It’s Been 21 Years and Politicians Still Say the Same Things About 9/11

Biden and his right-wing critics agree on little, but still lionize the War on Terror.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Twenty-one years ago today, hijackers directed two passenger airlines into the World Trade Center’s twin towers and another into Pentagon. A fourth flight, likely headed toward the US Capitol, crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. The series of events, which killed 2,977 people, shocked a nation that had not experienced such mass carnage on its mainland since the Civil War. The period after the attacks witnessed a brief period of comity in the nation and an outpouring of sympathy and support for the United States from the rest of the world.

All of that soon evaporated as the US government launched the War on Terror, an effort marked by officially sanctioned torture and mass surveillance. And so today, given that history, how should we remember 9/11? 

In a speech at the Pentagon today, flanked by military brass, President Joe Biden showcased what has emerged as the conventional way to think about the history-changing cataclysm: An attack on American resolve, which the nation absorbed with dignity, and responded to with successful and justified aggression. 

As has largely been the case on this anniversary for the last 20 years, the president opened his remarks by focusing on the grief of those who the dead left behind. His own life haunted by the trauma of tragic deaths of family members, Biden vowed to “keep alive the memory of all of those lives stolen from us on that terrible day.” He added: “I know that for those of you who lost someone, 21 years is both a lifetime—and no time at all.” He quoted a message sent to the American people by the recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II: “Grief is the price we pay for love.” 

After a wrenching tribute to the first responders who entered smoking rubble to save lives, Biden sought to justify the subsequent wars launched by the US government in response to the day’s atrocities. “Over the years since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of American troops have served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and so many other places around the world, to deny terrorists a safe haven and to protect the American people,” he declared. Biden took pains to avoid using the occasion to drum up anti-Muslim furor. 

Meanwhile, right-wing pols chose to lionize the War on Terror without such restraint. Rudy Giuliani—who commanded the spotlight as “America’s Mayor” during 9/11 and its aftermath—took a break from his crusade to overturn the 2020 election to claim that the wars “preserved our spirit and saved our nation,” while having a poke at “Islamic Extremist Terrorists.” (Several days before the anniversary, Giuliani appeared on Newsmax and described 9/11 “in some ways…as the greatest day of my life.”)

Sen. Ted Cruz, perhaps hoping to dash the internet’s memory of his embarrassing but historic Sept. 11, 2017, Twitter mishap, drove home a similar theme.  

In his 2021 book Reign of Terror, veteran journalist Spencer Ackerman delivered a different way of thinking about the violence unleashed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Ackerman argues that the forever wars neither “protect[ed] the American people” (as Biden claimed) nor “saved” the nation (as per Giuliani). Instead, buoyed by a tangle of lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the wars torched trillions of dollars of federal money only to fan racist anti-immigrant furor; justify torture and the rise of mass digital surveillance; breed an atmosphere of paranoia and conspiracy-mongering that eroded faith in American institutions; and committed the nation to foreign adventures that could never end in victory. The chaos wrought at home ultimately opened the door to the presidency of Donald Trump, Ackerman argues.

“Experiencing neither peace nor victory for such a sustained period was a volatile condition for millions of people,” he writes. “Trump knew how to explain such humiliations: the War on Terror was an enraging story of insufficient brutality wielded by untrustworthy elites.” He goes on:

 Those elites, he claimed, pretended that America was not at war with Islam, that it was not experiencing a foreign invasion, that it was not at risk, in the final analysis, of being itself lost. If America could not defeat its enemies abroad, there were so many here at home: Muslims, nonwhite immigrants, brown people from what Trump called “shithole” countries, queer and especially trans people, Black people, socialists, liberals, Jews. A war that never defined its enemy became an opportunity for the so-called MAGA coalition of white Americans to merge their grievances in an atmosphere of righteous emergency. That impulse unlocked a panoply of authoritarian possibilities that extended far beyond the War on Terror, from stealing children to inciting a violent mob that attempted to overturn a presidential election.

Ackerman recently expressed hope that his analysis would emerge as the “dominant narrative of the 9/11 Era.” Listening to Biden and other politicians mark the anniversary today suggests that the heroic view of the War on Terror clearly still has plenty of life.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate