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17/09, 13:30
9/11 and the war on terror 5 days in discussion
Editorial summary

The attacks of 11 September are being revisited through their aftermath: war, surveillance, detention, and the political uses of fear. What is contested is whether that response made security stronger or left the United States, Europe, and the Middle East less safe and less free.

Lead piece

The Chálid Šajch Muhammad case shows how the U.S. post-9/11 military justice system became paralysed and Kafkaesque.

Key actors

September 11 attacksGeorge W. BushAl QaedaOsama bin Laden

How it travelled

Started in English · crossed 14 language spaces

  1. English +0h Foreign Policy
  2. Portuguese +34h Observador
  3. German +7d Journal 21
  4. Dutch +10d NRC
  5. Spanish +10d El Orden Mundial
  6. Finnish +10d Helsingin Sanomat
  7. Polish +11d Rzeczpospolita
  8. Slovak +11d .týždeň
  9. Italian +11d Domani
  10. Norwegian +11d Dagsavisen
  11. Serbian +11d Vijesti — Kolumne
  12. Czech +11d Český rozhlas Plus (Komentáře)
  13. Turkish +13d Serbestiyet
  14. Greek +15d Kathimerini

Editorial layers

English

Core Contention

Did the post-9/11 response improve security, or did it widen the damage by deepening war, surveillance, and executive power?

Argument Map
Clear position outside this map: Jan Fingerland (Český rozhlas Plus (Komentáře)), Miguel Baumgartner (Visão), Matthew Yglesias (Slow Boring), Lotfi el Hamidi (NRC), Ed West (Wrong Side of History), Dávid Polák (.týždeň), José Pedro Teixeira Fernandes (Público), María Ramírez (eldiario.es), Vijesti (Vijesti — Kolumne), Štefan Hríb (.týždeň), Colin Sheridan (Irish Examiner), Samantha Hancox-Li (Liberal Currents), Andreas Kilb (FAZ), Helsingin Sanomat, Nicholas Harris (New Statesman), Bryan C. Del Monte (The Long Memo), Bart Jan Spruyt (Wynia's Week), Newsroom (Kathimerini), Tomáš Zálešák (.týždeň), Dave Keating (Gulf Stream Blues), Makronom, Bill Scher (Washington Monthly), Wieland Schneider (Die Presse), Wieland Schneider (Die Presse), Kai Eide (Dagsavisen), Yousef Munayyer (Al Jazeera Opinion), Juan Rivas (El Orden Mundial), Helena Wittlich (Tagesspiegel), Ana Marcela (ECO), Matthew Yglesias (Slow Boring), Ondřej Konrád (Český rozhlas Plus (Komentáře)), Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui (Serbestiyet), Georgiana Banita (der Freitag), Valentine Lomellini (Corriere della Sera), Daniel Byman (Lawfare), Ellen S. Bakalian (The Atlantic), The Grayzone, Eric Boehm (Reason), Hillary Rodham Clinton (The Atlantic), Jason Briggeman (Liberal Currents), Mariano Croce (Domani), Roman Joch (Český rozhlas Plus (Komentáře)), Beata Błaszczyk (Krytyka Polityczna), Jorge Fernandes (Observador), Robert D. Kaplan (UnHerd), Kenneth Propp (Lawfare), Claudia Pizzocri (Daily Maverick Opinionista), David Thomson (UnHerd), Immaculada Monsó Fornell (La Vanguardia), Alice Valeria Oliveri (Domani), Edward Augustyn (Tygodnik Powszechny), Jan Uphoff (Cicero), Noah Smith (Noahpinion), Matthew Cooper (Washington Monthly), Jonathan Chait (The Atlantic), Thomas Vieregge (Die Presse), Thomas Wessel (Ruhrbarone), Erich Gysling (Journal 21), Colin P. Clarke and Clara Broekaert (Foreign Policy), Brian Finucane (Foreign Policy)
No clear position: Manuel Castello Branco (Observador)
Fault Line

The split is over the record of the U.S. response: security gain versus strategic overreaction and legal decay.

New Element

The latest pieces focus less on the attacks themselves and more on the unfinished legal and political costs of the response, especially Guantanamo, surveillance, and presidential war powers.

European Relevance

European governments helped build the counterterrorism order and now face its legal, security, and far-right spillovers.

Angles in this discussion

At least 8 distinct readings of the same story, detected across the articles.

  • The War on Terror deliberately prevented closure and justice, turning 9/11 into a permanent emergency
  • The post-9/11 response made the world less safe and eroded law, restraint, and Western legitimacy
  • 9/11 reshaped security, geopolitics and democracy in ways that still define the 21st century
  • The September 11 attacks were a hinge point whose contingent aftermath is still underestimated
  • 9/11 and the war on terror were the foreseeable result of earlier US policy and exposed Western complicity and hypocrisy.
  • Bin Laden's miscalculations and Bush's Iraq diversion made the war on terror strategically damaging and politically blundering
  • 9/11 failed to produce lasting anti-Muslim backlash and instead reshaped politics through unintended consequences
  • The US response to 9/11, especially Iraq and Homeland Security, empowered authoritarian politics and made America less free
Discussion detected
13 Sept 2026, 11:40
Latest article
17 Sept 2026, 13:30
Authors
99
Articles
106
Languages
Czech, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Slovak, Spanish, Serbian, German, Italian, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Turkish, Polish
Source concentration

No single source has more than 6.5% of the core pieces.

Discussion: Voices: Christian Caryl, Jan Fingerland, Manuel Castello Branco View all 99 voices

Sources

99 distinct sources contributed to this discussion.

+ 93 other sources, each with 1–2 articles.