Twenty years ago, a group of terrorists bankrolled by a former CIA asset inflicted a massive collective trauma on the United States and provoked it into a war that lasted officially until about two weeks ago. In fighting this war, the United States left thousands upon thousands more injured and dead in its wake – on any and all sides of the equation – than who perished in the World Trade Center collapse or Pentagon attack by several magnitudes.
According to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, 38 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines have been displaced since 2001; to this day, 13 million people are still unable to return to their former homes. Over 900,000 people are dead, a third of whom were civilians completely unconnected from the conflict.
Since the war began, the United States has increased its penchant for authoritarianism at home and abroad, to the point where it invited an overt fascist to hang out in the halls of power for four years (a change of pace in that all the previous fascists were merely covert about it) and let fascism openly organize in the streets. Religious fundamentalism is on the rise, the culture war is louder than ever, and marginalized people are actively in danger from everyone from the police to ICE to the fucking Proud Boys. We are a belligerent, dangerous nation in nearly every respect, lower in international standing even than we were in 2001.
So on this 20th anniversary of September 11, where we would typically reaffirm our commitment to all this bullshit nonsense in “honor” of the senseless deaths of 2,977 people, instead let’s honor their memory another way.
Let’s forget.
Let’s let the wound finally close, let the nerve go unexposed for the first time in two decades. We should refocus the resources we spent on an endless war towards both supporting and caring for veterans for as long as they need it and providing a safe haven for the refugees we created – including the newest batch of scared Afghan citizens whose “freedom” was predicated on the stability of a house of cards in a windstorm we set up.
Abolish not just Immigration and Customs Enforcement but the entire Department of Homeland Security. Roll back TSA restrictions that unfairly and disproportionately target people with “middle eastern”-sounding names for shit like “random” checks and detainment. Eliminate the random and sweeping no-fly lists and travel bans. Get rid of the lie that doing any of this in the first place made “us” any safer at all. Free the Gitmo detainees.
In Oklahoma City, we have a memorial set up for the 168 people who died in the Murrah building bombing perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh in 1995. Every year, we run a marathon and observe a moment of silence for the dead. Visitors and residents can wander through a museum solidifying the rubble.
It is healthy to grieve. It is healthy to memorialize. It is not healthy to keep reaffirming the bloodthirst for revenge that has driven the US for so long that adults celebrating their first legal drink of alcohol on Saturday were barely one year old when the attack happened.
Forget, let go, move on. For the world’s sake, and your own.
