‘War on terror’: How 9/11 changed the language of conflict

Torture became “enhanced interrogation”. Suspects were seized and removed crossed borders done “extraordinary rendition”. Detainees held astatine Guantanamo Bay were designated “enemy combatants”, portion deadly attacks were described arsenic “surgical” oregon “targeted” strikes.

In the years aft the September 11 attacks connected New York City’s World Trade Center, a full caller vocabulary of war, laced with the connection of bureaucracy and precision, moved into the governmental mainstream successful the United States.

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At its centre was a operation wide capable to encompass astir everything that followed: the “war connected terror”.

That operation came to specify an epoch successful which the US illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, established the notorious Guantanamo Bay holding centre for “terrorists” and dramatically expanded its surveillance and nationalist information powers astatine home. And it was each facilitated, experts say, by a caller lexicon, 1 that sanitised violence, and erased the humanity of its targets.

Twenty-five years later, the operation “war connected terror” is present heard acold little often from the White House. But galore of the themes and ideas it helped to embed stay profoundly rooted successful US politics.

“I deliberation we tin spot the bequest of the warfare connected panic everyplace successful US authorities today,” Leonie Jackson, a elder planetary relations lecturer astatine Northumbria University successful the United Kingdom, told Al Jazeera. “In fact, I would reason that we are inactive precise overmuch wrong the logic of this ‘war’.”

A ‘war’ without beforehand lines

Nine days aft the attacks connected New York and Washington, DC successful 2001, then-US President George W Bush addressed a associated league of Congress. “Our warfare connected panic begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not extremity determination … It volition not extremity until each violent radical of planetary scope has been found, stopped and defeated,” helium declared.

Congress had already passed the Authorisation for Use of Military Force, signed by Bush connected September 18. The authorisation gave the president wide authorization to usage unit against those helium determined had planned, authorised, committed oregon aided the September 11 attacks, oregon anyone who had harboured those responsible.

But dissimilar a accepted war, this was not a warfare against a circumstantial radical oregon country.

“Terrorism is not a state, a territory oregon adjacent a circumstantial organisation. It is simply a tactic,” Christopher Baker-Beall of Bournemouth University told Al Jazeera.

“Declaring a ‘war connected terror’, therefore, created a struggle without an evident geographical bound oregon intelligibly defined force and therefore, importantly, nary earthy endpoint.”

Later that year, Bush laid down a stark situation for the planetary community: “Either you are with us, oregon you are with the terrorists.” Bush besides often utilized the word “evil”.

Harmonie Toros, prof of authorities and planetary relations astatine the University of Reading successful the UK, told Al Jazeera that this “language is utilized to sanitise actions taken by the US – actions that could beryllium seen arsenic not good for a normal, functioning ideology to undertake”.

At the aforesaid time, she said, it represented “a beardown discursive effort to demonise” the enemy. Fear, choler and the tendency to respond, Toros said, “come unneurotic and make this ‘war connected terror’”.

The effect was a communicative that divided the satellite not lone betwixt allies and enemies, but betwixt notions of “good” and “evil”.

In his paper, 9/11, the Crisis of Meaning, and Disinformation successful the 21st Century, Jason Thomas wrote that this stems from assemblage ideas of civilisation and barbarism, and the US had constructed a communicative that “asserted the … ‘civilised/barbarian’ arsenic a cardinal axis successful satellite politics”.

When torture became ‘enhanced interrogation’

The US invaded Afghanistan little than a period aft the events of September 11, 2001. Then, successful March 2003, a US-led conjugation invaded Iraq based connected repeated claims by the Bush medication that Iraqi person Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of wide demolition that could endanger the US and its allies. In the end, the stockpiles Washington said it was definite existed were ne'er found, but by that clip it was excessively late.

The “war connected terror” rapidly expanded into a sprawling web of planetary subject operations and covert operations.

Nearly 780 radical would yet walk done the US subject situation astatine Guantanamo Bay. All but a fistful person since been freed without ever being charged with a crime, but immoderate had by past languished successful detention without charges for two decades.

When the British-American quality rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith archetypal arrived astatine Guantanamo to render ineligible assistance to detainees determination soon aft it opened – helium was among the archetypal lawyers to beryllium granted entree – helium said helium saw boys arsenic young arsenic 14 being held. “The Guantanamo detention campy was calved a atrocious prevarication and it remains one,” Stafford Smith wrote for Al Jazeera successful 2022.

Besides Guantanamo, the CIA operated concealed detention facilities, oregon “black sites”, overseas portion the maltreatment and torture of prisoners by US forces astatine Abu Ghraib prison successful Iraq became 1 of the defining scandals of the war.

Oiling the wheels for those practices was a connection that often appeared deliberately clinical. Torture and abusive interrogation methods including the notorious signifier of waterboarding, prolonged slumber deprivation and accent positions were described arsenic “enhanced interrogation techniques”. The covert transportation of detainees extracurricular mean judicial processes became “extraordinary rendition”.

“What is striking astir galore of these presumption is their bureaucratic oregon method character,” Baker-Beall said. The effect was to make “moral and governmental distance” which “can sanitise acts of bonzer unit and crook them into thing that sounds similar an mean instrumentality of authorities policy”.

In a bid of ineligible memoranda which became known arsenic the “Torture Memos”, lawyers successful the Bush medication constructed an extraordinarily constrictive mentation of what constituted torture arsenic the CIA sought ineligible authorization to usage progressively brutal and coercive interrogation techniques.

Jackson said euphemistic connection helped cloak specified practices successful “a veneer of legality”, allowing leaders to interruption planetary ineligible protections, portion maintaining the representation of the US arsenic the “good guys”.

Tahir Abbas, prof of criminology and planetary justness astatine Aston University successful the UK, told Al Jazeera “this connection besides desensitised mean members of the public, rendering them progressively numb to the profoundly dehumanising and depersonalised ways successful which decease and demolition were discussed”.

“Often successful narration to guiltless victims,” helium added.

Suspicion and the surveillance state

Forty-five days aft September 11, Bush signed the Patriot Act, vastly expanding the surveillance apparatus of the US authorities and making it easier for quality and instrumentality enforcement agencies to stock idiosyncratic information.

The post-9/11 information architecture besides transformed the mode immigration, borders and home policing were understood. The Department of Homeland Security was established successful 2002, bringing galore agencies liable for borders, immigration, transport and information nether a azygous nationalist information structure.

Security argumentation became progressively acrophobic not simply with what idiosyncratic had done, but with what they mightiness do.

“The cardinal governmental displacement went from responding to existent threats towards governing imaginable aboriginal threats,” Baker-Beall said. “Once that happens, the imaginable scope of information argumentation becomes overmuch wider.”

That logic created governmental abstraction for quality gathering, detention, borderline controls and enforcement power. Governments crossed Europe besides introduced sweeping counterterrorism laws and expanded surveillance, portion Muslim communities progressively recovered themselves connected the receiving end.

Abbas described the effect arsenic a “boomerang effect”, successful which citizenship stripping, securitisation and surveillance became normalised successful the lives of Muslims.

The connection of the warfare connected terror, helium said, helped physique a wider authorities of “othering”, successful which full communities could beryllium formed arsenic sources of information – making specified suspicion itself a justification for surveillance, detention and different forms of authorities control, adjacent erstwhile individuals had done thing wrong.

What the ‘war connected terror’ near behind

By the clip Barack Obama became US president successful 2009, the caller terminology had begun to change. On 23 May 2013, Obama announced that the “war connected terrorism” was over.

But the institutions built successful the aftermath of September 11 did not vanish with it. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, oregon ICE, was created arsenic portion of the Department of Homeland Security, its enduring bequest being progressively predominant images of ICE agents patrolling streets successful balaclavas arresting radical of colour and assaulting protesters since Donald Trump began his 2nd word arsenic US president past year.

Far from being unopen down, Guantanamo Bay – itself possibly the astir recognisable carnal awesome of the post-9/11 suspension of mean ineligible norms – has been utilized by the Trump medication to detain migrants.

The warfare connected terror, therefore, near down a bequest of constructing threatening communities: “a signifier of villainising a circumstantial radical of people”, Toros said.

“It tin beryllium gangs oregon a circumstantial migrant group, oregon adjacent sex oregon sex identity. Post-9/11 and each the warfare connected panic sermon allowed radical to go much skilled erstwhile the intent is to villainise a community.”

And its bequest expands into US overseas policy, with Trump ordering the enforcement subdivision successful 2025 to usage the sanction “Department of War” arsenic a secondary rubric for the Department of Defense, saying that the sanction amended conveyed America’s willingness not simply to support itself but to combat and triumph wars.

And those ideas person played retired connected Trump’s watch. The US is erstwhile again at warfare successful the Middle East, with Trump claiming that subject enactment against Iran was indispensable to forestall it from processing a atomic limb – a justification that has drawn comparisons with the claims astir weapons of wide demolition utilized successful the run-up to the penetration of Iraq successful 2003.

The Trump medication has besides drawn connected parts of the post-9/11 lexicon portion processing a vocabulary each of its own. Military enactment has again been framed done the connection of “pre-emptive” and “precision” strikes, portion Iran has repeatedly been described arsenic a “terror regime” and the “world’s starring authorities sponsor of terrorism”.

“It is not simply a continuation of the ‘war connected terror’ and the circumstances are precise different,” Jackson said. “But the aforesaid pre-emptive information logic is familiar.”

“What is striking is the continuing powerfulness of the aforesaid governmental argument: We cannot spend to hold for the menace to materialise, truthful enactment has to beryllium taken now.”

She added that “the bequest of the warfare connected panic everyplace successful US authorities today”.

“We whitethorn person moved distant from the connection of the warfare connected terror, but its effects stay profoundly ingrained successful US society.”