covered the listening post on i just i joined 0 as part of the launch team in 2006 pro just as a goal for a 1000000 mom march. in that time i covered wars revolutions, elections on mandatory cruise from the preventive of correct. so the battle fields around most of our job is to get to the truth and empower people through knowledge . ah, hello there, i'm mr. you tando how the headlines for you here are now to 0. now commemorations will begin in the united states in about half an hour to mark 20 years since the $911.00 attacks. nearly 3000 people were killed. president joe biden earlier posted a video calling for americans to reclaim the spirit of cooperation that followed 911. use what makes us who we are american at its best

to me. that's the central lesson of september. 11th, is that at our most vulnerable in the push and follow all that makes us human in the battle for the soul, american unity is our greatest strength. our white house correspondent, kimberly how it sets the scene for us from new york. it's already a very somber mood here at ground 0. there are going to be a number of living presidents that will be attending these commemoration events. we will be expecting not only the current president joe biden, but also a former president clinton obama, and also as well. we are expecting the president who was really in charge of everything when it happened on $911.00, and that will be george w bush. now. notably, who will not be here is donald trump, which is a bit of a surprise,

given the fact that he was living in new york at the time of these events. but what we expect is that there will be no public speeches from these presidents. they will be here really just to commemorate the event and to remember what happened on that day and to offer the support to the not only victim families, but also to the 1st responders. we do know that there will be, as part of the ceremony, there will be 6 moment of silence to commemorate the major events of the impacts of the plane, the crashing of the plane, and also the downing of the towers. robin gucci is an associate professor lancaster university and he explains how 911 shapes the u. s. view of the wild and different cultures. i saw a lot of that immediate domestic response of hyper militarization of police which seeped into churches into classrooms and really began to foster i think

a baseline for where we are today in domestic politics. and that has a direct influence into the national and international responses that the united states leads in terms of fears and moral. panics related to one's fueling is momma phobia and into negotiations with its friends and neighbors across the world and how to respond to western and american interests economically and militarily. so the, the things that have happened over the 20 years, domestically on american soil, in terms of the response, has a direct impact into the narratives of popular culture that spread across the world and politics. meanwhile, a new york times investigation has revealed the u. s. may have mistakenly targeted an aid worker and a drone strike that killed 10 people in the african capital back in august. and the u. s. military has said was going off to isolate charlotte, bella has moved from couple in that joint strike. the pentagon said that it hit i

for bombers who were planning an eminent attack on the airport. we know that civilians were killed in that but now this investigation has, has you. cctv footage has talked more than a dozen of the target family members and colleagues and found out that he was actually a worker for us a organization. they also showed that he was loading canisters of water into the car and not explosion. explosives, as the painter gone, had seeds. and they are also leaching that wasn't secondary explosions, which is what the pentagon used to prove that they knew that they were explosive in the car. now there's another news, and israeli forces have arrested 4 of the 6 palestinian prisoners who escaped from a maximum security facility 5 days ago. one of them is for talk. amanda, the car is you baby, 2 prisoners remain at large. well, don't forget about half an hour be starting without special coverage here of the

$911.00 memorial in your stay with me. i me hi, i'm steve clemens and i have a question. 20 years after the attacks of $911.00. how is the world changed and how has america changed? let's get to the bottom line. ah, it was the biggest sucker punch in america's modern history, outside in its leader, osama bin laden had planned and executed the hijacking of commercial airlines and killed almost 3000 people in the morning of september, 11th, 2001. no one saw it coming. and no one could explain it, it been loud and wanted to so fear and confusion, america. he had definitely succeeded. the u. s. response was massive and visceral, but besides decimating al qaeda and killing bin laden. there's so much more that has happened in the past 20 years in the so called global war on terror,

aka the global war on everything. america violated its own laws, is suspended habeas corpus. protections for suspects it kidnapped, that tortured and rendered suspects to 3rd countries to be tortured, even more. and to look at every global challenge to the lens of islamic terrorism. along the way, fortunes were made by those benefiting from massive spending on national security, like new weapons and drones, vehicles, surveillance systems, you name it, even local police departments in the us started to look and act like the military. today when civil liberties are threatened and the master valence of phones and emails is just about normal, we shrug. so what $911.00 do to america and can america reinvent itself so that it's not chasing goes forever. today we're talking with political scientists in journalist david roth cop, the former editor in chief, a foreign policy magazine, and host of deep state radio, a podcast on american power, and it's global impact. he's the author of running the world, be inside story of national security council and the architects of american power.

previously, he managed the international advisory firm, a former secretary of state, henry kissinger, and now he has his own the rop cop group. david, it's great to be with you, and thanks for joining us today. this is a somber time, a moment to sort of reflect on 20 years after one of the most major attacks on the american psyche. let's play a clip from president george w bush on what he said right after 911. the attack took place on american soil. but it was an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world. and the world has come together to fight a new indifferent war. the 1st, we hope, the only one of the 21st century or against all those who seek to export terror and a war against those governments that support or shelter them. david, that was president bush's launch of the so called global war on terror. and my

question to you after 20 years is what has that done to the american psyche in your view? well, i think ultimately it's done a lot of damage. in the days after $911.00, president bush responded as any president would. he did a number of things that i think were completely appropriate. he expressed grief. he expressed angry, deployed troops to go out and get the people who had perpetrated the crime. but the global war on terror became an umbrella term that enabled the united states to much more broadly expand this than we should have. you know, i think there is a kind of a collaboration that goes on between a terrorist and the victims of the terrorist. ideally in the eyes of the terrorist, the victim wo overreact in ways that support the terrors narrative and

weaken the victim. and that's exactly what happened with the united states. not only did we extend the war into iraq, which was entirely unjustified, and had grievous consequences, not just for iraqis, but for america standing in the world and cost over trillion dollars. we expanded the mission and africana stand beyond getting al qaeda. we extended the global war on terror and to many other countries. we, as you noted in your intro, set aside american values, which under cut us in dramatic ways. and you know, 20 years later, it's clear. well, you know, we spent, i think, a total of 3 trillion dollars, thousands of american lives, hundreds of thousands of other lives. and you know that a great deal of damage has been done back and just put

a button on it though. i think we can end in a more optimistic place. i think president joe biden recognizes that it's time to turn the on the past 20 years. and time to reset our priorities and, and begin to undo some of the damage that was done. well, i want to, i want to talk to you about president by now want to tell our audience, you had a very powerful bed recently on this subject of overreaction and the lack of resilience in the united states after terrorist attacks that ran in the daily beast . but before that, go back to 1997, the c c. and ended interviews with osama bin laden and our hearing. and they both were very overtly open about the fact that they thought that they could attack the united states. and that they could like a playbook get america to overreact, to undermine its own place in the world. and thus create the conditions that would, that would allow them to recruit more and to look legitimate in the eyes of people

who have grievances around the world. and so i guess my question to you is the see, i knew what bin laden was saying, our national security establishment knew what bin laden was saying. why has it been so difficult to stand resilient against the efforts of others to hijack us and make them do what we want to do? because that's what you're saying. you were warning about this right after 911. you warned it again about it again, just in your recent op ed, why has this country failed to basically say, we know what you're trying to do and we're not going to do it? well, i think it's hard to do, you know, i, i think the reality is that, you know, 911 was a deeply devastating blow to the psyche of the country. thousands of lives were lost, there was a lot of pain and it was natural to,

to want to react, you know, in a way that was proportional to that. but of course, it goes further and you know, we live in an era in which our media tends to cheat up the dialogue rather than cool it down at once. took days before a story was reported and reached the general public time for things to cool down. now everything happens in an instant. you know, i think one of the contributing factors to 911 and our reaction was, fox news was founded in 1996 m. s. b. c was founded in 1996. the goal was. ready founded in 1998, the american people around 2001 passed 50 percent internet penetration. this was a different kind of political atmosphere and ideas could catch fire more quickly. but point out that since then it's gotten even harder. and twitter and instagram

and facebook. things that contribute to that all came 20042005, instagram, kevin, 2010. i want to interviewed former senator george mitchell, not only about the israeli palestinian situation of which he had some responsibility at that time, but the broader middle east. and he said that the unresolved issues in the middle east were so big, so deep in tectonic lea. complicated that america ought to just stay away from the region that the, that the so called sam huntington class of civilizations was inevitable if we got involved and we ought to just, you know, say give us a call in 400 years. what is your view on these tensions in the middle east? are they? are they the kind of tension america can be engage with? or ought we? should we withdraw? keep our powder dry. wait for the middle east to resolve its own issues and be on the sidelines. i don't, i don't think we should be on the sidelines,

but i don't think the only option we have is to intervene militarily or, you know, try to do nation building. when we do both of those things, we have problems in the region. we have diplomatic tools. ready we have, we cannot make tools, we have the ability to work through international institutions. we have the ability to work with alliances, of like minded countries. they're on the ground, and i think we should do all of those things as any other internationally engaged. our would. i do think, you know, one of the things that happened in the course of the past 20 years is we learned the cost of mistakes, of, of the kind that we may, whether that's me unilateralism or, or nation building. as i indicated earlier, american exceptionalism neeve and i was quite striking earlier in this year when secretary of state blinking gave his kind of 1st address the secretary of state.

and he talked about in america that was kind of post american exceptionalism. he talked about in america that was more humble, that was more willing to engage through international mechanisms that was more willing to listen. that was more willing to approach other countries as peers. and i think, you know, if there are positive consequences of the past 20 years, it is that those things are lesson learned. and this is an administration that has learned those lessons. so how does he take those lessons, david? and i'm, and i'm, you know, i believe that you're sort of have something on your thumb on something very important. but i think a lot of the world looks at that as a function of american weakness of weakness after the moment the failure in afghanistan. and now we're willing to listen to people cuz we've been beaten down the chinese talk about it. well, america's in, you know, a period of strategic contraction from the world. how do you turn that around?

you're an expert in this, you're a pro and washington and turn that into a position of strength and enlightened policy as opposed to something that looks as if we're just basically talking our tail and walking away. i don't think it's strategic contraction. i think it's ending irrational overreach and i think that, you know, there is a way to step away. ready from thinking the us military was the solution. every problem thinking the u. s. was uniquely able to impose its will on the rest of the world, you know, and getting to a place where we assume our role as other great powers do constructively working with them. standing up for our values where we, we must, defending ourselves where we must, but not overreaching, not trying to remake the world that america's image. and i don't, you know, i mean, jo biden's been advising advising. you know that we embrace and approach like this

for a long, long time. he advised president biden, a president obama, and in 2009 to drop down in afghanistan and refocused our mission. then this is not you know, something that's recent. it's something that a lot of people have known was the right thing to do for a long, long time. no, i know he has and you and i have talked about it in the past that, that, you know, joe biden saw afghanistan as a black hole for money, for loss of lives and for not coming up with a winning solution in the end. some have described our afghanistan departure is something that is given, you know, a lot of glee to china and russia watching us with these problems. but, you know, i've been in the, in the wondering whether or not, you know, try and is now seeing darn, you know, america's now no longer tied down in afghanistan. it's going to have greater resources and attention to deal with other issues including them in the world. am i getting that wrong or is that how david roth cop sort of sees it as well?

i think that's more importantly than, than what i might say it. i think that's how joe biden said that it's not an accident that we've pivoted from getting out of afghanistan in the month of august to focusing in the month of september on investments that may total as much as 4 and a half trillion dollars into the united states in our infrastructure, human infrastructure and making our systems more resilient against climate and fighting climate change and making our systems more resilient again, cyber attacks and focusing on a competitiveness. you know this, this is one of those hinges of, of history or at least of american foreign policy or domestic policy, where the president of the united states has saying, we spend 3 trillion dollars. busy on futile wars, the damage over the last 20 years, i want to spend an equivalent sum of money investing in us so that we can lead

again in the remainder of the 21st century. and that we can face the challenges that we're sure are going to emerge over that time. that's sensible, strategic, repositioning that again, as i, as i said earlier, is long overdue. dave, what about guantanamo guantanamo is still open. other presidents, including president obama, tried to close one time to mo, it was his central obsession of his white house council. they failed to do so. guantanamo is still there. you could argue some people have argue that, that president obama and his team got very active in drones shrikes because, you know, it was easier to do that than actually to begin to continue to increase the population of those enemy combatants that were housed at guantanamo is guantanamo remains something that creates a problem for the sort of reset you're advocating for. absolutely does. it should be shut down. you know, where they were just undertaking the trial colleague,

shake mohammed for the events of 911. and it's 20 years later. and you know, all the observers recognize that this is a failed process. you know, we believe in, you know, the right to a speedy trial in our society. and we're not giving that in this instance. guantanamo is a black guy, just like a grape, was a black guy, just like rendition, and the use of torture was a black guy. and honestly, i think the united states has made a mistake. not only in keeping those things open and not addressing it. i think the united states has made a mistake in not holding us officials who are responsible for violating. busy our laws and our values and violating international law, accountable for doing that because unless you know people accountable for those kind of abuses, they'll continue. let me ask you a question about how we deploy resources when we think about our engagement abroad

nation building. you said we have other tools, but i remember when secretary of state, then secretary of state, hillary clinton was in her position. she launched something called the q d d r. the quadrennial development and diplomatic review to sort of look at how america does it's diplomacy, how it does and engages in development. and one of the big bottom line findings of that report is that not enough resources, we're going into the tools of diplomacy and the tools of development and many of those resources warehouse and responsibilities warehouse and the pentagon. and even then secretary of defense, robert gates said stop it, we need to give those resources to the state department. and so i want to ask this question about the militarization of everything the militarization of our, of our engagement abroad, the militarization of, of development. i remember when, when david portrays, were talk about his captains that were deployed in afghanistan, how they were essentially becoming the de facto mayors of towns and villages

throughout afghanistan. and it just seemed to me something that was odd. and we've now seen how a lot of those resources have trickle down into domestic police departments in the united states that material, et cetera. how do we undo that? because that seems to be like a big deal that we can't just say, let's just do these other tools. they have to have resources. why? you know, i think we have to undo it by, you know, recognizing the damage that it's done to us. you know, we're discussing whether or not we should spend another 7 or $800000000000.00 in defense this year. as every year. the big debate in the united states on defense spending is whether it goes up 3 percent or it only goes up 2 percent, or maybe it should go up 5 percent. it's insane. the systems that we've got, many of which are, are antiquated, obsolete, are not

a political to the nature of the future of conflict. the way that we promote people in our military is based on old models and modalities of fighting war. we don't even have doctrines for the next generation kind of conflicts that will have like cyber conflict. when you respond, how do you respond with force if ever to a cyber attack, consider etc. we need a complete reset, a 0 based look at how do we do defense in the united states. and i think you're absolutely right. one of the ways that you do that is, you know, just as you would with policing, is you stop saying that the military is the solution to everything. and you start re, you deploying those funds to entities that are better position to do. it would be better off if we spend more money on development assistance on diplomacy on economic aid that gives us leverage on international institutions that assume some

of the responsibilities that we've had. justice with policing. i'd be better if police were not the ones doing mental health counseling in the united states. it was actually people who understood how to and were trained as mental health counselors. and so i, you know, i think we need to rethink that. i think we need to do so urgently and until we do, we're going to continue to have problems because the tools we've got at hand will not be suited to the problems that need solving david to come back to your essay for a minute. one of the things i've been trying to get my head around is, is the, you know, the positive political gains that fear mongers, in this political system are able to generate that they're able to win through fear mongering. you know, conspiracy theories, you know, looking at the worst of every situation. and i sort of wonder whether that has help

contribute to the deep divide in toxicity in this country, which we saw in vivid display on january 6th in the insurrection, against the u. s. capital, and that is a deeper issue of what's happening here in this country as opposed to what we're doing abroad. i'd love to just get your insights as you've got a foot in both sides of these, of these issues, america's engagement with the world, but also america's engagement with itself domestically what your thoughts are about undoing some of that toxicity, the conspiracy theories, the queue and on the fear mongering it, i think that's a very tough problem steve and i, i wish i had meant easy answer to it. i think what has happened in the united states is that we have created tools to allow completely separate information ecosystems to evolve. and people seeking to exploit those differences and those, the ecosystems have, you know, effectively not just deepen the divide, but they've,

they've created irreconcilable. ready differences, and when i say people, i mean fox news o a n and the q and non people people in the g o p establishment. who said, yeah, sure, it's fine if we deny science. if it gives us political. ready advantage, it's fine if we deny history, it's fine. if we embrace conspiracy theories, we will elect a man who lives 30000 times as president of the united states. we'll add here to foreign enemies if it helps us get elected. will embrace countries that have values that are not our values if it helps us get elected. busy we will lie to the american people again and again and again. and, and, and, and you now have, you know, have, you know, be that one of 2 leading political parties in the united states. that is grounded

in lies and deceptions and untruth and denial of reality. at its core, this is not peripheral, this is not extremist views, it's at its core. donald trump is still the leader of that party. the mendacity of others from kevin mccarthy to to mitch mcconnell is, is, is well known to the world. and so how do we solve that? you know, you solve it by educating people, teaching them to use critical reasoning, challenging the lives of the deceptions whenever you have the opportunity to challenge them. but i haven't seen us make much headway on that. and i think to the extent to which we can fix that problem, that will lead to decline in the united states just as the republicans wanted to lead to decline and in ineffective working democracy country

that's, that's the strategic threat we face as a country that's far more important than any overseas threat we might see. well, david, ross cop political scientist, journalist, and author, thanks so much for being with us today. really appreciate your candid thoughts. thank you. so what's the bottom line? in 1993 harvard professor samuel huntington argued that the world with headed toward a clash of civilizations, that it was inevitable that the western world and muslim world would be locked in a perpetual state of conflict. while the actions of al qaeda $911.00 and america's response to it definitely gave credence to this idea. but this dark prediction is not shared by everyone. radicals will always exist, but both sides seem to want to turn a new page in relations between the west and the muslim world. 20 years ago. america couldn't resist the efforts by ben lot and to turn the country into one obsessed with or ism, could it happen again? could a small non state actor hijacked the entire national security apparatus? again, the truth is that many folks are easily captured by fear mongering. we see it every

day and american politics, my guess, has confidence that joe biden can lead america in a different direction. but i'm not convinced. sadly, the answer is really yes. the same type of reaction could happen again. and that's the bottom line. ah, it was meant to be here to cameras. why not quickly but a tragic attack stunned the world and the u. s. president, a guy came in and whispered something into the president's ear. what did he has fatal for the school children present? the events of september, the 11th, defined the world. they grew up in just a huge moment. these are their stories. 911. witness on al jazeera.

ah, al jazeera. great. when i i hello there, i'm miss darcy tay. and this is algebra. live from our headquarters here in doha. we are now bringing you special coverage of the 20th anniversary of the $911.00 attacks in the united states. let's take you to some live pictures now from new york, where commemorations are just beginning to get on the way.