By admin 
The terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, imposed profound lasting costs on our society. As the first major foreign attack on American soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it generated a desire for an immediate response. Undoubtedly, some of the actions were positive in helping to prevent future terrorist acts. But some were very negative and continue to haunt us.
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A case in point is Authorization for Use of Military Force, a joint resolution passed by Congress on September 14, 2001. It authorized the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those responsible for the attacks, as well as any organizations or persons who aided or harbored them. The AUMF was an expansive delegation of power for the president to use military force, and it had no expiration date. It was used by President George W. Bush and his successors to justify military interventions in various countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq. It is estimated that military-related spending since 9/11 has cost more than $8 trillion and more than 900,000 lives have been lost in various wars since the terrorist attacks..
Soon after 9/11, the United States began apprehending those it believed were part of the al-Qaida terrorist organization. President Bush and his administration took the position that these individuals, including American citizens detained in the United States, could be held indefinitely as “enemy combatants” without any semblance of due process. “Enemy combatants” is a classification that did not exist in international or American law prior to 9/11 and was created to sidestep the rights accorded to prisoners of war.
In January 2002, the United States began transferring detainees — often shackled, blindfolded and sedated — to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. About 780 men have been held there since the prison opened; 15 remain, a quarter-century after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The government chose military commissions rather than federal courts to prosecute some detainees, but the system has yielded few completed cases and long delays
We now know that some detainees held at Guantanamo were imprisoned without sufficient evidence. We also know that detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run detention sites were subjected to brutal abuse and torture. Justice Department lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel produced a series of memoranda — commonly called the “torture memos” — that narrowly defined torture and provided legal rationales for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding, prolonged sleep deprivation and stress positions.
A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, released in December 2014, described horrific, sadistic brutality inflicted on prisoners. It also leaves no doubt that both United States criminal statutes and international treaties were violated. The 499-page report describes in detail what was done.
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The report tells of a man chained to a wall in the standing position for 17 days and of detainees kept awake for nearly 180 hours in standing or stress positions. It documents repeated waterboarding, which international law has long defined as torture, including one man who was waterboarded 183 times. It tells of detainees being immersed in ice baths and of the death of an Afghan, Gul Rahman, of suspected hypothermia in November 2002 after he was beaten, stripped naked from the waist down and left chained to a concrete floor in near-freezing temperatures. The report also documents the use of rectal feeding, a practice described as intensely painful, invasive and profoundly degrading.
Meanwhile, the consequences of torture continue to reverberate. On Friday, August 28, a military judge ruled confessions made by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to FBI agents are inadmissible at trial because they were tainted by the CIA’s torture of him.
Another response to the attack on 9/11 was Congress enacting The Patriot Act. The law was adopted on Oct. 26, 2001, to expand the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies in order to prevent future terrorist attacks. It allowed for increased surveillance of individuals suspected of terrorism or related activities, expanded the ability to track and intercept communications, and enhanced information sharing between government agencies. It authorized the use of National Security Letters (NSLs) to compel businesses to turn over customer information without judicial oversight.
Because much of this surveillance occurred in secret, the public cannot fully know how many communications were intercepted or how much privacy was surrendered.
Thus, in addition to the 2,977 who died on 9/11, and the many who suffered greatly as a result of the attacks, the country lost intangible, precious aspects of our identity. Separation of powers and privacy rights were compromised to further security. And as a nation, we lost our morality, and our moral standing in the world, by engaging in torture.
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Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law.