Opinion by
Paul Waldman
Columnist
Today at 1:03 p.m. EDT
As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, The Post/ABC News poll asked Americans whether the events of that day changed the country in a lasting way, and whether that change was for the better or for the worse. Only 46 percent of respondents said the country was changed for the worse, while 33 percent said it was changed for the better.
How deluded would you have to be to think America had been changed for the better by 9/11?
Perhaps it’s a lingering memory from the first days after the attacks, when the tragedy led us to briefly join in grief and anger, and find what we were told was commonality of purpose. In those early days the media were filled with stories about our new “unity,” with American flags everywhere and Democrats and Republicans joining hands to sing “God Bless America” at every available opportunity.
But not only didn’t it last, the two decades since have seen one tragic and disturbing effect after another. Unless 33 percent of Americans work for military contractors, it’s hard to see where they’re finding that silver lining.
Even “unity” itself was quickly revealed to be a sham. We were certainly united in the desire to send the military into Afghanistan — and we saw how that turned out. It took about ten minutes for the Bush administration to start exploiting the attacks for its own advantage; literally on that very day, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote a note to aides asking if the still-burning wreckage could be used as justification to invade Iraq. “Go massive,” he wrote. “Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”
Which of course we did, and as disastrous as the Afghanistan war turned out to be, by any reasonable measure, Iraq was worse. According to one estimate, the cost of the War on Terror, including both Iraq and Afghanistan but spreading out to dozens of other countries, has been $8 trillion and 900,000 lives.
How 9/11 conspiracy theories fueled the war on reality | Opinion
Conspiracy theories blaming George W. Bush for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have been debunked, yet millions of Americans still believe them. (Kate Woodsome/The Washington Post)
Meanwhile back at home, we created a sprawling surveillance infrastructure fed with hundreds of billions of dollars and the authority to undertake unprecedented steps to spy both on foreigners and Americans, leaving it to do its work with almost no real oversight or public accountability.
Everywhere we go now we are subjected to heightened examination and inconvenience, some of it necessary and much of it no more than “security theater,” meant mainly to make it seem like we’re being protected. We militarized our local police, sending weapons of war to departments who ordinarily have to deal with nothing more serious than small-time drug dealers — and those weapons are inevitably used on the public. Bizarre conspiracy theories have never been more mainstream than they are now.
For the first time in history, the use of torture became official U.S. government policy; American officials employed beatings, waterboarding, extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation, stress positions (designed to produce excruciating pain), and mock executions on prisoners. From this shameful period we learned virtually nothing; one of our two great parties remains essentially pro-torture.
But were there some positive effects of Sept. 11 on our national spirit? We did have that moment of “unity,” after all.
The answer is obvious: No. We did not become kinder to one another. Our political and cultural conflicts did not grow more thoughtful or less bitter. We did not gain a new and deeper understanding of our place in the world. We are no smarter, no wiser, and no more humane.
Although in The Post poll there were no real differences by party (36 percent of Democrats said 9/11 changed the country for the better, as did 35 percent of Republicans), the GOP could certainly say the attacks reinvigorated the sense of purpose and focus it had lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
After a decade of drift, here was a new enemy — foreign and alien, but also one that could be used against its domestic opponents, who could once again be charged with insufficient patriotism and secret traitorous sympathies. The War on Terror offered a grand and glorious clash of civilizations, in which no harebrained scheme was too outlandish to consider and no brutality too immoral to indulge.
But these days the right has become far less concerned with the enemies from outside than the enemies within. What makes Republicans sputter with rage today is a public health official suggesting that they wear a mask, or the idea that their children might be taught that racism still exists. Conservatives don’t even suggest anymore that terrorism is an “existential threat,” a term that used to be thrown around with abandon.
Twenty years later, if we’re less respected in the world it’s no more than what we deserve given the disasters of our foreign policy. At home we’ve grown angrier, pettier, more deluded and more divided: we elected Donald Trump, quite possibly the most corrupt and immoral citizen in the entire country, to be president (four years later we booted him out, but not by much).
In short, all the ways we tried to turn the horror of 9/11 into national progress and a better world ended up failing quite miserably. And once again, we are presented with a multitude of lessons to learn, if only we could clear our vision and find our way toward them.
Paul Waldman
Columnist
Today at 1:03 p.m. EDT
As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, The Post/ABC News poll asked Americans whether the events of that day changed the country in a lasting way, and whether that change was for the better or for the worse. Only 46 percent of respondents said the country was changed for the worse, while 33 percent said it was changed for the better.
How deluded would you have to be to think America had been changed for the better by 9/11?
Perhaps it’s a lingering memory from the first days after the attacks, when the tragedy led us to briefly join in grief and anger, and find what we were told was commonality of purpose. In those early days the media were filled with stories about our new “unity,” with American flags everywhere and Democrats and Republicans joining hands to sing “God Bless America” at every available opportunity.
But not only didn’t it last, the two decades since have seen one tragic and disturbing effect after another. Unless 33 percent of Americans work for military contractors, it’s hard to see where they’re finding that silver lining.
Even “unity” itself was quickly revealed to be a sham. We were certainly united in the desire to send the military into Afghanistan — and we saw how that turned out. It took about ten minutes for the Bush administration to start exploiting the attacks for its own advantage; literally on that very day, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote a note to aides asking if the still-burning wreckage could be used as justification to invade Iraq. “Go massive,” he wrote. “Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”
Which of course we did, and as disastrous as the Afghanistan war turned out to be, by any reasonable measure, Iraq was worse. According to one estimate, the cost of the War on Terror, including both Iraq and Afghanistan but spreading out to dozens of other countries, has been $8 trillion and 900,000 lives.
How 9/11 conspiracy theories fueled the war on reality | Opinion
Conspiracy theories blaming George W. Bush for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have been debunked, yet millions of Americans still believe them. (Kate Woodsome/The Washington Post)
Meanwhile back at home, we created a sprawling surveillance infrastructure fed with hundreds of billions of dollars and the authority to undertake unprecedented steps to spy both on foreigners and Americans, leaving it to do its work with almost no real oversight or public accountability.
Everywhere we go now we are subjected to heightened examination and inconvenience, some of it necessary and much of it no more than “security theater,” meant mainly to make it seem like we’re being protected. We militarized our local police, sending weapons of war to departments who ordinarily have to deal with nothing more serious than small-time drug dealers — and those weapons are inevitably used on the public. Bizarre conspiracy theories have never been more mainstream than they are now.
For the first time in history, the use of torture became official U.S. government policy; American officials employed beatings, waterboarding, extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation, stress positions (designed to produce excruciating pain), and mock executions on prisoners. From this shameful period we learned virtually nothing; one of our two great parties remains essentially pro-torture.
But were there some positive effects of Sept. 11 on our national spirit? We did have that moment of “unity,” after all.
The answer is obvious: No. We did not become kinder to one another. Our political and cultural conflicts did not grow more thoughtful or less bitter. We did not gain a new and deeper understanding of our place in the world. We are no smarter, no wiser, and no more humane.
Although in The Post poll there were no real differences by party (36 percent of Democrats said 9/11 changed the country for the better, as did 35 percent of Republicans), the GOP could certainly say the attacks reinvigorated the sense of purpose and focus it had lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
After a decade of drift, here was a new enemy — foreign and alien, but also one that could be used against its domestic opponents, who could once again be charged with insufficient patriotism and secret traitorous sympathies. The War on Terror offered a grand and glorious clash of civilizations, in which no harebrained scheme was too outlandish to consider and no brutality too immoral to indulge.
But these days the right has become far less concerned with the enemies from outside than the enemies within. What makes Republicans sputter with rage today is a public health official suggesting that they wear a mask, or the idea that their children might be taught that racism still exists. Conservatives don’t even suggest anymore that terrorism is an “existential threat,” a term that used to be thrown around with abandon.
Twenty years later, if we’re less respected in the world it’s no more than what we deserve given the disasters of our foreign policy. At home we’ve grown angrier, pettier, more deluded and more divided: we elected Donald Trump, quite possibly the most corrupt and immoral citizen in the entire country, to be president (four years later we booted him out, but not by much).
In short, all the ways we tried to turn the horror of 9/11 into national progress and a better world ended up failing quite miserably. And once again, we are presented with a multitude of lessons to learn, if only we could clear our vision and find our way toward them.
