Since 2001, the United States has embarked on a path of "endless wars" or "forever wars".
Twenty-five years ago this week, the United States and the world were shocked by the terrorist attack that became known as "9/11," in which four civilian airliners were hijacked and crashed to maximize the deaths of innocents.
A death toll of nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, was the biggest single-day casualty count on American soil since the Civil War (1861-65). For comparison, the Pearl Harbor wartime attack by Japan on December 7, 1941, resulted in 2,400 mainly U.S. military deaths.
The abiding spectacle of horror that morning was two airliners flying into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third passenger jet flew into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
Many questions are still unanswered about the event described as the biggest terrorist attack on the United States. How did 19 alleged al Qaeda hijackers who, in the weeks up to the event, were being monitored by U.S. security services, manage to pull off such a feat ? Why did the Twin Towers, including a nearby WTC Building 7, collapse suddenly as if in free fall?
One thing is clear, however: the U.S. authorities used the shock and awe of the 9/11 event to launch foreign wars in the name of fighting terror. Paul Wolfowitz, an early proponent of "full-spectrum dominance" after the Cold War - that is, unlimited U.S. military global power - talked about the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" as a mobilizing pretext.
Countless people have lamented that since 2001, the United States has embarked on a path of "endless wars" or "forever wars".
As William Astore, a thoughtful American commentator, wrote this week: "The chief legacy of 9/11 is the tragedy of permanent wars."
He added: "If you're 25 years old or younger in America, you've never known a time when your country wasn't at war... war is seen as America's natural state."
American news outlet CNN also commented: "Twenty-five years ago, the course of American history changed in a single morning."
The past quarter of a century has indeed witnessed an endless series of U.S.-led wars, sometimes with the support of its NATO allies. From the early targets of revenge, Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. forces attacked several other nations in the name of "war on terror" - all with a dubious legal mandate.
The post-9/11 wars are estimated to have caused nearly five million deaths from direct violence, disease, or hunger in a host of countries ranging from Africa to the Middle East and Asia.
A further 38 million people are reckoned to have been displaced from these regions as a result of U.S.-led wars, creating huge humanitarian and political problems from mass immigration to North America and Europe.
Yes, history has undergone a reprehensible change since 2001, in that U.S.-led wars have gravely undermined international law, creating a sense of lawlessness and impunity.
It should also be highlighted that America's domestic laws and democratic rights have been fatally undermined by the ramped-up era of lawless wars. Within weeks of the 9/11 event, the U.S. Congress passed the Patriot Act, giving security services unprecedented surveillance powers over citizens, both in the United States and around the world.
The legalistic licences for launching wars and spying on citizens have never been revoked. This has created a full-fledged warmongering police state.
Still, there is another crucial perspective that needs to be considered in all of this. The past 25 years of constant war-making by the United States are actually not a new historical development. These bloodsoaked past 25 years are not an aberration, an accidental casualty from a single day of terror.
This year also saw the U.S. commemorating the 250th anniversary of its founding as a modern state.
During this quarter of a millennium (1776-2026), the U.S. has been at war constantly, as documented by Congressional data and historians like David Vine and William Blum, among others. No other nation has a record that comes anywhere near the U.S. for the number of conflicts and frequency of military violence it has engaged in on every continent since its founding as a republic in 1776.
Wars and the slaughter of fellow human beings are the quintessential story of how European colonialists conquered the North American continent and transformed the United States into an imperialist power.
It is an astounding record of genocide and belligerence that continues to this day.
The truth is, endless wars are a condition of the United States not merely from 2001 onwards but from 1776 onwards. That's not just 25 years of forever wars, but 250 years.
This violence goes under various pretexts or self-serving propaganda narratives, such as "manifest destiny," the Monroe Doctrine, "defense of the free world," and, more recently, "war on terror." There is always an excuse invoked by the U.S. rulers and their servile media to justify what is simply out-and-out barbarism, lawlessness, and state terrorism.
It's a distraction to delve too much into the specious pretexts for the U.S. wars and violence. The key issue of focus is the constant conduct of war and conquest.
This current American president, Donald Trump, got elected by vowing to end "endless wars." Since he returned to the White House in January, 2025, for the second time, Trump has bombed at least seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. We can add three more countries that the U.S. is aggressing against by proxy: Lebanon, Palestine, and, of course, Russia via NATO's arming of Ukraine. That's quite an impressive record of criminality for someone who pledged to be a "peace president."
It's not just about one unhinged individual, though. All 47 U.S. presidents have overseen violence and wars of conquest. That long incorrigible history speaks of the daming existential nature of the United States. It is incapable of peaceful, law-abiding relations with the rest of the world because its economic power depends on the relentless conduct of imperialist violence. That is true of all capitalist powers, but as Martin Luther King Jr. noted some 60 years ago during the genocidal war in Vietnam, the U.S. is the biggest purveyor of violence in modern history.
In that regard, the post-9/11 years are not unique. It's delusional to think otherwise. Yes, those years have exacerbated certain heinous trends, such as lawlessness, brute force, torture, mass violence and killing, as well as pathological deception and lying propaganda. But all this evil and destruction is completely, hideously normal under the U.S. Empire.