Twenty years later, it is difficult to overstate the impact of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The attacks claimed the lives of 2,751 people that day, and hundreds more in subsequent years due to illnesses directly linked to the attacks.
But it also unleashed two decades of war, a sprawling surveillance state and a vast ceding of power to the executive branch.
Like other infamous moments in history, virtually everyone who was old enough to understand what was going on remembers where they were when they heard about the attacks.
People around the world watched the same horrifying scenes in real time: of a plane hitting the second tower of the World Trade Center, of smoke billowing from the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, the collapse of the Twin Towers.
For a brief period of time, Americans felt more unified than ever. Our nation was under attack.
In that spirit, Congress rushed through an Authorization for Use of Military Force granting the executive branch essentially a blank check to use military action against those responsible.
Congress followed that up with passage of the Patriot Act, which granted the federal government vast surveillance powers, from wiretapping powers to the ability to surveil the reading habits of library visitors.
It would take a decade to eventually bring Osama bin Laden to justice.
In the years between the moment of unity following the Sept. 11 attacks and the death of bin Laden, the sense of unity had long since faded and Americans were left with the legacy of decisions made post-9/11.
The war in Afghanistan had already gone off the rails, though it had almost slipped from the minds of Americans due to the disastrous war in Iraq, which was launched in 2003.
Debates over CIA black sites, mass surveillance, torture, drone bombings in countries the U.S. wasn’t at war in were commonplace.
In the decade since bin Laden’s death, it has been more of the same.
Americans have become more polarized than ever.
Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump entered or continued new conflicts, including in Libya, Syria and Yemen, without congressional approval.
The revelations by Edward Snowden about the extent of the surveillance state prompted momentary outrage, but it turned out Americans weren’t too bothered about being spied on without warrants.
And only recently has Congress considered scaling back some of the war powers ceded to the executive branch after the attacks of Sept. 11.
Meanwhile, trillions of dollars have been spent or obligated in America’s post-Sept. 11 wars. Future generations of Americans will have to deal with that.
Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives in those wars; many more were injured. Millions of people were forced to become refugees.
The attacks of Sept. 11 forever altered the trajectory of the United States and the world. We must never forget that horrible day. We must honor the victims. And we must ensure similar attacks never happen again.
But we must also learn something about the fragility of unity and the risk of ceding vast new powers to government in times of crisis.
— The Orange County Register/TNS
