Two things stood out in the American mind about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. One, it was, in the eyes of Americans, unprovoked, and two, it happened on US soil - in, as they say, The Homeland.
To take the second point first, the unspoken deal the U.S. public had long made with its military and foreign policy was that, yes, there would be ongoing war, yes, there would be bombing campaigns and the destruction of cities and the deaths of thousands - but those would happen in someone else's country. In, for example, Cambodia and Vietnam - with those countries having no ability to bomb the U.S. back. The Americans would attack Iraq in the Gulf war, but that war would be fought overseas, not in New York or Boston. The invasion of Grenada? No chance that any fighting would happen in Texas. The multiple times (I believe the number is nineteen) that the U.S. Invaded Guatemala in the twentieth century held no danger of Guatemala taking the war to Michigan. The west could bomb third world countries without worrying about those countries bombing anything in the West. For one thing, those countries had no military capacity to fly over Chicago and drop fire bombs - no wonder going to war was no big deal.
But today, technology has reached a point, and strategies have been developed, so that targets (or those who perceive themselves to be targets) of US war can, in fact, bomb the US. Without missiles, without B-52s, without nuclear submarines, or jet fighters, enemies can hit the Homeland. When America bombs Yemen, the effects of that bombing do not stay in Yemen. Instead, they may bomb the U.S. back - with a suitcase. There was a reason America never attacked the Soviet Union - because the Soviet Union would have hit the US in return. It used to be safe though, to attack smaller countries. Maybe not so much these days.
You might think that fact would change American policy and make military adventurism and fiddling with other countries politics less attractive or at least more tentative. But the thing is, the terrorist attack on the U.S. is universally considered unprovoked by Americans. Whatever it may have been in the minds of the perpetrators, no one one this side can accept that anything could have preceded 9/11. Even the Muslim world saw the attacks as criminal and unjustified and unprovoked - there were pro-US demonstrations in Iran, of all places - until, that is, America responded to the attacks with war. War on Afghanistan. War on Iraq. Black site prisons. Torture. Drones. All of which, in the minds of many Muslims, justified 9/11 in retrospect; see, the US really is trying to destroy Islam, really is bent on dominating or eliminating Islamic countries or populations - Bin Laden was right. At the time Muslims saw 9/11 as unjustified and shameful terrorism, by the end of Bush's tenure many saw 9/11 as pointing out an obvious truth, that America was out to destroy Islamic culture.
Since 9/11 was such a shock, violation, affront, was done to such innocents, was so like the Crucifixion of Jesus - the most innocent person who could possibly be and who had only wanted to help the very people who executed him - the response had to be damnation to the perpetrators (remember when Jesus called down curses and hate on the Romans who were crucifying him? "Kill them all, Father, for they know exactly they are doing." Look it up). Such a challenge to self-image, to confidence, to invulnerability, military supremacy, righteousness and the favour of God, the raised possibility that not everyone wanted to be an American; a controlled, measured, limited, criminal justice, political, cultural, response including working with then-sympathetic Muslims would have been emotionally unsatisfying. Outrage must be met with outrage. As the point of capital punishment is simply to emotionally satisfy those who like it, the point of the Iraq war for the public was the visceral release of anger - "Hulk! Smash!" - even if those leading the war had another agenda (Oil? Glory? Utopian arrogance? Money? Empire?). There is nothing more natural than the desire to hurt people who hurt people.
But if that is the reaction of Americans to an attack on them, what do they think the response of foreigners will be to attacks on them? If a U.S. drone kills your friends and family, are you not going to have he same reaction? Aren't you going to want to lash out in return? And, of course, there is a way to lash out. Terrorism.
This war is already lost. It was lost as soon as it was declared, because war was the goal of the attack; to provoke the targeted nation to over-react with excessive violence which will only make the terrorists' point for them, namely that there is a war going on between their interests and our interests. That sides must be chosen. That there is, always has been, and always will be, a war going on between the West and Islam. It's just that now we know it, whereas before only people like Bin Laden could see it.
9/11 was unprovoked, but not unusual. People in other countries have had bombs dropped on their cities, governments overthrown, civil wars, military dictatorships, dirty wars, and death squads - they already knew how politics and economics and ideology kill, even American politics, even capitalist economics, even our foreign policy. What happened to America that day was that buildings blew up in an act of political violence - something that had happened in lots of other places, sometimes (often) as a result of Western interests. The charmed life of North America (Satan himself to its enemies) has changed. It was not a loss of innocence; the west was never innocent. It was joining the club. It was our becoming like the other nations of the world - subject to war and aggression and attack and violence from political interference from external forces whose interests differ from ours.
To the extent that American exceptionalism is built on military supremacy, it took a blow on 9/11, and an even bigger blow in Afghanistan and Iraq. No one sees the U.S. as invulnerable or even intimidating the way it used to be. This is not like to change. It is the new reality. Perhaps the west needs to find a political, international, policy approach that doesn't rely one an advantage it no longer has.
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