Washington, D.C. is presented as both a target of the September 11 attacks and a center of U.S. political decision-making. Its place in Noam Chomsky’s argument is less that of a described urban setting than of a political landmark: the attacks brought violence to the country’s capital, while the government’s responses made the city a focal point for debates over terrorism, law, military power, and public dissent.

The Attacks and the Capital

Chomsky describes the September 11 attacks as historically unprecedented for the United States because of their targets, not their scale. He contrasts the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. with Pearl Harbor: the 1941 attack struck military bases on territories he characterizes as colonies, whereas the September 11 attacks reached the U.S. mainland. In his account, the attacks therefore reversed a long pattern in which the United States had used force abroad without its national territory being attacked in the same way.

Washington’s appearance alongside New York gives the capital a double significance. It was one of the places attacked, but it was also the seat of the government whose response would shape the conflict that followed. Chomsky treats the event as a sharp geopolitical change while warning that its novelty should not obscure the longer history of U.S. violence abroad.

Terrorism, Definitions, and Law

The city also enters the book’s discussion of terrorism through the government centered there. Chomsky accepts the official U.S. definition of terrorism as the calculated use or threat of violence for political, religious, or ideological ends, including actions intended to intimidate or instill fear. By that definition, he calls the attacks on the United States an unmistakable terrorist crime. His argument then turns to the difference between a literal definition and a political convention that tends to reserve the label for violence committed by enemies against the United States or its allies.

That distinction underlies his criticism of the U.S. government’s official doctrine of low-intensity warfare. He argues that its description of coercive force directed at civilian populations closely resembles the official definition of terrorism. In this framing, the issue is not simply what happened to Washington, D.C., but whether the same standard is applied to violence undertaken by the state and by its opponents.

Chomsky also places the government’s choices against the rules of international law. He recalls that the United States was condemned by the International Court of Justice for unlawful use of force and then vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to observe international law. In discussing the September 11 response, he argues that the right of self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter did not, in his view, apply as a justification for retaliation because the United States was not under an armed attack in the sense specified there. The capital’s role as the seat of government thus connects the attacks to a broader dispute over whether legal limits bind the United States as well as other states.

Government Power and the Domestic Agenda

Chomsky portrays Washington’s response as shaped not only by security concerns but also by domestic political interests. He argues that the government is responsive to powerful national constituencies, while public opinion and popular movements remain additional influences. In his account, the crisis offered the administration an opportunity to press for militarization, including missile defense and the militarization of space; weaken social-democratic programs; redirect attention from globalization, environmental problems, and health insurance; shift more wealth toward a small number of people; and reduce public debate and dissent.

He connects that agenda to the atmosphere of fear and patriotism after the attacks. Chomsky says the administration used the crisis to impose measures that disciplined the domestic population and advanced policies he considered unfavorable to the broader public, including future generations. The capital is therefore not only the site from which the government acts but the institutional center of a claimed process in which emergency language can narrow debate and make political programs harder to challenge.

Military Strategy and Global Position

The post-September 11 policy debate in Washington also appears as a contest over U.S. power abroad. Chomsky argues that the Bush administration’s campaign against terrorism could consolidate an already overwhelming military advantage and extend U.S. influence over strategic resources. He points to the establishment of substantial U.S. military bases in Central Asia and describes their importance in relation to regional resources, planned pipelines, and the energy reserves of the Gulf. Before the war in Afghanistan, he says, Diego Garcia was the most secure base in the network directed toward the Gulf; new positions in Central Asia improved the capacity for intervention.

He situates these moves within a longer pattern of unilateral policy. The Clinton administration had told the United Nations in 1993 that the United States would act multilaterally when possible and unilaterally when necessary; Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William Cohen later reiterated positions supporting unilateral military action to protect U.S. interests. Chomsky argues that the Bush administration went further, and that the new coalition was expected to offer support without meaningful participation in decision-making. In this account, Washington’s effort to build an alliance could soften its rhetoric without substantially changing the policy of reserving the right to act independently.

Chomsky further interprets the Afghanistan bombings as a possible demonstration of what the United States could do when others failed to follow its rules, while acknowledging that confidential documents were unavailable and presenting this reading as an inference. He compares that proposed purpose with the NATO bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had described in terms of maintaining NATO’s credibility. The argument links the capital’s decisions to a wider strategic logic of deterrence, military credibility, and the projection of power.

Consequences and Significance

For Chomsky, the attacks did not erase the underlying international problems. They did, however, create conditions for consequential and, in his view, troubling changes: expanded U.S. military reach, a new foothold in Central Asia, and the use of fear and patriotism to advance domestic policies. He also argues that large-scale retaliation risked feeding a cycle of violence rather than reducing the threat, and that the September 11 attacks severely harmed the prospects of Palestinians by strengthening the political position of Israel and its supporters.

Washington, D.C. consequently carries two linked meanings in the discussion. It is part of the geography of an attack Chomsky regards as a major historical reversal, and it is the political center from which he examines the response. The city’s significance rests on that contrast: the United States had experienced violence at home, while its government retained the power to answer abroad and to reshape policy at home under the banner of counterterrorism.