Why — and what — are we ‘remembering’?
By: Don Branum
Tags: Terrorism, Civil Liberties, Fascism, 9 11

I remember how we, as a nation, flew into a collective blind rage. How dare a bunch of foreigners with different-color skin kill 3,000 Americans? That privilege is reserved for us (to the tune of about 30,000 per year from gun violence alone).

The first victim of our outrage wasn’t an extremist nor even a Muslim, but a Sikh man, Balbir Singh Sodhi. Twenty years later, Christian extremists and nationalists continue to target Sikhs for violence. Then-President George W. Bush, to his credit, implored people to see that extremism, not Islam, was the real threat. But his Republican party, built on racism and hatred, was in no mood to listen.

Our intelligence agencies knew that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, and the Taliban refused to hand him over. So into Afghanistan we went, with less of a plan than Peter Quill had to get the Power Stone away from Ronin the Accuser. To their credit, the U.S. armed forces carried out their pursuit of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden with efficiency and purpose — until they were abruptly hamstrung in December of 2001. In a 2009 report to members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) wrote:

… [T]he Al Qaeda leader would live to fight another day.

Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their

Afghan allies, and calls for reinforcements to launch an

assault were rejected. Requests were also turned down for U.S.

troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few

miles away in Pakistan. The vast array of American military

power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the

Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines. Instead,

the U.S. command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained

Afghan militias to attack bin Laden and on Pakistan's loosely

organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes. On or

around December 16, two days after writing his will, bin Laden

and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora

Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area.

The mountains of Tora Bora loom over a lone U.S. mine resistant ambush protected vehicle as it patrols outside the Achin District Center, Nov. 5, 2011. (U.S. Army/Spc. Ken Scar)

So American and allied forces insinuated themselves into Afghanistan, because that was somehow easier than putting enough troops on the ground to fish him out of Tora Bora, easier than pursuing him into Pakistan when the U.S. had the backing and goodwill of the entire world, and easier than going after bin Laden’s money and backers in Saudi Arabia (where a whopping 15 of the 19 hijackers called home). It was a move that I knew would put us in the country for at least a generation, especially if we were serious about trying to rebuild the place.

And then the U.S. invaded Iraq because, and I quote the former president directly, “That man tried to kill my daddy.” Yes, he really said that. Oh, he sold the public on weapons of mass destruction, but they didn’t actually exist — and the largest American media outlets, who should have pressed for evidence, took his word on it. And why not invade Iraq? We’d been enforcing no-fly zones over two-thirds of the country for 12 years by that point anyway.

Twenty years and hundreds of thousands of lives later, what did we really gain? Bin Laden continued to plan terrorist attacks until his death at the hands of U.S. special forces in Pakistan May 2, 2011. A new terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (which I call Daesh), filled the power vacuum left after the deaths of Saddam Hussein and Muqtada al-Sadr and the departure of American forces from Iraq. The Taliban took over Afghanistan in a matter of days as U.S. forces withdrew in August, negating 20 years of American and allied efforts.