[ta_egdhs]

idk why this is downvoted. the 90s is the period between the end of the cold war and the start of the war on terror. its the only time in living memory where there was no enemy.

9/11 absolutely changed the country. it was the start of militarized police, nationalistic displays, and 24/7 fear that have all been normalized today. Perhaps the terrorists didn't win (Bin Laden is dead and the house of Saud still stands) but we certainly lost.

[NeedMoreTea]

Perhaps this is far too controversial a view for HN, and for many Americans, we'll see.

The terrorists absolutely won. Least that's my perception as a non-American. Your first mistake was legitimising them as "the enemy"

When the IRA were bombing Docklands, Manchester or Birmingham pubs we'd make a poor taste joke the next morning, walk past the wreckage and forget about it the day after that. When the Baader Meinhoff Group were killing public figures, and bombing Brits, Germans and Americans over in Germany they were treated as a bunch of insignificant extremists. Even by the Americans it seemed from news reports. There'd be a poor taste joke or two, and they'd be ignored. Much the same for other terrorist groups hijacking aircraft or killing people through history. "Don't deal with terrorists" was heard from every politician.

Then came 11/9 and the "war on terror." So determined were your politicians to legitimise the terrorists it became a war. Against a legitimate target. Globally. So determined were you to preserve your "freedoms" that you built an apparatus of surveillance to ensure that freedom. Apparatus so far reaching that it is indistinguishable from an apparatus of oppression. Most other countries played along too in support, and built the same apparatus of oppression to preserve freedom. Not only did the USA lose, and the terrorists win, but the UK, France, Iraq, Malaysia etc lost too. So did freedom.

No more bad taste joke the morning after and treating them as a bunch of irrelevant idiots unworthy of but the briefest air time (like I get the impression most Americans still do with a group like the Westborough Baptist Church), but an unwinnable war with a legitimate enemy and a leader, and endless analysis. Everyone except them, globally, lost.

[ta_egdhs]

I think you missed my point when I said "the terrorist didn't win but we certainly lost".

Everything you say about how we've lost our identity, optimism, and freedom is exactly what I meant by "we certainly lost". I agree with that 100%.

But none of these things were the goal of al quida. AQ doesn't win by virtue of what we've lost. AQ doesn't care that we turn ourselves into a police state. "They hate our freedoms" is a propaganda line we told ourselves. The goal of AQ was to end the rule of secular governments on the Arabian peninsula (namely the Saudi's) and they attacked the US precisely because we prop up the Saudi's. 17 years later we're still backing the Saudi's. Bin Laden is dead. An order of magnitude more death has been unleashed in the Muslim world than what was released on America on 9/11. 9/11 was ultimately massively counterproductive to the goals of AQ. The terrorists didn't win.

[hindsightbias]

The price of freedom isn’t the WOT or trillions for wars - it was 9/11 and accepting what a few handfuls of men could do in a one-off in a free society.

We can win every tactical battle, but we lost strategically.

[zdragnar]

In a country of 325 million people, it seemed like there wasn't anyone who didn't know someone either affected or directly harmed by the 9/11 (11/9 as you call it) attacks. It didn't feel like "some poor saps over there got the short end of the stick" it felt like "we're all directly attacked".

This wasn't the first time Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda reached out and touched us. Previously, we'd treated him more or less the same as you'd suggested, thinking back to the attack on the USS Cole we just lobbed some missiles off into the desert and called it a day.

As for the surveillance apparatus that sprang up in response, there was most certainly a backlash against it, with all the dystopian oppressive government warnings. The general public didn't really mind much, though, because they'd felt that the government fundamentally failed at what could theoretically have been a preventable disaster.

So, given that, what were we to do? Say to our neighbors, "sorry, you have to risk death in future attacks because I can't be arsed to wait longer in lines at the airport"?

I don't think the terrorists have won, because their objective wasn't to make our lives a little less pleasant. Their objective (as stated) is the fundamental destruction of our nation. Sure, we've compromised our constitution by allowing our government more power than it ought to have. The consequences of our reaction, our actions (and lack of actions in other places) will be felt for generations. That doesn't mean that the terrorists have won, far from it.

[api]

Most of HN trends young (<=30) and maybe doesn't remember the before time.

There was a general optimism and sense of freedom in the 90s that is just gone. We have continued to progress in many amazing ways, but I feel like it's on inertia. The living, growing, vibrant ideas of today are totalitarian and paranoid: the alt-right, the authoritarian left, nationalism, technocracy, neo-feudalism, etc.

I think part of the popularity of 9/11 conspiracy theories comes from the deep intuition that something broke and never recovered. I think most of those theories are BS but the intuition is correct.

[kiliantics]

9/11 didn't come out of nowhere though. The 90s weren't actually war-free. There was, in fact, no shortage of wars[0]. Sure, they mostly do not involve western powers, but they can certainly be traced back to them. All of these civil wars are the reverberations of colonialism and the two world wars.

The former colonisers were so unwilling to relinquish their grasp on these territories and so willing to instead install puppet governments or just continue their colonisation through multinational corporations instead. It's no surprise it led to these insurgencies that have the US in their sights. We reap what we sow.

> its the only time in living memory where there was no enemy.

The reality is that we have always been the enemy. And we manufacture a bogeyman to legitimise our hegemonic power and the unjust actions it requires to maintain that power. When the USSR and other socialist powers fell, a new enemy had to be created and 9/11 worked perfectly.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1990%E2%80%932002