On Nine Eleven

The hijacking of flights on September 11, 2001 and the use of those hijacked aircraft to attack buildings in New York and Virginia, as well as the failed attempt which crashed in Pennsylvania, was a tragedy.

The response by the US government, supported by the American public, was a greater tragedy.

George W Bush, who barely won the presidency with the help of the Supreme Court halting recounts in Florida, saw his approval rating go up to 86%. Mayor Rudi Giuliani was named Time’s Person of the Year. Overt US nationalism exploded with American flags flying everywhere, as did anti-muslim hate crime, which grew 1600% in 2001. Anti-muslim hate crime in the US remains at about 5x the rate it was at prior to 9/11.

After the attacks on 9/11 the US Government and media set into motion its latest plans for war. The US Government always has plans for war. It is how empires function. Always planning and waiting and instigating for a triggering action that will give them the cover they need to bend the will of the people towards another war, another bombing, another “intervention” to expand the empire and gain strategic advantage and access to wealth and resources.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex lied. “They hate our freedoms,” said George Bush who should have known that they mostly hated our actions, especially our use of Saudi territory to attack Iraq in the first Iraq war. And, of course, the US Government strung together a relentless litany of lies to propagandize the public that Saddam Hussein was evil and was a threat to the US culminating in Colin Powell’s infamous presentation to the United Nations Security Council. The US media pushed all of these lies out to the pubic with virtually no dissent.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex concealed evidence. It continues to conceal evidence gathered in the FBI investigation of 9/11, some of which, it is expected, implicates Saudi Arabia. Biden has ordered that more of that evidence be declassified over the next 6 months.

In its relentless pursuit of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government/Media complex rejected opportunities to avoid war. The Taliban made overtures to turn over Osama Bin Laden to a neutral party for trial before 9/11 (for the US Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, and for the USS Cole attack). The US Government ignored the offers. The Taliban made a similar offer after the US began bombing in 2001, which was rejected by the Bush administration.

Empires require propaganda as well as brute force to maintain themselves and the US Government has developed one of the most impressive propaganda systems in the modern era. Through the education system and what is described as the “free press.” the US Government conditions the US public to believe an underlying narrative that it manipulate to generate desired responses for or against whatever it chooses.

The free press of course is a lie. When you have a commercial media apparatus dependent on advertising dollars for survival, and those advertisers are national and international corporations, that press is not free. The influence is constant and powerful. While MSNBC launched a regular program with Phil Donahue in the summer of 2002, they promptly cancelled it in February 2003, when it was the highest rated show on the network, for its potential of becoming “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda” as the US Government and the rest of the commercial media beat the drums for war in Iraq. Even when it was airing, the network put significant pressure on Donahue to slant the content, calling for two conservative or pro-war guests for every liberal or anti-war guest.

So thus was born the “war on terrorism” and the nation applauded, not realizing that terrorism was not an entity with whom you could go to war. Terrorism can be used outside of war, but is also a tactic of war and is inevitably practiced by both sides in nearly every war.

As Howard Zinn said, “How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?”

And hundreds of thousands died. And millions were harmed in so many ways. And the world is no safer.

And on top of the casualties and deaths at the hands of our military was the loss of our freedoms. George Bush and the US Congress did more harm to our freedoms after 9/11 than the terrorists did. We got the Department of Homeland Security, enhanced spying, the Patriot Act, torture and detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

The US Government response to 9/11 was a greater tragedy than the terrible tragedy of 9/11.