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  3. How different would the world be today if there had been no 9/11? What if the attacks had been foiled or bungled? One obvious an

How different would the world be today if there had been no 9/11? What if the attacks had been foiled or bungled? One obvious an

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问题     How different would the world be today if there had been no 9/11? What if the attacks had been foiled or bungled? One obvious answer is that Americans would probably care a lot less than they do about the rest of the world.
    Back on the eve of destruction, in early September 2001, only 13 percent of Americans believed that the U.S. should be "the single world leader." And fewer than a third favored higher defense spending. Now those figures are naturally much higher. Right?
    Wrong. According to the most recent surveys, just 12 percent of Americans today think the U.S. should be the sole superpower—almost exactly the same proportion as on the eve of the 9/11 attacks. The share of Americans who want to see higher spending on national security is actually down to 26 percent. Paradoxically, Americans today seem less interested in the wider world than they were before the Twin Towers were felled.
    In the past 10 years, the U.S. has directly or indirectly overthrown at least three governments in the Muslim world. Yet Americans today feel less powerful than they did then. In 2001 just over a quarter felt that the U.S. had "a less important role as a world leader compared to 10 years ago." The latest figure is 41 percent.
    Three explanations suggest themselves. First, wielding power abroad proved harder in practice than in neoconservative theory. Second, the financial crisis has dampened American spirits. A third possibility is that 9/11 simply didn’t have that big an impact on American opinion.
    Yet to conclude that 9/11 didn’t change much is to misunderstand the historical process. The world is a seriously complex place, and a small change to the web of events can have huge consequences. Our difficulty is imagining what those consequences might have been.
    So let’s play a game like the one my friends at the Muzzy Lane software company are currently designing, which has the working title "New World Disorder." The game simulates the complex interaction of economics, politics, and international relations, allowing us to replay the past.
    Let’s start in January 2001 and thwart the 9/11 attacks by having Condi Rice and Paul Wolfowitz heed Richard Clarke’s warnings about Al Qaeda. The game starts off well. Al -Qaeda is preemptively decapitated, its leaders rounded up in a series of covert operations and left to the tender mercies of their home governments. President Bush gets to focus on tax cuts, his first love.
    But then, three years later, the murky details of this operation surface on the front page of The New York Times. John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for the presidency, denounces the "criminal conduct" of the Bush administration. Liberal pundits foam at the mouth. Ordinary Americans, unseared by 9/11, are shocked. Osama bin Laden issues a fierce denunciation of the U.S. from his Saudi prison cell. It triggers a wave of popular anger in the Middle East that topples any regime seen as too close to Washington.
    In other words, if things had happened differently 10 years ago—if there had been no 9/11 and no retaliatory invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—we might be living through an Islamist Winter rather than an Arab Spring.
    Replaying the history game without 9/11 suggests that, ironically, the real impact of the attacks was not on Americans but on the homelands of the attackers themselves.
Which of the following best summarizes the text?
选项 A、How the history track can be altered if 9/11 attacks didn’t occur.
B、9/11 hasn’t cast too significant impact on U.S. citizens.
C、Americans’ thought on their country’s leadership changed greatly since 9/11.
D、Three explanations can illustrate the reason for Americans’ changing attitude.
答案B
解析 属主旨思想题。作者在文章前一部分便暗示出美国人在9／11事件发生前后对于国家地位和国防支出的看法没有太大改变，后一部分引出一个游戏，最后得出结论：9／11事件并未对美国人产生太大影响，故选项B正确。选项A和D产生同向干扰的作用，但是是对文章部分内容的概括，而非全文。而选项C则为反向干扰。
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