TRUTHDIG
September 12, 2023
There are two 9/11s, not one, and both cast long shadows into the present. The largest of these shadows, still covering much of the Middle East and beyond, is the legacy of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
As Norman Solomon explains in a Truthdig essay adapted from his latest book, a state of permanent war continues to define U.S. foreign policy, even as the president claims to govern a country “at peace.”
“With far fewer troops on the ground in combat and more reliance on air power, the ‘war on terror’ has evolved and diversified while rarely sparking discord in American media echo chambers or on Capitol Hill,” writes Solomon. “Twenty-two years after 9/11, the forces that have dragged the United States into war in so many countries still retain enormous sway over foreign and military affairs. The warfare state continues to rule.”
The “other” 9/11, preceding the more famous one by nearly three decades, is the U.S.-sponsored overthrow of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. Its shadow continues to darken the future of the Andean nation. As Marc Cooper writes in his investigative Dig on the fiftieth anniversary coup, “The ghost of Gen. Augusto Pinochet continues to roil and divide the Andean country he ruled for 17 years. His legacy of human rights abuses and neoliberal economics can be seen in Chile’s extreme inequality, its unreformed and unaccountable military and police, and unresolved human rights abuses, including the fate of more than 1,000 people who were disappeared during the dictatorship and thousands more still awaiting the trial of their abusers.”
Solomon and Cooper’s pieces anchor our coverage of the two 9/11s.
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