9/11

Zeitoun takes place 4 years after 9/11 and the start of war on terrorism in America. Preventing terrorism became a top priority by the American government after 9/11. The United States Department of Homeland Security was created in response to the September 11 attacks to protect the United States from terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina revealed that the US government was unprepared for (natural) disasters. The government believed that terrorists would use Hurricane Katrina to attack when America was at its weak point. Zeitoun’s story exhibits the idea that during and after Hurricane Katrina, the US government, in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was more focused on preventing terrorism and stopping suspected terrorists than rescuing people and helping with the clean-up effort. After the ordeal Zeitoun went through, he remarks, “The authoring committee had been asked to 'speculate on possible terrorist exploitation of a high category hurricane'”…”These terrorists “might even hope that National Guard and other units are less able and well-equipped to respond… because of deployment overseas.”” (308) In the book it states, “New Orleans Police Department had put out a nationwide request for law enforcement help.” (302) Some of the officers from this deployment were responsible for Zeitoun’s arrest on suspicions of criminal activity. Zeitoun was targeted because of his ethnicity for possible terrorism collaborations. Because of his race Zeitoun sometime thinks about the effect 9/11 has on him. “Zeitoun had long feared this day would come. Each of the few times he had been pulled over for a traffic violation, he knew the possibility existed that he would be harassed, misunderstood, suspected of shadowy dealings that might bloom in the imagination of any given police officer. After 9/11, he and Kathy knew that many imaginations had run amok … groups of would-be terrorists living in the U.S. and waiting, for years or decades, to strike.” (212) Zeitoun was consequently arrested by the police because of this same fear by the government and because 9/11 attacks were so engraved in the minds of Americans, it was hard for him to convince them that his race and ethnicity does not link him to terrorism.

Sources:
http://www.allgov.com/Agency/Department_of_Homeland_Security