Argumentative Essay On 9/11

September 11th, 2001 marks a very dark day in the United States. It is symbolic of loss and mourning for thousands of Americans who lost loved ones in a terror attack. This date also marks a very significant shift in how the U.S. military would go on to conduct a war. It has deeply changed the way that many Americans view an entire region of the world. The US War on Terrorism is a loosely defined war against an ideology that was also consequently a war of us vs. them.
A few days after 9/11 happened George W. Bush addressed congress. This address was designed to inform the people who the enemy is and how the United States had planned to go about fighting the enemy. One of his first opening statements, he referred to the attack on 9/11 as

Military would go about fighting wars. This would be the first war that the United States would engage in that would be fought against a non state actor, and more challengingly an ideology. This sent Congress and the President scrambling for answers. So they drafted up a Joint Resolution. This would give Authorization for Use of Military Force. What this attempted to do was defined who would essentially fit the bill for who terrorists are and who has the power to do what against them. However, it doesn’t even provide a concrete definition of who the terrorists are. It instead gave a blanket statement of about the nations, or groups that could plan out a terrorist attack. It also granted the President to “authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks” While the AUMF meant well, it was fatally flawed. In a way it allowed for a lot of ambiguity to take place in the war on terrorism. It allowed for a lot of groups of people to be targeted. It has also not been revised or revisited. At a Senator's event at the Wilson Center, Jane Harman : Director, President and CEO of Wilson Center. She had Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona speak. They talked about exactly this, the flaws and problems with the AUMF’s. They talked about how if these had what they

He claimed that it was a “war unlike any other in history.” which sounded really apocalyptic at the time and still pushed the narrative of an us vs. them or a civilized vs. savage ideology. Dick Cheney also backed this up by stating that this should be a “invisible war.” and should be hidden from the American people. From this you can also infer that they would be doing “un sanctioned things.” During this time the White House was convinced that another attack was inevitable. They had new intelligence that emerged after 9/11 that only intensified that fear. The CIA was the lead power in counter terrorism efforts and during this time they didn’t care if torture was used, they would use any means necessary to get the answers and intelligence that they needed. However they felt that this was completely justified because they believed that there would be another attack and more Americans would become the victims of