SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: The most important thing about September 11, from the perspective of American foreign policy, is what it authorized.

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The most important thing about September 11, from the perspective of American foreign policy, is what it authorized.

It authorized the suspension of legal norms.

It authorized surveillance of citizens without warrants.

It authorized the mass collection of communications and telephone records on an unprecedented scale.

It authorized torture, renamed "enhanced interrogation" with the same vocabulary trick used for "collateral damage."

It authorized secret CIA prisons, the "black sites", beyond ordinary judicial scrutiny.

It authorized extraordinary rendition, transferring suspects across borders outside ordinary judicial process.

It authorized detention without charge.

It authorized military commissions to try certain detainees outside the ordinary civilian court system.

It authorized wars without formal declarations of war.

It authorized targeted killings abroad by executive decision, without trial, including of American citizens.

All of this was authorized by 2,977 deaths.

Now ask what was authorized, in other countries, by the deaths produced by American foreign policy.

The answer, from the perspective of those countries, should be at least as much.

But of course, that's not how it works.

Because authorization flows from power, not from logic.

And power decides whose grief counts as a mandate.