Our Picks: 9/11: 20 Years OnHow the World Changed | How 9/11 Will Be Remembered | What Difference Did 9/11 Make?, and more

How the World Changed  (Economist)
Twenty years after 9/11 in Economist covers

Introduction to a Symposium: How Perpetual War Has Changed Us — Reflections on the Anniversary of 9/11  (Tess Bridgeman, Rachel Goldbrenner and Ryan Goodman, Just Security)
(Editor’s note: This essay introduces a Symposium published for the twentieth anniversary of September 11th.)
This Saturday will mark two decades since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The United States has just ended the most enduring and concrete manifestation of the sprawling response to those attacks, completing its military withdrawal from Afghanistan. But after two decades of ever-expanding conflict extending well beyond Afghanistan, a state of perpetual war has become a “new normal.” Much of the American public cannot identify with whom the United States remains at war. Questions that go to the heart of how the United States conducts counterterrorism efforts in the post-9/11 era, and whether and how it will uphold the rule of law in so doing, persist. Has the U.S. Congress authorized the armed conflicts the United States is fighting today, and what are the boundaries of these legal authorities? More fundamentally, is military force necessary to counter terrorism today, and if so, what should U.S. military engagement look like after the post-9/11 experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan? How should society deal with continuing radicalization to violent extremism, both domestically and abroad? And in designing policies to address current challenges, we cannot forget that the worst wounds created by the so-called “global war on terror” still fester: Why has there been no meaningful accountability for the most egregious abuses of the post-9/11 period, and what can be done now to address their legacies? How can we heal from the ways in which perpetual war has impacted American society at home and reshaped U.S. policy abroad? In concrete terms, what would a future without “forever war” look like?

Did 9/11 Change the United States?  (Foreign Policy)
We asked seven of our contributors what’s different after 20 years.

How 9/11 Will Be Remembered a Century Later  (Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy)
The attacks could be viewed as a historical turning point—or as entirely insignificant.