The Empty Watchtower: Counterterrorism After 9/11

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States and its allies pursued a Global War on Terrorism, squandering trillions of dollars and shattering countless lives. The Empty Watchtower tracks the rise of counterterrorism through the last twenty-five years to the messy, confusing present, when, according to officials, the latest conflicts in the Middle East should certainly not be confused with the War on Terror.

Drawing on their unprecedented access to security environments usually closed to outsiders, Mark Maguire and Pete Fussey expose the inner workings of a highly secretive, technologically advanced world that is teetering towards collapse. They participate in training programs run by intelligence agencies, interview senior military Special Forces, and study undercover police during live counterterror operations. In doing so, they reveal both the inadequacy of our counterterrorism systems and the violence enacted in the name of security. These issues are worsened by chronic understaffing as the generations that came of age in the shadow of 9/11 refuse to continue a doomed project.

The Empty Watchtower offers a stark warning: Counterterrorism has torn through our institutions, decimated our hard-won rights and freedoms, and left behind only a fragile edifice held up by cheap technologies and fragile security systems. To recover, we must understand the Global War on Terrorism’s corrosive legacies and reclaim the values it tarnished.