On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners bound for West Coast destinations. At 8:46 that morning, the first plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City; over the next hour, a second plane would be flown into the South Tower and a third into the Pentagon; a fourth plane crashed into an open field in Pennsylvania after an “insurrection” by passengers. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, and the United States and the world were changed forever. Let’s look back on the global impact of the Sept. 11 attacks.
When firefighters and paramedics rushed toward the smoldering Twin Towers on Sept. 11, they breathed in “pulverized dust loaded with cement, asbestos, lead, glass fibers, dioxins and other chemicals.” One firefighter told NBC, “Everyone had a half inch of white paste on their face [...] you could taste it.” In 2010, first responders and other survivors were given access to a US$4.2-billion compensation program, after an initial fund set up in 2001 had expired in 2004.
Many survivors are at increased risk for certain cancers, which may take years to develop. In 2019, after advocacy from survivors and others including TV host and 9/11 eyewitness Jon Stewart, the compensation program was prolonged until 2090 . According to Vox, experts estimate that premature deaths among survivors will outnumber the almost 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, then-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani became internationally famous. He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, and Time’s Eric Pooley called Giuliani “the mayor of the world.” The mayor “was the gutsy decision maker...pushing key institutions...to reopen and prove that New Yorkers were getting on with life. He was the crisis manager, bringing together scores of major players from city, state and federal governments for marathon daily meetings that got everyone working together. And he was the consoler in chief, strong enough to let his voice brim with pain, compassion and love.” Giuliani was given an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II and praised by world leaders.
He was an initial front-runner for the 2008 presidential nomination but withdrew in January of that year, mocked by some rivals for constantly referring to the attacks. Eight years later, he was an early backer of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and he later supported Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election results, speaking at the rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that preceded the riot at the U.S. Capitol. “September 11 hardened us. It prepared the ground for America to buy a vision of the world that it had not been prepared to buy when Giuliani was selling it,” Vanity Fair’s Aatish Taseer wrote in August 2021.
In April 2003, an international competition was launched to design a memorial to the victims of 9/11 on the World Trade Center site in New York. According to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the competition was open to people 18 or older from around the world, “without regard for nationality or professional accreditation,” and received more than 5,200 submissions from 63 countries. “In January 2004, the design submitted by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker, Reflecting Absence, was chosen as the winning entry,” the 9/11 Memorial and Museum notes. “Their design features twin waterfall pools surrounded by bronze parapets that list the names of the victims of the 9/11 attacks [including first responders] and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”
According to Arad, the pools “represent ‘absence made visible.’ Although water flows into the voids, they can never be filled. The sound of the cascading water makes the pools a place of tranquility and contemplation separate from the bustling noises of the city.” The memorial opened on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Sept. 11, 2011.
In early 2004, photos emerged of Iraqi prisoners being abused and tortured by members of the United States military. According to CNN, a report made public later that year revealed that American service members had been “punching, slapping and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees [...] arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them” and photographing dead detainees, among other abuses. In 2008, former detainees sued CACI Premier Technology, “a military contractor who supplied the army with interrogators,” and won a US$5.28-million settlement in 2008. Then-president George W. Bush and secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld quickly and clearly denounced the violence, but the damage was done in much of the Arab world. “The United States was already unpopular in the Arab world, mainly because of its war in Iraq. After Abu Ghraib, in most quarters, it became despised with a vengeance,” CNN’s Octavia Nasr wrote in 2009.
Before the 9/11 attacks, going to an airport in the United States was a vastly different experience. Baseball bats, box
cutters, darts, knitting needles, scissors and even small knives were allowed on flights, and security screening was carried out by private security firms, not law enforcement. Liquids did not need to be put in small containers in resealable bags at security checkpoints, and people without tickets could accompany loved ones with tickets all the way to the gate.
Fear of flying also spiked; more than 40% of Americans said they were less willing to fly in the days after the attacks, and air traffic fell 30% in the year after the attacks. As The Conversation summarizes, “it took several years, but the airline industry eventually did recover, and Americans once again were flying in record numbers”—despite the long lines at security.
The Watson Institute for Public Affairs at Brown University estimated earlier this year that 38 million people have become displaced—forced to flee their homes and seek refuge either within their home countries or elsewhere—“as a result of the wars the U.S. military has fought since 2001. The Brown University analysis calculates the number of people displaced as a result of U.S. and allied intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria in the context of the U.S.-led war on terror.
“Any number is limited in what it can convey about displacement’s damage. The people behind the numbers can be difficult to see, and numbers cannot communicate how it feels to lose one’s home, belongings, community, and much more,” the Watson Institute notes. The current refugee crisis is far from the first in Afghanistan’s recent history, and in addition to the devastating impact on individual refugees and their families, as Al Jazeera notes, the loss of skilled young people who seek safer lives and better jobs elsewhere will have a devastating impact on rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. Similar concerns prevail in Iraq, where, according to Brown University, “approximately half of Iraq's registered doctors fled the country in the years immediately following the 2003 invasion” and health outcomes for Iraqi patients worsened dramatically.
Many Muslim Americans found themselves under increased government surveillance after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Federal officials “ramped up government surveillance of the Muslim community, expanding the terrorist watchlist and infiltrating mosques,” as the Deseret News reports. The federal government “coded ‘terrorist’ to mean Muslim,” attorney Carolyn Homer told the newspaper.
Some Muslims stopped reporting hate crimes because they feared becoming subject to government surveillance themselves. In 2013 alone, more than 400,000 people ended up on terror watchlists; as of 2014, according to HuffPost, “concrete facts” were not required to put people on a watchlist, and “categories of people” could also end up on the lists, as could people who had the same names as terror suspects. “Someone on the watchlist will fail basically every form of government background check. You won’t be able to be employed by the government, get a credential for driving a semi truck or work in a chemical plant,” Homer told the Deseret News.
The practice of extraordinary rendition involves arresting and detaining people suspected of certain offences and forcibly sending them to countries where U.S. and international legal safeguards on the rights of detainees don’t apply. It had occasionally been used by the United States before 2001. “Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, however, what had been a limited program expanded dramatically, with some experts estimating that 150 foreign nationals have been victims of rendition in the last few years alone,” according to a fact sheet by the American Civil Liberties Union. The program “has allowed agents of the United States to detain foreign nationals without any legal process and, primarily through counterparts in foreign intelligence agencies, to employ brutal interrogation methods that would be impermissible under federal or international law,” according to the ACLU. One of the best-known cases of the practice involved Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar (pictured), who was forcibly extradited to Syria in 2002 and held for 10 months; a Canadian judicial inquiry later found “no evidence that [Arar had] committed any offence.”
For several weeks after the 9/11 attacks, American comedians seemed at a loss for words. “I have never ever felt more unsure or more lost than I do tonight,” late-night comedian Conan O’Brien said on air a few days after the attacks, according to U.S. News and World Report, which traces the journey that American entertainment took to find its feet again. The enduring impact of the attacks on pop culture has come in the form of a hit musical, Come From Away, which explores, through stories, songs, folk music and offbeat comedy, the experience of passengers on a flight that was suddenly rerouted to Gander, Newfoundland, on Sept. 11. Canadian producers David Hein and Irene Sankoff attended a 10-year passenger reunion and were “inspired by the stories of hospitality they heard and the deep bonds that had been formed in those few days,” according to the BBC. The interviews they conducted with “the desperate ‘plane people’ trapped on board for up to 30 hours with no connection to the outside world [and] the locals who scrambled to clothe and feed the thousands” turned into a surprise hit musical.
Two days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as the Council on Foreign Relations explains, al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. According to CFR, “experts believe [Massoud’s] assassination assured Osama bin Laden protection by the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.” Although none of the hijackers were Afghan nationals, the al-Qaeda terrorist group and its leaders were believed to be based there. On Sept. 18, 2001, then-U.S. president George W. Bush signed a joint resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for the attacks. U.S. and British forces began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001. The last Taliban strongholds in the country fell in December 2001 and “major combat” was declared over in May 2003, although U.S. and NATO forces continued to fight Taliban insurgents. On April 14, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would be completed by Sept. 11, 2021; by mid-August 2021, the Taliban had retaken control of the country. Over 20 years of war, more than 2,300 U.S. soldiers and more than 47,000 Afghan civilians are believed to have died, along with 458 aid workers and 74 journalists and media personnel.
Camp_Delta,_Guantanamo_Bay,_Cuba
Guantanamo Bay detention camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp (Spanish: Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo (/ˈɡɪtmoʊ/), on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. As of March 2022, of the 780 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 741 had been transferred elsewhere, 30 remained there, and 9 had died while in custody.
The camp was established by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration in 2002 during the War on Terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Indefinite detention without trial led the operations of this camp to be considered a major breach of human rights by Amnesty International, and a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution by the Center for Constitutional Rights.[2][3] There are also testimonies of abuse and torture of prisoners.
Bush's successor, U.S. President Barack Obama, promised that he would close the camp, but met strong bipartisan opposition from the U.S. Congress, which passed laws to prohibit detainees from Guantanamo being transferred to the United States for any reason, including imprisonment or medical care. During the Obama administration, the number of inmates was reduced from about 250 to 41.
In January 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the detention camp open indefinitely. In May 2018, the Trump administration repatriated a prisoner to Saudi Arabia.
In early February 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden declared his intention to close the facility before he leaves office, though the Biden administration has taken few steps in that direction. Instead, the Department of Defense has continued several million dollars of expansions to military commissions and other Guantanamo Bay facilities, including a second courtroom. The Biden administration has released 10 detainees from Guantanamo.
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