the u.s. government has used the post-9/11 war on terror to launch two major wars, mount gunship and drone attacks on several countries, and institute a widespread program of torture and abuse. deaths from those conflicts number in the hundreds of thousands.
another death of the war on terror is civil liberties. from the usa patriot act, to warrantless surveillance, to the muslim ban, to the use of metadata to spy on people and target for drone strikes, the deprivation of constitutional rights has continued during the bush, obomba and dump administrations.
an additional assault on the constitution is the terrorism watchlist, a federal government database of “known or suspected terrorists.” in 2013, there were 680,000 people on the watchlist, called the terrorist screening database (tsbd). by 2017, the number had swelled to 1.2 million, including 4,600 u.s. citizens.