THE TRAGEDIES OF THE TWIN TOWERS, AFGHANISTAN

                                 

Various Sources

Twenty years after Sept. 11, the attacks seem likely to be remembered as a double tragedy. There were the tangible horrors: The attacks on that day killed almost 3,000 people, and the ensuing wars killed hundreds of thousands more. And there is the haunting question that lingers: Out of the trauma, did the country manage to create a better future?

In the United States, Sept. 11 led directly to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the passing of the Patriot Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the use of warrantless surveillance programs, and special registration of immigrants and foreign students from Muslim countries. 

Outside the United States, the attacks served as justification for the 20-year war in Afghanistan; the invasion and occupation of Iraq; the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay; the use of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere; the killing of thousands of U.S. and foreign service members; the periodic bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia; the deaths of some 800,0000 people, including 335,000 civilians; and the displacement of an estimated 38 million people.

At each step in this parade of horrors, we were reminded that the United States was attacked on Sept. 11. The terrible wound of that day was left open, causing pain and anger that lasted for years. In that continually grieving state, the public was perhaps more willing to accept what it might not have otherwise — security theater at our airports, constant surveillance, bombs being dropped on wedding parties in Afghanistan.

The fact that the United States itself went on to attack, and wreak even greater violence against innocent civilians around the world, has been largely omitted from official narratives. This erasure is not accidental. After the initial phase of fighting, the Pentagon did not release regular and precise reports of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We got out of the body count business years ago,” Mark Kimmitt, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general and former State Department official, said in 2018.

 “The numbers, while relevant, are not something that we quote, nor do we keep in our back pocket.” The work of counting the civilian dead fell instead to human rights groups, research centers and special sections of newspapers.

Likewise, the speeches of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were more likely to offer assurances that the nation was “staying the course” or “fulfilling our commitment” than to give an honest accounting of the wars. Every time we heard them speak, some of us wondered what goals they wanted to achieve. Was it the surrender of the Taliban? The capture of Osama bin Laden? The fall of Saddam Hussein? 

The staging of elections in Iraq and Afghanistan? Each milestone was reached, and yet the wars continued, largely out of sight. Within the first few months of combat operations, news of the wars disappeared from front pages. Nightly news broadcasts spent so little time on the wars that yearly coverage was measured in seconds per newscast.

That Sept. 11 represented a chance to make a buck was not what most of us had in mind when we saw the tribute posters that went up shortly after the towers came down. But from the commercialization of the phrase “never forget,” which appears on pens, shirts, mugs and baby onesies, to the privatization of the war effort, which shifted billions of taxpayer dollars into corporate coffers, Sept. 11 became a business.

Over time, this dynamic between memory and erasure encouraged a destructive nationalism, which culminated in the rise of Donald Trump, who was elected on promises to bar Muslims, build a wall and stop refugees from the very countries the United States was bombing. Like his predecessor, Mr. Trump pledged to end the war in Afghanistan, but with his “America First” national security strategy, there was no longer any pretense at nation building or “winning hearts and minds.” 

In the last year of his administration, he struck a deal with the Taliban, whose offer of surrender the United States had turned down in December 2001.

The withdrawal effort, managed by President Joe Biden, took an abrupt turn in August, when the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan with extraordinary speed. Despite months of notice, the United States seemed unprepared or unwilling to meet its obligations toward the Afghan people. Desperate to flee the country, thousands of civilians rushed to the airport in Kabul, leading to wrenching scenes on the tarmac, including a teenager who fell from a departing C-17.

In 20 years, a great deal can be lost to memory, but there is hope we will hold on to that moment. It contains one of the most significant lessons of the atrocities of Sept. 11 and the only incontrovertible truth of the wars that were started in its memory: Ordinary people, thousands of miles apart, are suffering for political causes none of them chose.

If we are to “never forget,” then we must remember not just the pain and grief we felt on Sept. 11, but also the aggression and violence that our government unleashed. Reconciling this contradiction is the work we have to do in order to allow ourselves, and others, to heal.