United States political language transformed by 9/11 legacy

The September 11 attacks fundamentally altered the political and linguistic landscape of conflict in the United States. Following the attacks, a new vocabulary emerged to describe military and intelligence actions, often using bureaucratic terms to sanitize violence. Examples include the use of “enhanced interrogation” to describe torture, “extraordinary rendition” for the cross-border removal of suspects, and the designation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay as “enemy combatants.”

This lexicon facilitated the “war on terror,” an era defined by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the expansion of domestic surveillance and national security powers. While the specific phrase “war on terror” is used less frequently by the White House today, experts suggest the underlying logic and themes remain deeply embedded in contemporary US politics.