USA11 September, 20263 min read
Bush Launches War On Terror After September 11, 2001 Attacks
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
Al-Qaeda attacks killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. The United States launched the War on Terror, reshaping foreign and security policy worldwide.
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Post-9/11 War Apparatus
Three days after terrorists killed almost 3,000 people in the United States on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush told the nation, “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic,” as the “war on terror” impulse to avenge quickly aligned with war planning.
The CounterPunch.org account says the Iraq war, launched with a March 2003 invasion, relied on massive air power and more than 150,000 U.S. ground troops, and it describes Afghanistan troop levels reaching 100,000, triple the number when Barack Obama entered the White House.
Democracy Now! anchors the start of the campaign in Bush’s September 20th, 2001 address to Congress, where he said, “Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.”
Democracy Now! also frames the “war on terror” as a construct that was “always a construct to be waged, never quite to be ended,” with Spencer Ackerman describing it as “a tremendous violent exertion of American power” to ward off “the next 9/11.”
Surveillance and Domestic Use
The Washington Post describes how the U.S. built an anti-terror apparatus after 9/11 and says the Trump administration is using many of those powers at home, directing Joint Terrorism Task Forces to investigate groups that challenge White House views on immigration, gender and religion.
The Post adds that “almost all of the agencies that were created by the Bush administration to protect us from terrorism” have been dismantled or repurposed, quoting former Bush legal adviser John Bellinger III saying, “There has been a tremendous loss of focus.”
Glitchwire traces the legal architecture to the USA PATRIOT Act, saying it was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, and quoting the ACLU that “a panicked Congress passed the 'USA/Patriot Act,' an overnight revision of the nation's surveillance laws.”
Glitchwire also says the Department of Homeland Security was established in November 2002, consolidating 22 federal agencies under a single cabinet department, and it describes how surveillance powers expanded alongside technology, culminating in the 2013 leak of classified documents about the PRISM program.
Islamophobia, Power, and Stakes
Multiple outlets tie the post-9/11 era to Islamophobia and surveillance, with The Guardian quoting Imam Dr Qari Asim saying the attacks cast “a long shadow over almost two billion people who bore no responsibility for them,” and describing how Muslims in Britain and across the world still live with “suspicion, anti-Muslim hostility, discrimination, war.”
The Washington Post and other accounts describe how anti-terror tools and agencies created after 2001 have been turned inward, while Interfaith America says Muslims in the U.S. have seen some improvement, including that “The most sweeping surveillance provisions of the USA Patriot Act expired in 2020.”
El Mundo says the U.S. remains under effects of 9/11 through airport security measures and scrutiny, and it reports that just 45 days after the attacks George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act, while a month later the Transportation Security Administration was established.
El Mundo also quotes Ishraq Ali recalling the shift in New York, and it includes Republican lawmakers’ rhetoric that it says has helped legitimize hatred, including Andy Ogles writing “Muslims do not belong to American society” and Randy Fine saying, “if we are forced to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not very complicated.”