an essay on 911

• Foreign Affairs
• CFR Education
• Newsletters

Climate Change

Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland December 5, 2023 Renewing America

• Defense & Security
• Diplomacy & International Institutions
• Energy & Environment
• Human Rights
• Politics & Government
• Social Issues

Myanmar’s Troubled History

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland January 31, 2022

• Europe & Eurasia
• Global Commons
• Middle East & North Africa
• Sub-Saharan Africa

How Tobacco Laws Could Help Close the Racial Gap on Cancer

Interactive by Olivia Angelino, Thomas J. Bollyky , Elle Ruggiero and Isabella Turilli February 1, 2023 Global Health Program

• Backgrounders
• Special Projects

Nonproliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament

CFR Welcomes Lori Esposito Murray

July 25, 2024

• Centers & Programs
• Books & Reports
• Independent Task Force Program
• Fellowships

Oil and Petroleum Products

Academic Webinar: The Geopolitics of Oil

Webinar with Carolyn Kissane and Irina A. Faskianos April 12, 2023

• Students and Educators
• State & Local Officials
• Religion Leaders
• Local Journalists

NATO’s Future: Enlarged and More European?

Virtual Event with Emma M. Ashford, Michael R. Carpenter, Camille Grand, Thomas Wright, Liana Fix and Charles A. Kupchan June 25, 2024 Europe Program

• Lectureship Series
• Webinars & Conference Calls
• Member Login

Seven Reflections Worth Reading About 9/11

Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Not surprisingly, the last several weeks have seen the publication of a torrent of articles assessing the meaning and lessons of 9/11. It’s a topic that has been debated for twenty years and will continue to be debated for decades to come. The lessons that get drawn will inevitably change over time, just as we see 9/11 differently today than we did a decade ago. We inevitably see the past through the lens of the present.

With so much being written in so short a period of time, we can’t say that we have read everything that has been written, or claim to be able to say which essays will have the greatest or most lasting influence. What we offer below are simply seven articles that tackle critical questions and might give you reason to pause and think. You won’t see any articles written by our CFR colleagues. That’s because our rule for these posts is to avoid home-cooking. We no doubt have missed some terrific writing that would have made generating a list of seven articles even harder. To everyone who feels overlooked, we apologize.

United States

Bryan Bender and Daniel Lippman , " They Created Our Post-9/11 World: Here’s What They Think They Got Wrong ,”  Politico Magazine . Did I get it right? It’s a question we can all usefully ask of ourselves, even if we may not like the answer. Bender and Lippman interviewed a range of former senior Bush administration officials, U.S. senators, ambassadors, generals, and admirals about the decisions they made or helped shape in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Many of them look back with regret at what they see as U.S. “overreach” but hold out hope that the country can right itself. “Nations are like people,” retired Admiral James Stavridis notes, “They get some things right, they get some things wrong. The measure of any nation is whether it learns both from the mistakes and the successes.”

The Water's Edge

James m. lindsay  analyzes the politics shaping u.s. foreign policy and the sustainability of american power.  2-4 times weekly., daily news brief, a summary of global news developments with cfr analysis delivered to your inbox each morning.  weekdays., the world this week, a weekly digest of the latest from cfr on the biggest foreign policy stories of the week, featuring briefs, opinions, and explainers. every friday., think global health.

A curation of original analyses, data visualizations, and commentaries, examining the debates and efforts to improve health worldwide.  Weekly.

Garrett Graff ,   " After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong ,"  The Atlantic . By one important measure the U.S. war on terrorism succeeded: neither al-Qaeda nor any other foreign terrorist organization has successfully launched an attack remotely approaching what happened on 9/11. Beyond that, Osama bin Laden and many of his close advisers have been captured or killed.   Garrett Graff argues that despite these successes, the U.S. response to 9/11 did more harm than good. “By almost any other measure, the War on Terror has weakened the nation,” he writes, “leaving Americans more afraid, less free, more morally compromised, and more alone in the world."

Hannah Hartig and Carroll Doherty , “ Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11 ,” Pew Research Center. What do Americans think about 9/11 twenty years on? Hartig and Doherty sort through data the Pew Research Center has compiled on public attitudes toward the deadliest day in U.S. history. They conclude that surveys show “how a badly shaken nation came together, briefly, in a spirit of sadness and patriotism; how the public initially rallied behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, though support waned over time; and how Americans viewed the threat of terrorism at home and the steps the government took to combat it.”

Nelly Lahoud , “ Bin Laden’s Catastrophic Success ,”  Foreign Affairs . Did bin Laden succeed? Nelly Lahoud thinks not. While the 9/11 attacks inflicted a grievous wound on the United States, they did not produce the outcome he sought. Bin Laden thought the attacks would compel a fearful United States to withdraw its military forces from Muslim-majority countries, leaving al-Qaeda free to recreate an exclusive community of Muslims. What he got instead was a United States that stood up rather than backed down in response to his plot, intervening even more deeply in the Middle East. “Bin Laden did change the world,” she concludes, “just not in the ways that he wanted.”

Carlos Lozada , “ 9/11 Was a Test. The Books of the Last Two Decades Show How America Failed. ”  Washington Post . If you read our post on  Seven More Books to Read About 9/11 , you know that a vast literature now exists on 9/11, examining that day and its consequences from an array of angles. Carlos Lozada, the  Washington Post ’s terrific book critic, decided to read more than his fair share of them. The effort convinced him that “Bin Laden did not win the war of ideas. But neither did we. To an unnerving degree, the United States moved toward the enemy’s fantasies of what it might become—a nation divided in its sense of itself, exposed in its moral and political compromises, conflicted over wars it did not want but would not end….. al-Qaeda could not dim the promise of America. Only we could do that to ourselves.”  

George Packer , “ 9/11 Was a Warning of What Was to Come ,”  The Atlantic.  It may be difficult from the vantage point of 2021 to remember what the world looked like in early September 2001. The United States had won the Cold War. It was the world’s dominant power by far, perhaps the most powerful ever known. The laws of history had seemingly been suspended. The future promised continued success, wealth, and safety for decades to come. Looking back at those heady times, Packer concludes that 9/11 pricked the illusion that somehow Americans stood outside of time. “September 11 wasn’t a sui generis event coming out of a clear blue sky,” he writes. “It was the first warning that the 21st century would not bring boundless peace and prosperity.”

Stephen M. Walt . “ How 9/11 Will Be Remembered a Century Later ,”  Foreign Policy.  We noted above that our collective lessons of 9/11 are likely to change over time as the progress of events gives us new vantage points from which to see the past. Harvard Kennedy School of Government Professor Stephen Walt wondered what people might make of 9/11 on its centennial. He sees three possible scenarios: people might see it as a turning point, an isolated tragedy, or as irrelevant. Which of those scenarios carries the day, he writes, is not pre-ordained but rather depends on “what the United States and others do from this day forward.”

On Monday we will share additional resources on 9/11 that friends and readers politely (for the most part) noted that we missed.

Here are the other entries in this series:

• More Resources Worth Exploring About 9/11

Seven Documentaries Worth Watching About 9/11

• Seven Movies Worth Watching About 9/11
• 9/11 Online Exhibits and Resources Worth Viewing
• Seven Resources Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
• Seven Podcasts Worth Listening to About 9/11
• Seven More Books Worth Reading About 9/11 and Its Aftermath

Explore More

The president’s inbox recap: the future of u.s. foreign policy.

Backgrounder

What Is the U.S. Federal Reserve?

Shock, insecurity and endless war: How 9/11 changed America and the world

Terror attacks damaged our psyches, and the response undermined U.S. moral authority, Berkeley scholars say

By Edward Lempinen

September 9, 2021

Choking on fumes and covered in dust, a woman and a man make their way to safety after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. (Wikipedia photo by Don Halasy)

For tens of millions of Americans alive on Sept. 11, 2001, the images are indelible: Flames exploding from a tower of the World Trade Center against a brilliant blue sky. A tsunami of smoke and debris roiling through the canyons of Lower Manhattan. Office workers — those who managed to escape — covered in grey dust.

In the shock that followed those terror attacks, it was common to imagine that the world had changed forever. Just how, exactly, no one could know. Twenty years later, after so many other turns of history, the ragged withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is a reminder of how the nation has struggled to answer the attacks.

Janet Napolitano (UC Berkeley photo)

“One of the most lasting impacts has been the damage to the American psyche,” said Janet Napolitano, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and former president of the University of California. “Even after Pearl Harbor, there was a presumption that we were somehow immune from attack, that our airliners would not be weaponized and flown into iconic buildings. That sort of presumption was effectively destroyed by 9/11 — and it hasn’t come back.”

Even as Americans grappled with trauma and anger at home, the attacks cleared the way for a foreign policy based on the belief that the United States can “transform foreign societies in its own self-image,” said UC Berkeley historian Daniel Sargent. This was “hubris,” Sargent said, with the “consequence of exploding the credibility of America as a superpower.”

Daniel Sargent (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy)

To be sure, the American reaction to Sept. 11 achieved a critical aim: After a massive mobilization of resources, intelligence and military power, the U.S. has prevented any other large-scale attack on domestic targets. Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind, was found and killed. The war in Iraq, though ill-conceived and fatally mismanaged, removed Saddam Hussein, a vicious tyrant, from power. A generation of women and girls in Afghanistan found that with the Taliban banished, there was space for education, for work and for pursuing dreams.

In a series of interviews, Berkeley scholars said the shock and the national response set off a cascade of repercussions — misguided and expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a rise in anti-Muslim hate, and an obsessive focus on security and safety that has sometimes undermined freedom and human rights.

Asked to reflect on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, they pointed to four broad, specific examples of how 9/11 continues to shape America and the world, plus a fifth that may — or may not — come to pass.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C., deeply shocked and angered America — and led political leaders to overreact in response, Berkeley scholars say. (Flickr photo by Robert J. Fisch)

1. Policymakers implemented aggressive plans to combat global terrorism — and to prevent “contamination” of the homeland.

Marika Landau-Wells (Photo by Aidan Milliff)

In a period of major conflict, two primal fears can become pronounced, said Marika Landau-Wells, a UC Berkeley political scientist who studies how political leaders and the public perceive threats. One is fear of death. The other is fear of contamination. These fears colored the U.S. response to communism in the 1950s and to COVID-19 and illegal immigration today.

In the psychological environment that rose from the shock of 9/11, the Bush administration had support to make a dramatic response.

“They didn’t want more people to die on their watch,” said Landau-Wells. “But there was also a sense that…this ideology of international terrorism had some contaminant properties to it. It’s a little bit like communism in that respect.”

With unprecedented speed, the Bush administration transformed the national security system. Airline security was tightened and intensified. The Department of Homeland Security was created a little more than a year after the attacks, and today is the third-largest federal agency.

At the same time, U.S. foreign policy was “remilitarized,” said Berkeley political scientist George Breslauer, a scholar in U.S. foreign affairs. “After 9/11, with the neoconservatives in power, you get this notion: ‘We are the most powerful country in the world, and it’s about time to show our adversaries what that means.’”

U.S. military personnel carry the remains of fellow service members killed in the Aug. 26 Kabul airport attack, just days before the U.S. completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by 1st Lt. Mark Andries)

2. Political leaders bet that terrorism could be defeated by conventional military action. This was a grave miscalculation.

Hatem Bazian

Several Berkeley scholars shared a common view: The U.S. could have responded to 9/11 as if it were a crime — using law enforcement, diplomacy and intelligence along with limited military resources to hunt down Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida leaders and others linked to the attacks.

“If you want to pursue the terrorists, there are different approaches and strategies to undertake this in a legal, legitimate way rather than unleash an invasion that is going to be disastrous,” said Hatem Bazian, founder of the UC Berkeley Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project.

George Breslauer (UC Berkeley photo)

Added Breslauer: “Trying to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while simultaneously conducting a global police action against terror — it only brought us misery and pain.”

The death toll: Some 15,000 U.S. soldiers and military contractors died, along with some 15,000 allied military personnel. Among Afghans and Iraqis, deaths mounted into the hundreds of thousands.

The financial cost: By one estimate, the U.S. has spent more than $8 trillion — much of it borrowed — in wars launched after 9/11.

In Vietnam, the U.S. learned through failure that “conventional military deterrence…doesn’t work against insurgencies in guerilla war contexts,” Breslauer said. By repeating that approach against Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. “affirmed that it had unlearned the lessons of Vietnam — and that was triggered by 9/11.”

3. The attacks provoked a wave of anti-Muslim bias, harassment and violence. This demonization has become a persistent feature of our politics.

Incidents of torture by U.S. military and intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq deeply damaged the U.S. effort to promote democracy in the region, Berkeley scholars said. (Photo from U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command via Wikipedia)

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, society focused indiscriminate rage on Muslims, several scholars said.

“To tar a whole group of people with that brush is a big move, but I think 9/11 gave permission to think that way,” said Landau-Wells. “There was a tolerance for a kind of thinking that probably would have been frowned upon on Sept. 9th or 10th.”

Hate crimes against Muslims , or those mistaken for Muslims, soared. Law enforcement agencies detained thousands of men who were Middle Eastern and South Asian. Agents infiltrated Arab American communities. In Iraq and in the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the images of U.S. military personnel abusing and torturing Muslim men suggested that Muslims had been officially dehumanized.

While some Americans recoiled, others did not. In a climate of suspicion and fear, Berkeley scholars said, hostility for Muslims became a political wedge issue.

Critics attacked a rising 2008 presidential candidate by his full name: Barack Hussein Obama. After Obama’s victory, future presidential candidate Donald Trump led a sustained conspiracy movement claiming that the victor wasn’t American, and was therefore not a legitimate president.

Lawrence Rosenthal

Later, as the Republican nominee, Trump would promote the lie that thousands of Muslims on 9/11 cheered the fall of the twin towers at the World Trade Center. And as president, he largely suspended tourism, business and academic visits from Muslim countries.

“Islamic terrorism, quote unquote, replaced communism as the great foreign enemy,” observed Lawrence Rosenthal, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies . “And those who were not hostile to the domestic Muslim population — they could be characterized as enemies on the home front.”

4. Through strategic failures and compromised values, the United States suffered deep, long-term damage to its political and moral authority.

The stated goals in both Afghanistan and Iraq seemed straightforward: topple authoritarian governments seen as hostile and replace them with functional democratic states, and thereby make the region less hospitable to terrorists. But Iraq wasn’t even linked to terrorism. And the use of detention without trial, kidnapping and torture undermined U.S. claims to democratic virtue.

“The use of what was euphemistically called ‘ enhanced interrogations ,’ which most people would call torture, was really contrary to our values — and it was not effective,” said Napolitano, now director of the Center for Security in Politics at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “Those kinds of decisions not only change our self-perception, but change the perception of the United States in the world.”

The invasion of Iraq “completely torpedoed and collapsed U.S. standing” in the Muslim countries and much of the world, said Bazian. “U.S. power has diminished tremendously in the most important powers — the power of persuasion.

“Once the Abu Ghraib pictures came out, the Abu Ghraib torture, the United States’ claim that it represents the civilized world, the rule of law — at that point, the emperor had no clothes.”

5. Can the U.S. accept the humbling lessons of 9/11? Time will tell.

The world has transformed in the two decades since the terror attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. The United States is no longer the world’s sole superpower; China is a rival, and Russia remains a global force. India and other nations once considered poor and powerless are building strength.

In the last days before U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan, a throng of Afghans hoping to escape waited for evacuation behind a cordon of U.S. Marines at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla)

The U.S. remains the world’s most powerful country, Breslauer said, but it cannot impose its will on the world. It must define its vital interests realistically, and then work with other powers to address global issues through diplomacy and cooperation.

“We have to search for a way to get the United States, Europe, Russia and China to collaborate on issues that all of them define as major threats,” he proposed. “Those issues can be global terror, or the avoidance of accidental nuclear launches. It can be pandemic control, or climate change. There are any number of issues on which those four entities — plus Japan and a few others — have a common stake in avoiding the worst outcomes.”

Bazian finds cause for optimism in the European fishing crews that have rescued refugees fleeing war and persecution, and in the church groups working to resettle refugees in the United States. But he sees that the U.S. military web still circles the globe, and he wonders whether the lesson has been learned.

In this new world, he and others suggested, hubris is no longer viable. Diplomacy, subtlety, cooperation — these are essential if the U.S. is to recover from the self-inflicted damage of 9/11.

“I think over time we can recover,” Napolitano said. “But we can only do it by action, by exhibiting to the world our values and how we practice them… You know, the world is a complex place, and we need to approach its complexity with a degree of humility.”