This archive report was first published on 5 September 2021.
September 11, 2001, was a day that shook the world, leaving an indelible mark on American society. Two decades later, the nation is still grappling with the aftermath of the attacks, and scholars are sounding the alarm about the devastating consequences of the US response.
According to Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, the US launched big, messy wars in response to 9/11, which have cost trillions of dollars and run up the national debt to alarming levels. The wars have also led to the militarization of police departments, making them seem like occupation forces in their own communities.
Adam Horwitz, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan, notes that 9/11 is a unique event that has had a profound impact on all Americans. He describes it as a 'memorial day' that serves as an opportunity for somber reflection on the lives lost on that day, as well as the veterans and their families who have suffered losses in the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ann Lin, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy, argues that the tragedy of 9/11 resuscitated a politics of fear that targeted Arab and Muslim immigrants, much like the politics of fear directed against Italian immigrants in the early 20th century, German immigrants in World War I, and Japanese immigrants in World War II.
Yasmin Moll, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, echoes Lin's words, saying that the narrative of a clear-cut 'us' versus a clear-cut 'them' was easy to adopt in the aftermath of 9/11, but it left room for neither the ordinary experiences of individual Arabs or Muslims nor for the collective trauma of Arabs and Muslims as themselves victims of political violence and terrorism.
Twenty years after 9/11, the US is at an inflection point with respect to its posture against terrorism, with a shift more towards combating domestic terrorism as against international terrorism, according to Javed Ali, an associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy.
