New Yorkers were stunned and bewildered when they witnessed giant passenger jets speed headlong into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.The tragedy was as unexpected as it was unimaginable. Both skyscrapers collapsed, killing more than twenty-eight hundred people.Two other planes crashed, one into the Pentagon and one into a field in Pennsylvania. Americans were aghast at the first attack on their country since Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

National security became an immediate issue, and citizens began to consider the ways that the United States was at risk. For the first time in many years, many began to question the nation's dependence on foreign oil.The world's largest oil reserves are located in the Middle East around the Persian Gulf, the area from which the September 11 killers had come and where anti-American sentiment is...