25 years ago, the world changed. September 11th, 2001 was an inflection point. We didn't know it at the time, but we woke up in one world, and transitioned into another over the course of the day.
Life was different then. We didn't even know anything had happened until a neighbor called us, as I recall. We had a single computer, and it wasn't perpetually online. We had internet access, but it was still a dial-up connection, not broadband. Our family also had no cable or satellite TV, and we didn't spend our days glued to network news. Everything was basic analog signals, too. If we had it by then, our cellular phone (singular, for the entire family) was only used for voice calling, not text messages.
The western US is not the same as the urban east coast. News trickled in slowly over the day and continued for several days after. I don't really remember when Osama bin Laden was fingered as the mastermind. I do remember the search for survivors in the rubble. I remember the fury and demand for revenge. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and later the Iraqi government were all eventually conflated as conspiring to commit the attack despite what, in hindsight, we can charitably describe as varying levels of evidence for those accusations. However, at the time, tensions were high as anthrax letters and other concerns about followup attacks loomed large.
A "war on terror" would follow, but the means of war are just terrorism on a larger scale. Politicians promised these would be swift and decisives trikes. Instead, civilian deaths and other atrocities orders of magnitude greater than what the US suffered were inflicted across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and beyond for over two decades and counting. Puppet regimes and mission creep further destabilized the middle east, and shifting loyalties resulted in various US agencies sometimes funding both sides of civil wars, leading to the US backing a literal al-Qaeda warlord taking power in Syria. The former dictators of nations like Iraq, Syria, and Libya were far from saints, but was it good for anyone to have the US destabilize those regimes and install new governments in their stead after subjecting the people there to war and devastation?
Cracks in the official narrative began to emerge soon enough, and I dove deep into the 9/11 conspiracy sphere in response. I'm not convinced "Bush did 9/11" or any of the other alternative explanations of the event hold water, but I remain unconvinced were were given the true and complete story by our public officials, either. The military-industrial complex hoovered up money while the Americans suffered the effects of money supply inflation and distorted incentives from economic intervention to "fix" the economy. Was this a premeditated plan to centralize wealth and power, or just opportunistically not letting a crisis go to waste?
Here in the US, we have been subjected to the PATRIOT Act, TSA porno-scanners and gate rape, financial surveillance in the guise of "fighting terrorism," and now Flock cameras monitoring our movements and building a database of everywhere we go. If "the terrorists hate us for our freedom," as we were told 25 years ago, surely we are loved and adored now, 25 years later, as the Panopticon has been built around us and our liberties have been eroded continually since then?
Now, we are over six months into a new war against Iran we were assured would last only weeks, not months. It started with a sneak attack on Iran in the midst of negotiations, and among the civilian deaths were scores of schoolgirls. Similar to how 9/11 galvanized Americans behind George W. Bush, Iranians who were protesting the Iranian regime found themselves asked to choose between their domestic tyrants and external enemies. Is anyone really surprised Iran continues to resist? The cycle continues. Politicians claim new power. Civilians suffer the cost. Soldiers are sent to kill and die base don dubious justification. Another generation fails to learn, hate and fear maintain the status quo, and the old profit off their blood and sweat. War is the health of the state, just as Randolph Bourne sagely warned over 100 years ago.
If you're not on Hive yet, I invite you to join through InLeo or PeakD. If you use either of my referral links, I'll even try to delegate some Hive Power to help you get started.
