The trail of blood connecting 9/11 and 1/6
On Saturday, Americans will somberly commemorate the 20th anniversary of the cataclysmic blow that changed the United States and many faraway countries in fundamental ways that were impossible to contemplate before the 9/11 attacks. Never in recorded history have a small band of men shook the foundations of a great empire with such alacrity and finality as the 19 young Muslim men did on that September morning in 2001. Never before had the phrase “the barbarians at the gates” carried such meaning as when the four highjacked airplanes blew up our civilization’s virtual walls ushering in the age of globalized terrorism, at the intersection of atavistic hatred and the digital revolution.
Nineteen men, driven by the manufactured rage of a whole generation of preachers of violence and armed with a budget of less than half a million dollars, shattered the thin veneer of our civilization and the brittle foundations of our democracy. We flailed violently. One expeditionary force was sent in the footsteps of Alexander the Great to invade Afghanistan to punish the turbaned men who humbled us and inflict the kind of horrific injury that would deprive them from even thinking of revenge. Another one was sent to Mesopotamia to pacify that ancient land and bestow on it the gift of Jeffersonian democracy. Twenty years later, the Taliban is back in power in Kabul, Baghdad continues to live in the shadow of Tehran, and we are still searching for the missing answers.
The war we declared on terrorism everywhere in the world took us with our prisoners to dark dungeons in foreign lands where torture is called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Our Justice Department produced “torture memos” that corroded our souls and distorted the English language in ways not even George Orwell could have imagined. At the home front we brandished a militant patriotism and codified it into law where we waged a low intensity war against some of our cherished constitutional values and foundational principles, all in the name of preserving and defending national security “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-trail-of-blood-connecting-9-11-and-1-6/