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“The ‘war on terror’ was always a construct to be waged, never quite to be ended.” We discuss the origins and impacts of the global “war on terror,” launched by the U.S. government in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., with Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. “We saw, beginning at the very outset of the ‘war on terror,’ our leaders told us to understand 9/11 as an assault of a foreign civilization, one that had nothing to do with the consequences of American extractive and exploitative foreign policy in the Muslim world or its support for Israel.”

Ackerman says the “war on terror” and its repercussions have extended past U.S. ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to its current war on Iran, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and the development of extensive surveillance architecture and state repression of Muslim minority groups around the world. “A whole lot of regimes around the world, rising powers looking for their own advantage, saw what the United States was constructing and realized they wanted that for themselves,” he says.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue to discuss the global legacy of the 9/11 attacks, we turn now to look at the devastating impacts of the decadeslong so-called war on terror, a series of wars launched in the name of those killed on September 11th, 2001. Just nine days after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush declared the beginning of a war that would come to define the next 25 years of foreign policy. This is President Bush speaking before a joint session of Congress on September 20th, 2001.

For 25 Years, the War on Terror Has Turbocharged Surveillance and Imperialism

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. … From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy........

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