> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://redflag.org.au/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 9/11: How the US turned tragedy into barbarity - URL: https://redflag.org.au/article/9-11-how-the-us-turned-tragedy-into-barbarity/ - Published: 2026-09-10T05:34:30.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-10T05:36:05.000Z - Description: Twenty-five years ago, the world changed irrevocably. Not because of the terrorist attacks on the United States, but because of US imperialism’s response. - Author: Editors - Tags: Imperialism, History Twenty-five years ago, the world changed irrevocably. Not because terrorists from the al-Qaeda network attacked the United States, bringing down the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York, hitting the Pentagon in Virginia and killing nearly 3,000 people. It changed because of US imperialism’s response. The day after 9/11, the editors of *Socialist Alternative* magazine, one of the precursor publications of *Red Flag*, warned: “The real threat to people around the world is not terrorism, but the racism, militarism, repression and nationalism that has been unleashed in the wake of the terrorist attacks”. A week later, President George W. Bush, in an address to a joint session of Congress, announced his so-called War on Terror: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”. His administration rode the wave of outrage over al-Qaeda’s assault to open a new era of imperialist aggression that has cost millions of people’s lives. First came Afghanistan in October. It didn’t matter that the ruling Taliban [offered to hand over Osama bin Laden](https://abcnews.com/International/story?id=80482&page=1&ref=redflag.org.au), the alleged mastermind of the terrorist attacks, to a neutral country to face trial. The US was interested only in war. Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, admitted as much to the *New Yorker*’s Nicholas Lemann several months later. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, she had asked senior national security staff to think about how to “capitalise on these opportunities”. The Bush administration soon began making a public case for invading Iraq—which had no ties to 9/11—declaring the country part of an “axis of evil” with Iran and North Korea. Undersecretary of State John Bolton soon expanded the axis list to include Cuba, Libya and Syria. The bombs started raining down on Baghdad in March 2003. These invasions would have been followed by more had the resistance in Iraq not bogged down the US military in an intractable counterinsurgency. Nevertheless, Brown University’s [Costs of War research](https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human?ref=redflag.org.au) estimates the direct death toll from US military operations in the post-9-11 era in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan to be close to 1 million people. It estimates a further 3.6 to 3.8 million “indirect” deaths resulting from the “destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment”. The US also set up a global kidnapping network, which it termed “extraordinary rendition”, and a series of “black sites” in which prisoners were held without charge and tortured. [The Open Society Foundation estimates](http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/globalizing-torture-20120205.pdf?ref=redflag.org.au) that 54 governments collaborated in the program. Then there is the notorious [Guantánamo Bay torture camp](https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/01/1109472?ref=redflag.org.au), used since 2002 and still holding ageing prisoners from the War on Terror. This all served as notice that the US empire would stop at nothing to maintain its global domination. A more enduring legacy of this era of “forever wars” has been the construction of vast internal security and surveillance states, which have trampled civil and democratic rights. More than 140 governments have adopted “counterterrorism” legislation since 9/11, beginning with the USA PATRIOT Act, which green-lit mass surveillance and delayed-notice search warrants and bolstered spy agency resources. Mega-departments, such as Homeland Security in the US and Home Affairs in Australia, were established as Western states have become more authoritarian. Indeed, Australia is one of the worst offenders. “No other nation can match the volume of Australia’s counter-terrorism laws”, wrote legal academics Rebecca Ananian-Welsh and Keiran Hardy in [a 2021 piece for the University of Queensland’s *Contact* magazine](https://stories.uq.edu.au/contact-magazine/2021/before-9-11-australia-had-no-counter-terrorism-laws-now-we-have-92-but-are-we-safer/index.html?ref=redflag.org.au). They describe the scope of the laws as “staggering”, “unprecedented” and “extreme”, noting that they go beyond even “historical wartime powers”. They include control orders, preventive detention, and compulsory retention of all telecommunication and online data of every resident. The [Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Act](https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2021A00098/asmade/text?ref=redflag.org.au) of 2021 gave law enforcement agencies the power to take control of a person’s individual online accounts, modify or delete their data and even take over entire networks. That is, they can legally alter a person’s text messages. Death and destruction abroad and authoritarianism at home: such is the “rules-based order”, the purported demise of which we are supposed to lament. This post-9/11 era normalised authoritarianism, undermined democracy, outlaid trillions of dollars on military destruction and reconfirmed that Western governments lie and murder with impunity. The 9/11 responses laid the basis for the politics that now dominates the world: Trumpism and resurgent fascism. --- In the latest print issue of *Red Flag*, we revisit some of the arguments and developments from the first decade of the War on Terror. The above is the editorial introduction to several pieces from *Socialist Alternative* magazine (a precursor to *Red Flag*) that we believe have stood the test of time, unlike much of the reporting from those years, which was little more than propaganda and apologies for imperial barbarism. ### **FROM THE ARCHIVE** - [Tragedy in America: how should the left respond?](https://redflag.org.au/article/from-the-archive-tragedy-in-america-how-should-the-left-respond-12-september-2001/) (12 September 2001) - [US imperialism](https://redflag.org.au/article/from-the-archive-us-imperialism-november-2002/) (November 2002) - [War abroad and repression at home](https://redflag.org.au/article/from-the-archive-war-abroad-and-repression-at-home-november-2005/) (November 2005) - [How the US helped to create Osama bin Laden](https://redflag.org.au/article/how-the-us-helped-to-create-osama-bin-laden/) (First published 2007) - [‘End this disgusting war’: an interview with Malalai Joya](https://redflag.org.au/article/from-the-archive-end-this-disgusting-war-an-interview-with-malalai-joya-november-2010/) (November 2010)