Five Years post-9/11: What's Changed?

---by Micheal

On this fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there have already been numerous tributes, retrospectives and editorials. One of them stood out, or at least provoked a bit more thought than the usual sentimental gush or jingoism.

William Dobson of Foreign Policy magazine wrote an editorial entitled: The Day Nothing Much Changed. In it, Dobson reminds us how just about everyone was saying that the 9/11 attacks changed the world forever. He argues that five years later, the world has managed to return to pretty much where it was on September 10th, 2001.

The global economy reeled a bit, but eventually recovered. The transportation network was paralyzed, but returned to a degree of normalcy. Sure, we have long, slow security lines at airports and taking off our shoes has become an almost invisible routine, but by and large, we get from A to B in much the same manner as before.

Civil libertarians wailed and tore their garments expecting the onset of a fascistic security state. Eavesdropping programs and wholesale commandeering of internet and phone records have become routine, but our rights and freedoms seem little different than 9/10.

Dobson is correct that the world system, and even our various national systems, have not been changed forever. We're back to grumbling about a gutless UN. It's fashionable again for liberals to bash patriotism. Democrats are back to complaining that George W is the devil incarnate. Republicans are back to complaining that Democrats are wieners. Nothing much has changed there.

Has anything really changed? In a more subtle, background sort of way, I'd say yes. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War was over. The US had no major enemy any longer. What took the place of the old Soviets, was a shadowy new enemy -- Osama's Al Queda cells.

You could argue that the world really changed back in 1993 when Osama's boys tried to blow up the World Trade Center the first time. We didn't really notice the change back then. Osama failed, so we didn't take him seriously. He fired the first shots, but we hadn't thought of it as a war yet. In 2001, he got much better at the role of New Enemy.

Terrorists are still out there plotting death and destruction to (somehow) advance a twisted agenda. I wonder if any of those scheming terrorists have noticed something about terror as a tool -- it really doesn't work. Five years later, and many things really are about the same. They did not bring the USA to its knees, force the American government to cave in to their demands.

If it seems nothing much has changed after five years, it's not a sign of American complacency. It's proof that terrorism is a failure tactic of petty thugs.