The September 11 attacks occurred in America in 2001. Although they were two years off from Nostradamus's prophecy—"In the year 1999, in the seventh month, the great King of Terror shall descend from the sky"—some people still forcibly linked that event to the prophecy.
There had been many prophecies about the end of the world, yet not a single one had come true—indeed, if even one had, every human being living on this blue planet would have been finished.
After so many failed predictions, no one believed those prophets anymore. Yet for the people of Iraq, this "King of Terror" truly had arrived. Only, this "King of Terror" was not the Grim Reaper in a cloak, but Americans flying planes. At last, they had found an excuse to exercise their "right of self-defense."
The British people did not want to follow them into war, but even marching and protesting outside Whitehall was useless. Faced with such enormous temptations of profit, the prime minister could not hear "the voice of the people."
Just as the Ottoman Empire had bribed Mamluk commanders before attacking Egypt in the past, the Americans bought off Iraqi generals with dollars before the war. As a result, American ground forces practically won the war without even encountering the Iraqi armed forces. Two hundred and fifty thousand reasonably equipped regular troops collapsed like a landslide, and before long, the president declared the war completely over with an American victory.
Those Westerners believed they were bringing freedom and democracy to that conservative land. It was as if those girls constrained by religion could finally remove their black veils and wear bikinis while sunbathing on the beaches of the Persian Gulf.
Yet many things among the people often lacked sufficient rationality. Such sentiments were irrational and could not be underestimated,