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On October 7, 2001, 3 weeks after 9/11, U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan; bombers struck Taliban headquarters and Al Qaeda training sites. By early December, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been defeated and had fled. However, a war that began so successfully in 2001, eventually ended ignominiously on August 30, 2021, almost exactly 20 years later, with a U.S. withdrawal and a total Taliban victory. The speed of the Taliban's triumph shocked everyone. The entire campaign, costing US$2.3 trillion and 2,488 U.S. lives, had failed—utterly. The United States had lost its longest-ever war. How is it possible to explain a defeat of that magnitude? This article seeks to address this question. Although numerous factors played a role, this article identifies three principal factors: the environment, the local politics, and the Taliban. Afghanistan is a very difficult place to conduct large-scale military operations. The West never came to terms with the local politics and consequently undermined their own efforts. Finally, although they were not militarily sophisticated, the Taliban were politically astute and very resilient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the end of the Cold War and through the start of the 21st century, conventional IR theories were anticipating an eventual balancing against the United States. Puzzled when this phenomenon did not occur, balancing theorists engaged in a lively discussion, bringing with it the development of proposed alternative forms of balancing and a debate over whether the concept itself had perhaps outlived its relevance. This article reengages with this discussion, suggesting that many of the involved theorists were hampered by theoretical blinders based on statism, and that in fact balancing did occur, but in an unconventional manner and at the hands of an unexpected suspect: al Qaeda, a violent non-state actor, acting in a transnational manner. In this context, this article treats the 9/11 attacks of the violent Jihadist anti-Western movement as an instance of balancing against the hegemon, a successful one in that the Jihadists arguably aimed not at "winning," but at revealing the superpower's weaknesses so that others would subsequently join the balancing effort. By failing to view the Jihadists' efforts as an ideological balancing effort, the United States responded with force rather than ideational counter-balancing. They waged a war instead of emphasizing efforts to separate the radical violent Jihadist perpetrators from the idea they were championing—a struggle in the name of Muslims/the downtrodden East against the United States—and thus allowing the challenger to rise into a position of "dissident" in the Muslim world, and, arguably, paving the path for today's state revisionist behaviors. The article proposes a framework based on traditionally state-based concepts of intent and impact/capacity to show how non-state actors can in fact balance superpowers and therefore should be incorporated into balancing theories, and presents the actions of the violent Jihadists as an example of transnational, ideational balancing—a phenomenon as real and consequential as state-balancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post 9/11 wars have been mediated more than any other conflict in history. Just as television defined Vietnam and the first Gulf war, the internet is defining what we know, see, and remember about Iraq and Afghanistan. A handful of communication scholars have begun to pay attention to the way personnel represent themselves online, arguing that warrior-produced videos offer an alternative to the military–media control over information. This article takes up internet meme videos as mediated forms of cultural participation, arguing that the compulsion for US troops to create meme videos is fueled in part by the technology and in part by the popular culture they still interact with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the irruption of the designed destructive event in the order of the project of architecture. The artificial disaster brings onto architecture destructive sudden forces that operate against it with an intensity and speed that are different from those that are at play in it. It imposes on architecture the man-devised, forceful, and violent interference of a project that is alien to that of architecture. The violent orchestrated event in space is interpreted here as a paroxysmal—explicit, sudden, violent—actualization of the forces that contribute to the shaping of the environment. Design and planning are about space-definition and form-making, while the destruction inflicted by the disaster concerns the undoing of form, of planned orders, of structures (be they societal, urban, economic, national). Through a series of examples, this text explores those practices which—in architecture and around architecture—work on and with the energy released by the disastrous event. It aims to understand the effects of the planned disaster on the wider questions that the discipline of architecture needs to ask and suggests that silence—or, the project of silence of architecture—is an act of design too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This monograph examines from a psychological perspective the use of metaphors in framing counterterrorism. Four major counterterrorism metaphors are considered, namely those of war, law enforcement, containment of a social epidemic, and a process of prejudice reduction. The war metaphor is as follows: Wars are fought by states; the enemy is thus an identifiable entity whose interests fundamentally oppose your own. The conflict is zero-sum—the outcome will be victory for one side or the other—and there is no compromise. The war metaphor is totalistic and extreme. Arguably, it was adopted in light of the immensity of damage and national hurt produced by the 9/11 attack. It has insinuated itself into the public discourse about counterterrorism, and it has guided policy, but it has also met challenges because of lack of fit and the availability of counteranalogies with different lessons of history... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The risk of terrorism in the United States has gained a great deal of attention from researchers, policy makers, the public, and the press. This article focused on how one of these actors—the press—portrayed the risk during an eight-year period centered on the attacks of 9/11. The three goals of this study were to identify the dimensions of terrorism risk that are most likely to increase public perceptions of the danger, describe how these dimensions were portrayed in newspaper content, and explain how these portrayals were associated with other important news topics including the use of military force, the protection of civil liberties, and the image of the Muslim religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States armed-forces-and-society intersection is explored comparing attitudes toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan among West Point, Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), and civilian undergraduates. A survey was administered in January and February 2003 to determine if military affiliation is associated with attitudes toward sending troops into Afghanistan after the war started and Iraq before sending troops. Majorities of all students supported both war efforts, though United States Military Academy at West Point and ROTC cadets are somewhat more supportive of both wars compared to civilian students. However, most differences are explained by students' gender and political affiliation, suggesting that differences between groups result from selection effects rather than cultural differences. The authors contend a fourth wave in civil-military affairs potentially has emerged in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 through a civil-military attitude fusion complicated by a gender-politics gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how U.S. peace movement organizations (PMOs) sought discursively to overcome cultural and political obstacles to mass mobilization after September 11, 2001. Quantitative and qualitative methods are blended to analyze the official statements of nine U.S. PMOs. Three factors influencing framing are considered: the cultural context, the political context, and oppositional identities. The events of 9/11 presented discursive and emotional opportunities for PMOs to harness hegemony by drawing on resonant ideas, conforming to emotional norms, and linking strong emotions to opposing war and repression. Legitimated political closure in the aftermath of 9/ll also encouraged PMOs to harness hegemony by arguing that consensus for war and repression presented threats to civil liberties and democracy. Oppositional identities rooted in consciousness of structural inequalities encouraged PMOs to challenge hegemony, however, by highlighting the costs of war and repression of minority groups. This article advances our understanding of how interrelated cultural and political processes affect framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the emergence of the age of preventive war in 2005. It discusses the belief that the international community or its members could resort to nuclear force. Ramifications on the treatment of terrorism as a protracted war are discussed. It discusses the perception of terrorism before and after the terrorist attack that happened in the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

Analyzes the moral issues surrounding the U.S. wars. Background on the slaughter of My Lai villagers in Vietnam in 1968 as a result of the U.S.-Vietnam War; Assault by the U.S. on Iraq in 2003 ; Terrorist attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

Explores how the U.S. television coverage framed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to cause war hysteria. Analysis of the dominant discourses, frames and representations that informed the media and public debate in the days following the tragedy; Implications of the situation for information and knowledge.

Comments on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. Information on the institutionalization and normalization of warfare into everyday life; Forms of security taken by the homeland defense; Effect of political and democratic forces on the redesigning of infrastructure.