On September 11, 2001 I watched the smoke rising from the
attack on the Pentagon with my students from the 3rd floor of Montgomery
Blair HS in Silver Spring, MD. As we followed the news on the TV in our room a
sense of doom settled on us. Watching video of the second plane crashing into
the World Trade Center left an indelible mark on all of us.
Little did we realize that the consequence of this
tragedy would engulf us in what has become the forever war that followed. In
the 20 years since 9/11, the United States has launched two wars, engaged in
military conflict in dozens of countries, gutted civil liberties at home and
abroad, spent more than $8 trillion, killed more than 900,000 people, engaged
in torture, and imprisoned tens of thousands of people without a hint of due
process.
Fourteen million people in Afghanistan and Iraq alone became
war refugees or were internally displaced by war. Over 7,000 U.S. soldiers died in the wars, as did more
than 8,000 American contractors and more than 30,000 active-duty personnel and
war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died of suicide.
In the 10 years between the end of the cold war and 9/11,
there had been hope that this country, and the world, would see a peace dividend;
that, as the sole world superpower, the US could lead the world into a new era
of peace and prosperity.
But instead, we were fed the “War on Terrorism”.
Less than two years later, as George Bush launched a war
against Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack on
9/11, I watched as approximately 1800 students at that same high school walked
out into a cold rain and picketed for over an hour, in protest against that
war. How is it that these 14–18-year-old students had a much clearer
understanding than the decision makers in Washington about the insanity of a war
on terrorism?
In a tragic sense, the terrorists won. They dealt a far
greater blow to the US than they could have imagined. And it was
self-inflicted.
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