For those who had not yet reached adulthood in 2001, a third of the world's population, it is impossible to understand the degree of astonishment and terror that ignited in the United States and in much of the world that still summer morning of September 11 ago. 20 years. Never in history has there been an attack of such dimensions against the financial and political hearts of the first superpower, an exceptional country, sheltered by two oceans, which has not known foreign invasions.
Not even the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941 in the middle of the Pacific had caused so many casualties and spread so much pain and a sense of vulnerability among Americans. Also never in history have images of destruction been broadcast and broadcast even live on televisions around the world, immediately becoming the symbol of the fragility of American power.
The post-Cold War idyll and reverie had ended. Suddenly the majestic solitude of the single superpower cracked. It was a change of era. The unipolar world order ran into a tiny terrorist group capable of defying it and declaring war on it with as much cunning and determination and, however, very little material means, in the end some plastic knives, which served to threaten the crews of the four planes. kidnapped, turned into huge howitzers directed against the centers of American power.
A new light, apocalyptic and dazzling, hung over the world, turned into a very dangerous place in which the use of force seemed to be mandatory to maintain security and order.
It was not the time for contemplations or multicultural dialogues in the face of that sinister and elusive threat, which forced a change in mentality and customs.
The demand for security crushed every other consideration, including human rights, individual freedoms, and even democracy.
The United States was at war and declared at war.
It was a moment of disturbing unanimity around the commander-in-chief, the president, in defense of the attacked homeland.
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View of Manhattan when the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse on September 11, 2001. dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo
In one morning, the world had passed from the time of imminences, typical of the idea of progress, democratic transitions and great hopes for the future, to the time of anxiety, in which uncertainty and uncertainty prevail. fear, embodied by the threat of a devastating and unexpected attack.
The president and his closest collaborators were traumatized and convinced that more attacks were going to follow, such as those perpetrated by Al Qaeda against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and like the one that targeted the White House, towards which the plane was heading. crashed in Pennsylvania after being heroically controlled by passengers.
No one was fooled about the sudden response that was to be produced immediately by the most powerful army in history. A war of unknown dimensions was about to begin, paradoxically at the precise point where wars end and then lead to armistices and peace agreements: after the lethal attack on the heart of the metropolis and its headquarters, the Pentagon. The whole world was concerned when George W. Bush made it clear that he was not going to admit neutral attitudes or half measures: “We will persecute all nations that provide aid or refuge to terrorists. All nations now have a decision to make: either they are with us, or they are with the terrorists ”.
His words were foreboding: "Americans should not expect a battle, but a long campaign such as they have never seen." It was going to start in the Afghanistan of the Taliban, from where Al Qaeda had organized the attacks, but "it will not end until all terrorist groups with a global reach have been located, stopped and defeated." It was the declaration of the Global War on Terror, just closed now, two decades later, by another president, Joe Biden, with his emphatic declaration of the end of "the era of great military operations to remake other countries."
The White House felt liberated from the ties that had until then limited its power of action and proceeded to use its immense force to change the
status quo
of the world and shape it to its liking, without regard to the Constitution, the rule of law, the international conventions and much less the United Nations. He first ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and then invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein, with the aim of setting the example of the establishment of friendly, apparently democratic regimes by force of arms.
The new war also brought a new military doctrine. According to presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger, the
Bush doctrine
that emerged from 9/11 "repudiated the winning strategy of the Cold War — the combination of containment and deterrence — and turned war, traditionally a matter of last resort, into a presidential option." It was a revolutionary change whereby "a policy directed at peace through the prevention of war was replaced by a policy directed at peace through preventive warfare."
Foreign policy and diplomacy were militarized, law and public liberties suffered in their country and in the world, little was left of multilateralism in international relations, and the United Nations system and institutions were especially degraded.
Legal limbos such as Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib were created to kidnap and interrogate suspects.
Torture and targeted killings were recognized and used by the Government.
Habeas corpus
disappeared
for those who were designated as “illegal combatants without a State”, outside the coverage of the war conventions.
Osama bin Laden's house, on May 3, 2011, after a US military incursion ended in the death of the leader of Al Qaeda.Aqeel Ahmed / AP
Nothing substantial happens on anniversaries, as scheduled events that they are, except the opportunity to set a moving gaze on the authentic event they commemorate. It is exceptional that two events that have already acted as authentic milestones that separate the eras of history intertwine and are the object of programming, such as September 11, 2021, the day on which the attacks by Al Qaeda against the Twin Towers are commemorated. of New York and the Pentagon in Washington in 2001, and which was marked by President Biden as the deadline for the presence of US troops in Afghanistan. It was a bad calculation. The coincidence of the anniversary with the change of strategy, instead of leading to a happy celebration, throws up the most bitter and uncomfortable questions.Have the civilian and military efforts, the billions wasted and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and ruined, served any purpose? Is there a victor in this Global War on Terror? And if there is, aren't the Taliban the winners?
More information
The embers of 9/11
9/11 in reports and documentaries on TV
The answer is not simple.
History is sometimes woven together like a string of wars, each one succeeding the previous one as an effect and preceding the next one as a cause.
Peace is difficult and rarely succeeds in succeeding defeat, military occupation and regime change, as happened in Germany and Japan after World War II, the meritorious antecedent of US interventionism, which has not served in any subsequent case to prevent the disasters.
Poorly resolved wars, without reconciliation or peace, often incubate new wars.
Bush's obsession was to avoid a new attack like the one suffered on 9/11. Its effects on the morale and image of the United States would have been even more devastating than 20 years ago, let alone its electoral effects for the Republican Party. If Al Qaeda has not returned to act in the United States, Bin Laden was eliminated and his organization is even in decline, then it could be deduced that the United States has won. Nothing more misleading. First of all, because the Western presence in Afghanistan has little to do with the increase in counter-terrorism security in the United States, which is fundamentally due to the enormous reforms promoted after the 9/11 attacks, which affect border controls and in transport, especially airport; to espionage and the intervention of communications,and above all, to the coordination and direction of anti-terrorism with the creation of the Department of National Security.
There is no doubt about the improvement of internal security, but the same cannot be said for the global spread of terrorism on all continents, the increase in attacks in the allied countries of Europe and the persistence of radical jihadism throughout the Muslim world such as diffuse religious ideology with potential for violent action. No one can rule out that the emirate of Afghanistan itself will once again become the territory of a radicalization auction between the different currents of the Taliban, the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Biden has recognized it: "The terrorist threat has metastasized throughout the world, beyond Afghanistan",although the conclusion he has reached could not be more disappointing for the NATO allies who came to the aid of the United States in 2001 and now receive the message that Washington will only take care of their security.
As in a landscape of ruins, the defeats pile up on September 11, 2021. The military, the most powerful army in the world in the hands of some ragged guerrillas. The politics of a strategy of liberal interventionism and the export of democracy by arms. Morale, both for the democratic values defeated in Afghanistan and for the lost trust and credibility: Trump's victory was already a warning that did not deny Biden's victory, in which there was no guarantee of an even more regrettable return of the Trumpism. The hasty and unilateral exit from Kabul, without paying attention to the interests and obligations to such devout allies as the Europeans, has corroborated the degradation of the 70-year bond. The defeat belongs entirely to NATO. Also Brexit,with his idea of a global UK and his increasingly weakened special relationship with America, he has been defeated.
Taliban fighters, Aug. 29, 2021, in Kabul, Afghanistan.Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag
Hard not to concede that victory is on the other side.
The Taliban are back in power.
Islamism, in all its branches, even the most reticent to terrorism, feels reinforced in its anti-Western convictions.
Jihadism has received a morale boost for its fighters.
Bin Laden has achieved, 10 years after his death, the two objectives he set for himself: to demonstrate the vulnerability of the United States and to force its armies to leave the Middle East.
This has been revealed by the papers found in the Abbottabad complex where he was killed on May 1, 2011, after being analyzed by researcher Nelly Lahoud in a prominent article in
Foreign Affairs
magazine.
this September ('Bin Laden's catastrophic success. Al Qaeda changed the world, but not in the way he hoped').
From the notes and personal diaries found in his lair, Lahud deduces that Bin Laden wanted to unleash "a campaign of revolutionary violence that heralded a new historical era," until he brought together the entire global Muslim community, the Umma, under his sole authority. .
His immediate intention was to drive the United States out of the region and facilitate the overthrow of autocratic Arab regimes by the jihadists, but he failed to imagine a response such as the declaration of a global war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. .
The greatest defeat for the United States is not even the territorial victory of the Taliban, but the one suffered at the geopolitical level, most visible in the light of the 20 years since 9/11. Instead of the democratization of the greater Middle East then announced, these two decades have left without exception a string of failed states and dictatorships. They have facilitated the expansion of Iranian hegemony over Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. And they have gifted Pakistan a strategic victory in its confrontation and rivalry with India. Minimizing Afghanistan's loss to the country's limited economic and political value diverts attention from the strategic advantage gained by China and Russia through self-inflicted attrition by the single superpower.
Washington had the support of Moscow and Beijing in the Security Council 20 years ago in its response to the attacks.
At that time, both powers already derived immediate returns from the United Nations resolutions and from the new international anti-terrorist atmosphere in their policy of repressing the Chechen minorities, in the Russian case, and the Uighur, in the Chinese.
As if they had followed to the letter a famous sentence of Bonaparte - "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" -, the Chinese and Russians have exhibited great strategic patience in exploiting the weaknesses of their adversary, whom now they declare in open decline.
If they were right, this would be the biggest and bitterest defeat for the United States in that war declared 20 years ago.
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