It’s been 20 years since the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York City’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. that included the hijacking and crashing of four airliners with all their passengers. The casualties resulting from the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history was 2,977 people killed and more than 6,000 others injured.
Not long after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush launched U.S. military invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Presidents who succeeded Bush continued these wars and expanded the field of battle to include Somalia, Libya, Yemen and other nations around the globe.
A new report from the National Priorities Project titled, “State of Insecurity: The Cost of Militarization Since 9/11,” found that the U.S. “War on Terror” cost the United States government more than $21 trillion at home and overseas on militaristic policies that led to the creation of a vast surveillance apparatus, worsened mass incarceration, intensified the war on immigrant communities and caused incalculable human suffering in nations targeted by the Pentagon. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Lindsay Koshgarian, program director of the National Priorities Project and lead author of the report, who summarizes the study’s disturbing findings.