Twentieth anniversary of 9/11: Counter-terrorist campaigns are more destructive than terrorism

What began in Afghanistan and Iraq as an American-led invasion to overthrow unpopular rulers swiftly transmuted into something closely akin to an old-fashioned colonial occupation, writes Patrick Cockburn

Thick smoke billows into the sky from where the World Trade Center towers stood on 11 September 2001 (AP)

Certain viruses attack the human body indirectly by provoking a self-destructive overreaction by the body’s immune system. Successful terrorists operate in much the same way. They provoke a counterterrorism response out of all proportion to the original attack, and it is this that inflicts the real damage on the target.

By their very nature, non-state groups using “terrorism” as their prime weapon are small and have limited resources. At the time of 9/11, 20 years ago, al-Qaeda, the most famous terrorist group the world has ever seen, probably had fewer than a thousand activists in Afghanistan and supported a loose network of militants across the rest of the world. The destruction of the Twin Towers gave a tremendous shock to America, but al-Qaeda could never make another attack like it.

Devastating though 9/11 certainly was, its real success was in provoking a counterterrorist campaign that is still ongoing and has done damage to the US at every level. America has been damaged as a superpower because it failed to win wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been diminished as a civilised society because it resorted to rendition, torture and imprisonment without trial, justifying illegal actions by pretending that only by such means could public safety be assured.