The September 11 attacks shattered the myth of American innocence and invulnerability | KnottMatthew
Since the end of the Cold War over a decade earlier, America had basked in its status as the world’s sole and unquestioned superpower.
It was a frightening realisation but an energising one too. Suddenly American power was imbued with a new sense of purpose. From the start, President George W. Bush framed the attacks in the most expansive way possible. “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world,” Bush said on September 11. “And no one will keep that light from shining.”It was what Americans wanted to hear from their leader.
“Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there,” he said. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”Bush announced that the US would seek to strike enemy nations and terrorist groups before they had a chance to attack America and would do so alone if necessary. And more than that, his administration would seek to spread democracy and freedom around the world.
Neither democracy nor capitalism, it turned out, would flourish in Afghanistan like they did in postwar Western Europe. America seemed on a mission to shred the global sympathy it had attracted after the attacks. Civil liberties were thrown overboard in the name of national security. The Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, opened after 9/11, was used toand international human rights law. Waterboarding, widely regarded as a form of torture, was used to extract at times dubious confessions from inmates held under indefinite detention.
The rise of IS fed a resurgent panic about Muslim immigration, despite the fact the vast majority of American Muslims were well integrated into society. In December 2015, Donald Trump, a reality TV billionaire turned Republican presidential candidate, called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”.
The coronavirus has claimed over 600,000 American lives - 200 times as many as died on September 11. But the pandemic did not create even a fleeting sense of national unity. The sense of tribalism only hardened. Democrats largely embraced mask-wearing and rushed to get vaccinated; many Republicans rejected both as an affront to personal freedom.
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