Ghosts of 9/11 haunt US policy

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The ceremony marking the 11th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks at Ground Zero in New York on Tuesday morning was the first held without any speeches by government officials, in order to make it a moment of pure remembrance.

Yet politics arising from the terrorist attacks in 2001, which has dictated much of US foreign and domestic policy since, is not going to go away anytime soon.

In his weekly address on Saturday, US President Barack Obama said the US has come back stronger as a nation, decimated the leadership of al-Qaida and ensured that Osama bin Laden will never attack America again. He did not forget to congratulate himself on ending the war in Iraq and overseeing the transition in Afghanistan that will be completed by 2017.

Obama, regarded four years ago as weak on counterterrorism, has proved in poll after poll that national security is his strength. Compared to Republican challenger Mitt Romney, Obama has a clear lead in that area.

At last week's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, many speakers lauded Obama for bin Laden's killing.

But in the last four years, Obama's track record on counterterrorism has surprised both his supporters and opponents.

To the disappointment of many Democratic supporters, Obama preserved rendition, which allows terror suspects to be transferred to countries where harsh interrogation techniques, or torture, are employed.

In his first year in office, Obama ordered a surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan. He has authorized an increasing number of drone attacks. He sanctioned 283 strikes in Pakistan, eight times more than the Bush administration did in eight years.

While Obama, former CIA director Michael Hayden and others defend drones as an accurate and effective tool to eliminate key enemies, human rights groups and many Obama followers have been critical of the targeted killings, which caused collateral civilian deaths. Some have referred to the drone strike that killed US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen as the assassination of an American citizen.

Many have been angry with Obama for breaking his promise, made four years ago, to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, where suspected terrorists are held indefinitely without trials.

On Monday, the US military announced that one prisoner had died in the high-security prison, bringing the number of prisoner deaths at the facility to nine since it opened in 2002. A total of 167 prisoners are still kept there.

Questions

1 What year did 9/11 happen?

2 How many strikes has Obama sanctioned in Pakistan?

3 How many prisoners are kept at Guantanamo Bay prison?

Answers

1. 2001.

2. 283 strikes.

3. 167 prisoners.

About the broadcaster:

Rosie Tuck is a copy editor at the China Daily website. She was born in New Zealand and graduated from Auckland University of Technology with a Bachelor of Communications studies majoring in journalism and television. In New Zealand she was working as a junior reporter for the New Zealand state broadcaster TVNZ. She is in Beijing on a 2017 Pacific Media Centre international internship with the AUT/China Daily Exchange Programme, in partnership with the Asia New Zealand Foundation. She is working as a journalist in the English news department at the China Daily website.