Another way 9-11 "Changed Everything."

Supreme Court Refuses Torture Case From Associated Press October 09, 2007 5:57 PM EDT A German man who says he was abducted and tortured by the CIA as part of the anti-terrorism rendition program lost his final chance Tuesday to persuade U.S. courts to hear his claim. The Supreme Court rejected without comment an appeal from Khaled el-Masri, effectively endorsing Bush administration arguments that state secrets would be revealed if courts allowed the case to proceed. (...) After the CIA determined it had the wrong man, el-Masri says, he was dumped on a hilltop in Albania and told to walk down a path without looking back. Source

“Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years”
---Willa Sibert Cather

Change: the replacing of one thing for another.

Has 9/11 "changed everything"?

I suppose it depends on what "change" might mean - and to whom.

Change by whom? For whom? To what end? And what is it exactly one wishes to change - through what process? And in what direction?

And what if? What if the situation were reversed and it had been, say, a German State secret police that had abducted a US citizen and eventually released him some 4 months later without a word of explanation - not even an apology? What then?

Aahh, isn't it a good thing that Khaled el-Masri is only a "German citizen of Lebanese descent? Just imagine, had he been a "pure Aryan," the current U.S. administration might have found itself with some serious international diplomatic incident on its hands.

After 9/11 "everything is changed." Or, perhaps, everything is just the same as it has always been - only, more so.