War of terror: Legal colonialism reincarnated

Did 9/11 really open a ‘new’ chapter in American history?

In the canon of 9/11 anniversary essays, “newness” is a perennial theme: the “unprecedented” changes spawned by an “unprecedented” threat.

Commentators mourn America’s “loss of innocence” – erasing the blood of centuries of settler colonisation, imperial expansionism, and enslavement from the United States’ historical slate.

Pundits decry the extension of mass surveillance and erosion of civil liberties as “[Osama] bin Laden’s victory” over American freedoms – scrubbing the long genealogy of policing, surveillance, and counterinsurgency measures wielded to repress Indigenous, Black, and Latinx dissent in the US.