9/11's Dark Legacy of Mistrust and Global Terror Continues
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What happened
On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda hijackers seized four U.S. commercial airliners. Two were flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, which later collapsed; one struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia; and the fourth crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers and crew attempted to retake control. Nearly 3,000 people were killed. The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, enacted the USA PATRIOT Act, and created the Department of Homeland Security. On the 25th anniversary in 2026, commemorations are scheduled at the Pentagon, with President Donald Trump attending, and at the National September 11 Memorial in New York, with Vice President JD Vance attending.
BLINDSPOT.
Only left-leaning outlets are covering this story
— the other side's media is silent.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Right-leaning coverage of this 25-year argument is absent, so the claim that 9/11 produced overreach, lost wars, and a hunt for enemies at home has no published reply from that side. Left-leaning coverage reports the hijackings, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, torture, and the Patriot Act, then follows that machinery into immigration enforcement. A reader on the silent side never sees that chain, or that the Guardian treats othering as the wound that never closed while the Atlantic treats panic as the error that hid nuclear threats.
The left's emphasis splits in the opening frame. The Guardian starts with a widow who says her husband's death "has been invoked to cause more violence". The Atlantic starts with a government that made everything terrorism and then stopped paying attention to nuclear weapons.
What subsequent attack on U.S. soil did the war on terror prevent?
Bottom line
The Guardian used the 25th anniversary to tie 9/11 to ICE, and no right-leaning outlet has published a reply.
The receipts — 6 facts one side's coverage lacks
- A former Obama deputy national security adviser said ICE agents are running counter-insurgency strategies in American cities
- Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks
- The Patriot Act passed 45 days after the attacks
- 780 men and boys have been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay since 9/11
- Jenna Jacobs McPartland's husband died at Windows on the World and their son was born six days after the attacks
- United Airlines Flight 93 was 20 minutes flying time from Washington when passengers rushed the cockpit
The Left View
The Guardian, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones published 25th-anniversary analyses framing the U.S. response as a lasting dark legacy of overreach. They recount the attacks, the invasions of Afghanistan (ending with the Taliban’s return after 20 years) and Iraq (on later-disproven WMD claims), CIA black-site interrogations including waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act’s surveillance expansion, and trillions spent. Named sources include a 9/11 widow, former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes, historian David Blight, civil-liberties lawyer Jameel Jaffer, and others who argue the reaction distracted from China’s rise, eroded civil liberties and the rules-based order, fueled xenophobia later associated with Donald Trump’s politics, and that post-9/11 authorities now underpin ICE operations and other domestic enforcement. Mother Jones adds a first-person Capitol Hill account of September 11 and honors Flight 93 passengers whose revolt is credited with preventing a strike on Washington. Opportunity costs in climate, health, and education are cited.
Our Take (balanced)
The pieces are long-form retrospective commentary, not a report of a new discrete event. Established and checkable: the 2001 attacks and death toll; the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and their outcomes; passage of the Patriot Act; creation of DHS; Guantanamo, black sites, and documented detainee abuse; the 9/11 Commission’s findings on intelligence failures; and the scheduled 2026 commemorations. Interpretive claims—that the response was a strategic miscalculation that caused U.S. decline, that it produced an autoimmune national decay or directly generated later domestic politics and ICE tactics, or that it constituted a betrayal of American ideals—are arguments by the quoted commentators, not newly documented facts. No right-leaning outlet has reported this. Watch official remarks at the Pentagon and New York memorials, any new government or congressional assessments of post-9/11 authorities, and whether additional outlets publish anniversary coverage.
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