We should never forget that American civilians were blindsided twenty-three years ago this month when a small group of mostly Saudis and Egyptians hijacked our civilian airliners in a kamikaze mission that murdered thousands. Though none of them were Palestinian, the nineteen hijackers’ indefensible terrorist attack was motivated largely by Washington’s unconditional military, financial, and diplomatic support for Israel’s apartheid system, illegal occupations, and myriad atrocities in southern Lebanon as well as Palestine.
By design, that’s a crucial part of the story never included in the “never forget” file. Such a superficial catchphrase, bereft of any meaningful understanding of why the transformative attack took place beyond the usual “they hate us for our freedom” canard, is just cynical.
Our new national mantra was used to psychologically torment survivors, widows, orphans, and the broader public alike into reluctantly accepting or enthusiastically supporting inexcusable and largely predetermined government policies.
As with anything else in life, our affairs would drastically improve with an objective understanding of cause and effect. If we achieved a realistic worldview following that terrible day in September 2001, it would have been impossible for the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney to justify his ostensible solutions to the attack, which included the largest government crackdown on our inalienable rights and doubling down on the same murderous foreign policies that made our waking lives a nightmare.
On both sides of the aisle, our rulers systematically provoked the attacks, supported Al Qaeda fighters in various theaters throughout the 1990s, and failed their most basic obligation—given the regime’s monopoly on security services—to protect its citizens and their homeland.
Still, instead of being punished with life imprisonment, the government officials responsible for the carnage managed to convince the American people—this author included—that they should punish us with a massive police state, effectively eviscerating our constitutional rights forever.
If our citizenry was properly informed regarding our terrorist enemies’ means and ends, it could have rendered impossible Washington’s objective of manufacturing consent for its subsequent series of unnecessary, endless, multi-trillion dollar illegal wars in Afghanistan, across Africa, and throughout the Middle East.
Under the guise of fighting terrorism, these unconstitutional mass murder campaigns killed between four and five million people via direct or indirect violence, sending Al Qaeda recruitment soaring. The administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden went on to actively support Al Qaeda shock troops in Washington’s proxy wars launched against the people of Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
Americans have been so apathetic, demoralized, and propagandized during the last twenty-three years that we are now, in fact, waging wars against groups like the Shi’ite militias of Iraq and Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Yemen’s Houthis. These entities constitute the region’s foremost enemies of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. But this, like Israel’s artificial intelligence programmed genocide, never seems to trouble the voter base of either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. We find ourselves in this absurd situation because our government is co-bylining a holocaust on our dime and in our name, unleashed on the Palestinian people by Israel, one of Al Qaeda’s regional benefactors in recent years.
Yet there is no outrage, no national scandal, nor even basic questions being asked. American protesters should be flooding the streets daily demanding answers as to why our government is again switching sides in the so-called “Global War on Terrorism” just so the IDF can safely torture, starve, rape, ethnically cleanse, and exterminate an entire nation of people whose land is coveted by the Israeli settler movement.
When American activists peacefully protest the illegal expansion of ethno-exclusivist colonies or U.S. citizen journalists cover other heinous crimes against the Palestinians, they are liable to be executed with IDF sniper rounds to the head, as occurred earlier this month. On September 6, in cold blood, an Israeli military sniper shot dead 26-year-old peace activist Aysenur Eygi during a demonstration near Nablus.
As if this were a scene in some dystopian novel, a White House occupied by Democrats predictably gave Israel a gentle tap on the wrist while the docile GOP “America First” movement did nothing.
While Israel wages a U.S.-backed war of genocide against Muslims and Christians living in occupied Palestine, its apartheid army concurrently bombs the people and infrastructure of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran.
This is all headed in one direction: a likely surge of Al Qaeda terrorism at home and the final transformation of the United States into an overtly totalitarian state, all amid a massive and costly war involving multiple nations simultaneously with American troops suffering enormous casualties.
The coming nightmare will surely dwarf the catastrophes already caused by our government alongside its client states across the region this century.
In the name of Aysenur Eygi and the victims of the September 11 attacks, it is imperative that any “America First” movement worth its salt target the heretofore “ironclad” U.S.-Israel partnership. The American people must permanently cut off our government’s military, financial, intelligence, and diplomatic support for this parasitic pariah state immediately.
