Possibly suggesting that countering terrorism was not the real goal.

It's never terrorism when the US government murders civilians. Clearly murdering civilians is simply an accepted practice at this point, and not "terrorism".

In your world does intent matter?

Does intent matter when the US government actively resists investigations into war crimes perpetrated its fighters?

Does intent matter when the US leadership pardons convicted war criminals?

Why dodge the question?

Whether or not intent matters in my world is utterly irrelevant, clearly intent doesn't matter when it comes to the US govt.

Because it's not called terrorism when very similar incidents are perpetrated by citizens or residents, despite having very similar motivations, and especially not when it's the government telling us to call it terrorism going over and doing worse in other places.

Because outside the little western bubble it might be understood more accurately along the lines of self defense, or a response to aggression and political interference motivated by any shady bullshit from proxy wars to controlling oil supply.

Because "weapons of mass destruction" definitely deserves the quotes and was used for a similar purpose.

But mostly because giving something scary a name that abstracts away everything except that it's scary not only makes it super easy to sell publicly, but also makes it super easy to aim the public response to said fear at whatever the label can be twisted into applying to.

> Because it's not called terrorism when very similar incidents are perpetrated by citizens or residents, despite having very similar motivations, and especially not when it's the government telling us to call it terrorism going over and doing worse in other places.

Similar incidents? I don't recall any similar incidents of ~20 Americans working together for years to hijack 4 planes and collapse multiple large buildings killing ~3000 people.

The patriot act may have been a bad idea but it was a response to a real, significant event and is not based on totally incoherent reasoning. We had surveillance capabilities that detected the 9/11 attackers ahead of time, but arguably due to the separation of foreign and domestic intelligence, that information was not acted on. You can argue the costs of breaking down that separation aren't worth it, but don't bullshit people with word games.

9/11 was a terrible thing for sure. Think a little bit about why it might have happened. How many thousands of people have died as a direct result of American intervention in the middle east, or do lives not matter unless they're American? How much cultural and economic regression and political instability have the military inverventions caused? All with super dubious justification pre-2001. How would that not provoke some kind of extremely violent response? Maybe without the intervention there wouldn't have been a response?

Nah mate, pushing past the knee-jerk reaction of fear takes too much effort, empathy is too hard, my life is easy and thinking about what my lifestyle costs other people is too unpleasant. Just slap a terrorism label (or maybe 'think of the children', or maybe 'war on drugs', or...) on it and call it a public license to go round fucking up cultures/demographics/human rights/geopolitical regions with impunity.

I'm not the one playing bullshit word games.

I am curious what would you call 9/11 then?

An avoidable tragedy.

The main tangible thing that gave the label it's public power.

And at the same time, did everyone expect an entire geopolitical region to just sit there and let themselves be curb-stomped by various international superpowers without at least trying to retaliate? And in lieu of making a dent on the military front, and noting the impact of curb-stomping on civilian life, where else would you expect the response to be aimed?

The mental gymnastics this must take. I would be impressed to see how you claim flying airplanes full of civilians into building full of civilians is “defense”.