09/11/2025
Do you remember where you were?
For those who lived through it, the images remain seared into memory:
the collapsing towers, the smoke and ash smothering Manhattan, the desperation of people searching for loved ones,
the tangible fear, chaos, and uncertainty hanging in the air at work, school, and elsewhere, as a panicked populace calmly tried to figure out what to do next.
It was a day of rare and profound vulnerability for the American people.
The grief deserves compassion and remembrance.
But grief was too quickly weaponized.
Rather than a moment to reflect on peace, the attacks became a justification for war.
The Bush administration declared a “War on Terror” that would expand American military presence across the globe.
The invasion of Afghanistan, launched in October 2001, morphed into a two-decade occupation.
In 2003, the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” (the OG of fake news) led to the war in Iraq,
Together, these wars killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions, destabilized entire regions, and drained trillions of taxpayer dollars.
At home, the Patriot Act expanded surveillance, racial profiling, and detention without trial, all in the name of "security".
Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities bore the brunt of suspicion and state repression.
Again, what was framed as security became an erosion of civil liberties and a blank check for militarism, setting the stage for much of hat we see on our streets today.
9/11 should remind us of the human cost of violence, but it should also remind us of the danger of uncritical patriotism in the face of trauma,
The attacks and pain were real, but the wars waged in their name inflicted suffering on a far deadlier scale.
The U.S. government leveraged the tragedy to secure oil in the Middle East and expand its military reach, with the bonus of suppressing dissent at home.
To honor 9/11 is to mourn the lives lost and support survivors still living with the trauma.
To learn from 9/11 is to recognize how fear was manipulated to unleash even greater violence upon the world--
a violence that is still ongoing.
