New York is presented as a focal point for the political and public response to the September 11 attacks: a city marked by grief, but also by substantial opposition to retaliatory violence. Chomsky uses reports of its streets and memorial to complicate the idea that the country spoke with one voice, distinguishing the desire to hold those responsible accountable from support for an attack that would kill many innocents.

The Attacks and Their Historical Significance

Chomsky describes the September 11 attacks as unprecedented for the United States because of where they struck, not because of their scale or character. He contrasts them with Pearl Harbor: the 1941 attack targeted military bases on two U.S. colonies, whereas, in his account, September 11 was the first attack on or threat to the national territory since the War of 1812. He sets that rupture against the long history of U.S. violence abroad, concluding that the reversal of direction was spectacular.

That contrast shapes the significance of New York in the discussion. The attacks brought violence to a place Chomsky describes as part of a country accustomed to projecting force elsewhere. His argument does not treat that history as diminishing the crime; he calls the attacks an appalling act of terrorism. Instead, the historical comparison frames the shock as an encounter with violence on U.S. soil and raises the question of what response that shock would authorize.

Grief, Memorial, and Public Opinion

A report in The New York Times described the drums of war as barely audible in New York’s streets and said appeals for peace greatly outnumbered demands for punishment, even at the city’s largest outdoor memorial to suffering and grief dedicated to the victims. Chomsky presents this account as evidence that public feeling in New York was more varied than a uniform call for war suggested.

He distinguishes two responses that could coexist: a near-universal wish to see the perpetrators apprehended and punished if they could be found, and a strong aversion to an indiscriminate attack that would massacre many innocent people. The distinction matters to his reading of the city’s mood. Mourning and demands for accountability did not, in this account, amount to consent to broad military retaliation.

Media and the Politics of Crisis

Chomsky cautions that U.S. media coverage was not wholly uniform, and suggests that European observers might mistake the views of a narrow selection of national newspapers and public broadcasters for the full range of opinion. He notes that The New York Times itself reported a difference between positions voiced in New York and the picture conveyed by the paper. The report of peace appeals in the streets therefore serves both as evidence about public feeling and as a correction to assumptions about how that feeling was represented.

At the same time, Chomsky argues that major media organizations and intellectual classes characteristically rally to political power in a crisis and encourage public mobilization behind its cause. He points to the bombings of Serbia and the Gulf War as examples of that pattern. New York’s reported resistance to calls for punishment stands in tension with this account of media alignment: the city’s public response, as he describes it, was not simply an echo of the dominant crisis narrative.

From War Language to State Policy

For Chomsky, calling the response a war against terrorism risks turning a political slogan into an account of what the policy actually does. He argues that the term would be propaganda unless the campaign genuinely targeted terrorism, and that Western powers could not apply their own official definitions consistently without implicating themselves and their clients. He also compares the U.S. official definition of terrorism with the stated doctrine of low-intensity warfare, arguing that coercive violence against civilians for political ends is treated differently depending on who carries it out.

The distinction between accountability and retaliation also underlies his criticism of military action as an alternative to identifying and prosecuting those responsible. He argues that criminal accountability requires evidence and raises questions that a vague declaration of war can avoid. In this framework, New York’s reported preference for peace is significant not as a denial of the crime but as a rejection of treating grief as automatic authorization for indiscriminate force.

Aftermath Beyond New York

Chomsky’s account follows the consequences of the response beyond the city. He cites the destruction of Sudan’s Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory and reports that the loss of affordable medicines, alongside sanctions that restricted replacement supplies, contributed to preventable illness and deaths. He also describes how airstrikes in Afghanistan interrupted food convoys at a time when millions faced hunger, while food drops were criticized by aid organizations as an ineffective substitute for truck deliveries. These examples extend his concern from immediate casualties to delayed effects on health and survival.

He further argues that governments used the attacks to intensify repression, citing Russia’s campaign in Chechnya, China’s counterterrorism rationale, Turkey’s repression of Kurds, and Israel’s increased latitude against Palestinians. In the United States, he says, fear and appeals to patriotism helped justify measures disciplining the population and policies serving narrow corporate interests. Set against these developments, the New York image of peace appeals marks a countercurrent: public grief could coexist with resistance to the political and military consequences pursued in its name.