of the decade's top news stories. Obama displayed a genius for when to bring race to the forefront and when to cast race aside, the duality aptly described by W.E.B. DuBois more than a century past in "Souls of Black Folks."

(4) U.S. Supreme Court decides 2000 election for George W. Bush. Five Supreme Court justices abruptly terminated the Florida vote recount and handed the "appointed presidency" to Bush. William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas not only supported federal power ahead of Florida's state rights, but they also ironically asserted that Bush's "equal protection" civil rights would have been violated if vote recounting had continued. The quintet of conservative justices all had been placed in office by Republican presidents, and beforehand, they often had opposed the pair of legal principles that they now conveniently embraced. Credibility for the Supreme Court still suffers as a result.

(5) Globalization and Near-Depression. In some quarters, one of the decade's top news stories will be otherwise describe as "the ascent of China" or "the ascent of China and India." The total package is globalization, or free trade. Through the decade, advocates of globalization not only prevailed, but they lectured that the world has changed for good and that naysayers are living in the past. But with the economic decimation not only of America's manufacturing cities but also of thousands of small towns (largely under-reported), and the economic near-depression that still lingers, will there be a public backlash during the decade to come? Another factor in globalization is the so-called green environmental movement, in that the vast majority of scientists worldwide believe global warming will place the planet at risk if carbon emissions are not controlled and reduced.

(6) "Googleization." It's hard to believe, but when 9/11 occurred, a vast majority of Americans lacked the resources or knowhow to "google" on their computers for immediate information. Now we not only have search engines, but social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and YouTube and Twitter. Even more importantly, commerce is conducted in entirely new ways. Elders may feel forgotten, however: Another under-reported story is that according to a Pew Center study, one-third of citizens ages 60 and older still aren't computer literate and feel they are left out.

(7) National health care/insurance reform. Even while a scant two weeks remain in the decade at this writing, one of the decade's top stories remains unresolved. More progress has been made toward health care compromise that at any point since passage of Medicare and Medicaid during 1965, in spite of all the political and public bickering. Odds are that something will happen either before or even as you read this, or at least early in 2010.

(8) Health care research. Sometimes lost in the health care debate is the fact that medical research continues to make exponential leaps and bounds. In 2003, scientists finally mapped the human genome. In other words, researchers are finding genetic variations that could unlock huge doors toward treating diseases. Stem-cell research continues to emerge as a related issue.

(9) Hurricane Katrina. The devastating hurricane and floods of late August 2005 that struck New Orleans, and the larger Gulf Coast, evidenced a separate and unequal society. Impact on Americans with open consciences was similar to the civil rights beatings of the 1950s and 1960s.

(10) The clock's first second of the decade. Other analyzers of the decade's top stories aren't including the clock's first second of the decade, but you're seeing it here. This was also the clock's first second of the new millennium, when all sorts of Y-2-K forecasts predicted the planet's demise. Well, it didn't happen, but considering those dire predictions, the story of "no Y-2-K" ranks among the top 10. In fact, if so much else had not happened, "no Y-2-K" would rate even higher!

SOURCES

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/gallery/international_national_news_stories_of_decade?pg=2

http://moneymorning.com/2009/12/08/china-decades-top-story/

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/katrina/facts/facts.html

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/sept-11-death-toll-rises-by-one-to-2752/?apage=2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake

http://www.kwanzaakeepers.com/africa-aids-death-count/africa-aids-death-count.htm