With the 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks upon us and a new trove of documents being declassified, I wanted to re-examine the harrowing events that occurred that day and give my perspective as someone who has only lived in a post-9/11 world.
Looking back, even disregarding all of the suspicious information that has come to light since the attacks, it seems clear that the government, or rather several actors within the government, didn’t really care about the tragedy.
Instead, they capitalized on the moment to move the country to war and pass sweeping legislation expanding domestic power.
The 9/11 attacks were one of the worst tragedies ever to happen and probably the single most important geopolitical event of the last two decades.
The World Trade Center attacks would be the guiding force behind all of America’s foreign and domestic policy for years to come, and not in a good way.
The PATRIOT Act, American invasion and occupation, arguably genocide, of middle eastern countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and the unfettered growth of the military-industrial complex are just a few examples that can all be traced back to the events of September 11th, 2001.
The United States is most comfortable when it has an abstract, existential threat that it can use as an excuse to meddle in other countries.
For decades that threat was communism, and the U.S. fought proxy wars all over the world in the name of vanquishing it until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
After the Soviet Union was defeated, the U.S. no longer had an existential enemy in the world and no excuse to be the global policeman.
All of this changed after the 9/11 attacks.
On September 11th, 2001, 2,977 people were killed by the attacks on the World Trade Center. On September 20th, 2001, President Bush declared war on terror in an address to Congress and the nation: “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
Our new global, abstract, existential threat was terrorism, and we had a new excuse to go anywhere in the world we wanted in the name of freedom.
The PATRIOT Act passed mere weeks later, a dense 342-page document that allowed for things like the indefinite detention of immigrants and permission for law enforcement to search property and records without a warrant, consent or knowledge, among many other questionable provisions.
On the foreign stage, we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and completely dominated and pillaged another region of the world for decades.
Tragedies like 9/11 should not be used to justify imperialism and government surveillance.
I bring all this up because it is still so relevant today, twenty years later.
We just left Afghanistan a few weeks ago, and we still have troops in Iraq.
Parts of the PATRIOT Act were extended by President Obama in 2011 and some provisions are still in effect today.
Documents regarding the Sept. 11 attacks are being newly declassified by President Biden.
I also want to bring attention to the fact that over 600,000 Americans have passed away due to COVID-19, which is equivalent to roughly 200 9/11s, and we have received almost nothing in terms of relief.
There have been several periods since the start of the pandemic where we have had a 9/11 every day.