Shock and Awe: Interpretations of the Events of September 11

This article examines a broad sampling of the academic and policy literature that appeared in the aftermath of the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. The essay canvases wide-ranging and passionate debates about how much, if anything, changed or should have changed in world politics, American domestic and foreign policy, national security, human rights and civil liberties, or the Middle Eastern and Muslim worlds as a result of the attacks. There is little consensus on the definition of terrorism, the nature of Islam, the evolution of globalization and the state, the merits of war, policing and law, or the capacities of social science. One common and profoundly important characteristic is revealed, however, and that is a deeply unsettling, if often unwitting, ambivalence about liberalism.