It’s exactly a quarter of a century since 2,977 people were killed by al-Qaeda terrorists in New York, Arlington and Pennsylvania.
The US elite – and its allies – responded by launching a series of wars and violent acts.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, up to 4.7 million people were killed in the post-9/11 wars, both through direct violence and the consequences of destabilisation, such as disease and hunger.
Between 37 and 59 million people were displaced from their homes.
Millions of children were driven into hunger.
Over 7,000 US soldiers and more than 8,000 US military contractors were killed. Taken together, that is about five times the number of people killed on 9/11 itself.
Hundreds of thousands of US and allied personnel were wounded. 1.8 million US veterans now have an officially recognised disability because of the wars.
An astonishing 30,177 US service members and veterans of the post-9/11 wars died of suicide.
The estimated financial cost to the US alone was $8 trillion. The bill doesn’t end there. Caring for post-9/11 veterans is projected to cost up to $2.5 trillion by 2050.
That was money diverted from infrastructure, services and the real economy.
According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and public policy expert Linda Bilmes, this helped destabilise the US economy in the run-up to the 2008 financial crash. The war was financed through debt rather than taxation, driving up interest costs, while the conflict also contributed to higher oil prices. US consumers, they noted, kept up their levels of consumption by borrowing against surging house prices.
The success of the ‘War on Terror’ can be judged by another key statistic: 3,329 people were killed by terrorism worldwide in 2000. By 2014, that figure had soared to 32,685.
Iraq was plunged into violent chaos, with a sectarian bloodbath detonated by the US-led invasion. All of this helped give rise to ISIS, which seized large swathes of Iraq and Syria, with apocalyptic consequences for its victims.
A two-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan – with hideous war crimes committed by the Western occupiers helping to drive an escalating insurgency – ended with the Taliban back in power, stronger than ever.
Torture became Western state policy. A worldwide network of secret prisons and rendition flights was established, with detainees abducted and transferred beyond ordinary legal protections.
Drone warfare and targeted killing were normalised. This was the dawn, too, of mass surveillance.
Muslims were demonised, setting off a tidal wave of bigotry which helped drive the rise of the far right.
Donald Trump himself was a direct consequence of all this chaos – threatening the very future of an already compromised US democracy.
Indeed, the War on Terror boomeranged home. Trumpism has redirected its rhetoric and institutions against migrants and political dissidents.
Before the attacks, the West seemed to be at the apex of its power. The post-9/11 wars played a pivotal role in the bloody, chaotic death spiral of Western hegemony that came next.
The September 11th attacks were a terrible crime.
What Western elites used those attacks to justify was the crime of the century.
You can order my book The Fall of The West: How They Really Lost It here
The victims of 9/11 are also the millions of people who lost their lives or livelihood due to western illegal wars on arab people to justify the theft of lands, natural resources and sovereignty to keep western capitalism going at the expenses of the global south
Chilli g statistics. How about the theory that the attack was not what it appeared to be? With the ‘demolition ‘ of the towers and complicity with Israel? So much to find out still.