SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
september 11
23 Years After 9/11, Are We Any Safer?
True justice for the lives lost on 9/11 and during the U.S.’ war on terror would require us to put an end to overfunding violence and war, and instead prioritize safety and security through investing in our communities.
Sep 11, 2024
It is hard to forget the burning stares of people in the airport that look at you with suspicion and disdain, to the point that your eyes close in shame. I remember feeling deeply embarrassed as a teenager when the Transportation Security Administration officers took my family and I aside to do a secondary screening at the airport. It wasn’t until many years later I realized that this was just a small cost of being Muslim in America after 9/11.
It has been 23 years since September 11, 2001. The phrase “Never Forget” is echoed nationally to memorialize the nearly 3,000 lives lost that day. Instead of building a safer world after 9/11, the United States government responded with misplaced vengeance on multiple civilian populations, the consequences of which continue to be felt at home and globally.
Following the attacks on 9/11, the U.S. government launched an international military campaign, called the “Global War on Terror,” under then President George W. Bush’s leadership. It was a campaign with no end date that included “large-scale surveillance measures in the U.S., torture, global drone strikes, blacksites, and the Guantánamo Bay military prison.”
If investing money in militarism and incarceration was meant to serve as a measure of justice for a post 9/11 world, then our communities would be safe and thriving.
The U.S. government’s response included wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan that killed 940,000 people directly, while 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones. The names of the people killed may never be known and memorialized. At the same time, 38 million people in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria were forcibly displaced. Over 7,000 U.S. service members also lost their lives due to our government’s foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks.
Since 2002, 780 Muslim men and boys have been detained at Guantánamo Bay, which claims to hold terrorist suspects. However, most were released without being convicted of a crime, and many are survivors of torture at the hands of U.S. officials. Thirty individuals still remain there.
Due to decades of dehumanization and propaganda, the American people have become conditioned to believe that death and violence among Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (BAMEMSA) communities is inevitable. These Islamophobic and anti-Muslim tropes continue today, as we witness the genocide of Palestinians with increasing normalization.
The U.S. government also spent $8 trillion on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and other countries. Over $21 trillion has been spent on militarism since9/11; militarism expenditure includes funding for the Pentagon, detentions and deportations, and policing and prisons. Our priorities become clear too when we see that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate and largest immigrant detention system in the world.
If investing money in militarism and incarceration was meant to serve as a measure of justice for a post 9/11 world, then our communities would be safe and thriving. Instead, Americans feel less safe than 30 years ago, while 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Oftentimes the U.S.’ global war on terror and intervention in other countries is seen as “an over there problem.” However, the general American public must also pay attention to how the military-industrial complex influences how we are governed, and firmly reject it. The military-industrial complex is a term used to describe the influence of those who profit from war such as contractors who produce weapons, our policymakers, and armed forces. Defense contractors have spent over $60 million in donations to politicians in the 2024 and 2022 election cycles.
During the Democratic National Convention (DNC), we saw a clear example of how Vice President Kamala Harris would continue this pattern of brute American force and militarism. She said, “As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Lethal is defined as: deadly, mortal, fatal, causing or capable of causing death. Criticisms of the Democratic Presidential candidate or party are often accompanied by “Trump would not be any better.” No politician is exempt from accountability when embracing death and destruction as values to lead with. Other realities are possible. How else have oppressed communities fought for their freedoms in the U.S.? Visionaries challenged the choices given to them by fighting for new ones. Power does not only lie in the hands of defense contractors and lobbyists, but among all of us too.
In a moment when our politicians are paying close attention to the issues voters care about, we cannot separate the genocide in Palestine from police brutality, or issues like access to abortion from the economy. Each issue is inextricably linked because of how our government chooses to prioritize its budget, and the domestic or foreign policies we employ always have a domino effect. During the DNC, Prism interviewed Cherrene Horazuk, the former president of a union at the University of Minnesota. Cherrene shares, “Palestine is a workers’ issue first because money that goes for war is not available for jobs.”
Pro-Palestine advocates understand the interconnectedness of struggles for all people. Their moral compass exemplifies that if we don’t reject this cycle of violence now, we are signaling to those in power that we condone and are willing to continue the U.S.’ culture of forceful domination that has existed since its inception.
The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding examined 3,100 bills in 50 U.S. state legislatures across several years and issue areas including abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, and more. Eighty-five percent of legislators that supported anti-Shariah or anti-“foreign law” bills also supported restrictive bills against other marginalized communities. When we understand that any form of injustice threatens all of us, we can act to advance our collective needs.
What does real justice look like for all those who have been harmed by the legacy of the U.S.’ war on terror since 9/11? Reparations for the lives lost that day some may argue could be revenge, but families advocating for a peaceful response to end the cycle of harm and violence are also showing us another way. True justice must include demanding our government to:
- Invest our taxpayer dollars in programs and services that actually lead to safety and healing;
- Repay our debt to the Afghan people who suffered immensely due to U.S. intervention and policy;
- Shut down and free the men detained at Guantánamo Bay;
- Ensure a cease-fire and enact an arms embargo on Israel; and
- Enact campaign finance reforms to end the influence of special corporate interests in our elections, such as lobbying by weapons manufacturing companies.
Islamophobia is not just a threat to Muslims—it’s a threat to all marginalized communities in the U.S. and globally. We must end the war on terror, and the violence U.S. government has inflicted on its people and elsewhere. Through our collective power and action, we can create a world that prioritizes and benefits from life, not death.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Fog of War Lies Thick': Critics Warn Israel-Gaza Crisis Is Repeating Bloody Mistakes of the Past
"It's so hard to sort out pebbles of fact from mountains of propaganda," wrote Canadian filmmaker Avi Lewis.
Oct 11, 2023
As officials and medical personnel in Gaza said Wednesday that the blockaded enclave faces a "humanitarian catastrophe," progressive journalists warned that policymakers are placing millions of lives at risk by rapidly making hugely consequential decisions while facts about what's taking place on the ground are not always immediately clear.
Canadian filmmaker and activist Avi Lewis used the military term "fog of war"—the difficulty of determining the on-the-ground realities and the correct decisions to make in military operations—to describe the current situation in Israel and Gaza following an unprecedented surprise attack by Hamas on Saturday, which killed more than 1,200 people, and Israel's deadly retaliation against the impoverished enclave that's home to more than two million civilians, about half of whom are children.
"It's so hard to sort out pebbles of fact from mountains of propaganda," Lewis wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, adding that he has been "appalled" by the suffering of civilians in Israel and Gaza and by the decisions that have followed by policymakers thousands of miles away from the conflict.
As Gaza faced intensifying strain on its healthcare system due to a lack of fuel for its sole power plant and the death toll reached at least 950, Lewis was among those condemning countries including the United States, France, and the United Kingdom for "reverting to simple-minded, one-sided Israel-right-or-wrong-ism."
His comments came less than a day after U.S. President Joe Biden said the Pentagon is "surging additional military assistance" to Israel, "including ammunition and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome," repeating that "we're with Israel" without urging a cessation of the airstrikes that have decimated civilian neighborhoods and healthcare facilities in Gaza.
"The dead and the rubble piling up in Gaza are the bitter fruit of this cynical, simple-minded worldview," said Lewis.
As Yumna Patel, Palestine news director for Mondoweiss, noted on Tuesday—citing The Times of Israel—policymakers including Biden are pledging support for Israel's assault on Gaza as media reports focus heavily on the human impact Hamas's attack had, but far less on the suffering unleashed by the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) retaliation.
"By taking only foreign press into these sites and feeding them information, Israel is again taking control of the narrative on the international stage," said Patel. "And by not allowing local, Hebrew-speaking media into certain areas, Israel is shielding itself from the criticisms and growing frustrations of a population that could easily eventually turn on the government for failing to protect them."
"It's a win-win situation for Israel," she added. "It gets to put out to the world the images that it wants (dead Israelis), while limiting what it doesn't want the world to see or hear (real-life Gazans as human beings), and preventing its own people from the truth of its colossal failure."
Germany-based Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal added that "this misinformation, and fog of war is playing EXACTLY into Israel's favor."
Warnings of the difficulties of determining the reality on the ground in Gaza and Israel came as numerous right-wing leaders in Israel and the U.S. compared the Hamas attack to September 11, 2001, with both the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and a spokesperson for the IDF saying in recent days, "This is our 9/11."
At The Intercept on Monday, Jon Schwarz wrote that the analogy is apt, but perhaps not for reasons Israeli or U.S. officials would acknowledge.
Both Israel and the U.S. "generated their own enemies," Schwarz wrote, with the U.S. encouraging "fundamentalist Islamic opposition to "the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s," and Israel doing "the same thing in miniature in the occupied territories, encouraging the growth of Hamas to damage the secular Fatah." And like the George W. Bush administration, Israel apparently "ignored" warnings about an impending attack, as Haaretzreported Monday.
"Finally, the revenge that Israel will now exact will be hideous, as was that taken by the U.S.," Schwarz wrote. "There is nothing on earth like the fury of the powerful when they believe they have been defied by their inferiors."
At Open Democracy—which published commentary in the wake of the 9/11 attacks urging the U.S. not to rush into war—international security correspondent Paul Rogers also drew comparisons between the current moment and the time period following the World Trade Center attacks, warning that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current outlook mirrors that of the Bush administration in 2001: "He sees no alternative but to launch a counter-attack," even against civilian families who had nothing to do with Hamas's brutal assault.
"The chances of a peaceful outcome may be remote, but the alternative will be years more of conflict," wrote Rogers. "Those few Western politicians calling for an immediate cease-fire may be shouted down, but they are right."
U.S. lawmakers including U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) were branded "disgraceful" by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after issuing statements that both condemned Hamas' attack and criticized Israel's occupation. The lawmakers also called for a cease-fire and peace talks.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—the sole member of Congress to vote against the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force—was widely denounced for her vote after 9/11, and over the weekend also called for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
"Time eventually proved her wise, and that lonely stand built her legacy," wrote Intercept journalist Ryan Grim of Lee's dissent in 2001.
Over the objections of lawmakers like Lee this week, he added, "what Netanyahu is doing, and what Biden is encouraging, may spiral into one of the greatest mass civilian atrocities in a half-century."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular