It didn’t change the world forever

Did the world change forever? No, it barely budged. 9/11 was a deliberate provocation and the United States fell for it hook, line and sinker, but it still didn’t produce any of the changes the perpetrators wanted—or any other big changes either.

With the benefit of hindsight, how much has the world changed as a result of 9/11? There was virtually no lasting impact on Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, or East and South-East Asia, where even the phrase ‘9/11’ is meaningless to most people, writes Gwynne Dyer. Photograph courtesy of Commons Wikimedia

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

September 9, 2021

LONDON, U.K.—‘Changed the world forever’ is the most hackneyed phrase in journalism, and if you can get through this week (the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks) without hearing it half a dozen times you’ll be very lucky. It’s a nonsense phrase because various aspects of the world are ...

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