Interrogating Torture: Human Rights, the War on Terror, and the Fate of America

In considering the legacy of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 for the United States, two facts stand out: first, to date there have been no subsequent terrorist attacks on US soil; second, there is absolutely no agreement as to why. Some assert that it has been the result of concrete US policies, while others claim it is more a matter of luck and that US actions have been irrelevant or counterproductive. The question is in itself unanswerable. Methodologically, it is all notoriously difficult to prove a negative--that is, to explain why something did not happen. Even to pose the question is to posit that a given event ought to have happened, which in turn presupposes a theory of history in which that event (or one very much like it) was teleologically necessary.