After Sept 11

A QUARTER of a century since the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, the world continues to feel the effects of that epochal event. The US response to the attacks on its soil went beyond a counterterrorism operation. It metastasised into a sprawling imperial ‘crusade’ that laid to waste countries that had nothing to do with the terrorists who had hijacked the American airliners. In fact, the US misadventure in Iran is a continuation of these flawed policies. Today, the world is no safer from religiously inspired terrorism than it was 25 years ago, reflecting the futility of the American-led ‘global war on terror’ and its modern-day iterations. Soon after the attacks, Muslims, including Arabs, in the US faced intense discrimination. Matters may have improved in some respects; after all, New York City, which was the epicentre of the terrorist attacks, today has elected a Muslim mayor .

But conversely, Islamophobia in the US is currently at historic levels, spiking after the launch of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in 2023 . The current US administration has contributed to this bias, with many of President Donald Trump’s close confidantes spewing reprehensible views. Big Tech, too, has played a significant role in mainstreaming anti-Muslim hate across the larger West. In the field of foreign policy, little has changed. Post-Sept 11, Washington launched invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the first instance, after a two-decade nation-building experiment, the Americans beat a hasty retreat , leaving Kabul to the Afghan Taliban who returned to power. In Iraq, the US occupation resulted in a vicious sectarian war, which paved the way for the rise of the self-styled Islamic State group. IS was arguably even more brutal than Al Qaeda, the outfit the Americans had sought to crush for…