The images still hurt of that Tuesday, September 11, 2001, which paralyzed the world, as the towers fell and a war that shows no signs of ending was unleashed.
In the following days, U.S. President George W. Bush repeated once and again that the crusade against terrorism would be a long one, announcing a new type of war, a total war, with no limits, that would mean conflicts, military interventions, new threats against states, against coalitions of states, and anything associated with the enemy, an abstraction named “evil,” always justified by the need to protect national security and the rights of those who make a business of these conflicts and their consequences.
Much has been said about attempts to justify every conflict unleashed, financed, or supported by the United States, with references to terrorism, playing with the feelings of millions around the world, especially the U.S. people themselves.
From the legal point of view, the Patriot Act reinforced the principle of a permanent state of emergency, which suspended constitutional constraints that the Constitution presented for the fight against terrorism, with practices like torture resurfacing – albeit outside U.S. territory – and internal security strengthened with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
According to a report from the Costs of War project at Brown University, the United States has spent some eight trillion dollars on war since 2001 and will pay at least that amount in interest over the next few decades. Although time has passed, the appetite for war remains alive and well – remember that Trump has just approved a record budget of 716 billion dollars for “defense.”
One would hope that remembering the day and its aftermath, would allow us to reflect and ask ourselves again and again: Do the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of the apparently unending list of conflicts unleashed since September 11, 2001, have a price?
(Granma)