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23 years ago today, I woke up to a national tragedy. As disturbing as the news was that Tuesday morning, the still-unfolding legacy [ [link removed] ] of that day has grown catastrophically worse [ [link removed] ] in the decades since the 9/11 attacks. That night, I shaved my head before going to bed, having discovered during a pilgrimage to Mecca the previous summer that doing so was a ritual way for Muslims to shed our worldly attachments.
A law student’s alarm
My alarm at the time may have been driven by any number of things.
I was in law school at the time, and felt painfully aware that the Supreme Court’s 1944 [ [link removed] ]Korematsu [ [link removed] ] decision [ [link removed] ] upheld indefinite military detention during a time of armed conflict. While the Bush administration had no formal authority to detain civilians outside the criminal legal process, the lack of formal authority didn’t ultimately stop it from hatching a continuing mass surveillance scheme, or launching a torture program in violation of international law.
The Court is responsible for guarding the Constitution, and its abdication in Korematsu effectively invited the Bush administration to consider military detention without trial. Ultimately, the administration did precisely that, while locating its detention facilities offshore in locations including Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and CIA “black sites” [ [link removed] ] located in any number of countries.
I’d also recently watched The Siege [ [link removed] ], a 1998 film starring Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, and Bruce Willis depicting a horrific government response to terror attacks in the U.S. It was a compelling film even before the 9/11 attacks rendered it more or less prophetic.
As a student studying what passes for law in the U.S., I was aware at the time how precarious our so-called “rights” have always been when challenged by perceived exigency. And as a Muslim Pakistani-American immigrant, I figured—sadly, correctly—that I would likely fit a racial and religious profile.
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On the one hand, I felt surprised as the ensuing months unfolded at how relatively slowly Washington responded. On the other hand, I spent the next 20 years fighting that response as it continued to expand [ [link removed] ] beyond domestic surveillance to include executive secrecy, military detention, torture with impunity, and unprompted wars on multiple countries.
I spent those decades chasing a futile dream of guarding constitutional principles from political demagoguery that, during last night’s presidential debate, ensconced itself in the mantle of bipartisan consensus.
Neither Harris nor Trump support peace
Last night’s face-off [ [link removed] ] might be the only time that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will ever debate each other. Having repeatedly embarrassed [ [link removed] ] himself on national television, Trump has indicated his reluctance [ [link removed] ] to repeat the exercise, and with good reason: he has no business running for the White House in the first place, especially given his multiple impeachments and criminal convictions.
But while any number of observers have sang praise [ [link removed] ] for Vice President Harris in the wake of last night’s debate, most have shied away from observing an elephant in the room: a disturbing imperial consensus uniting her and Trump.
Harris and Trump went so far as to compete over which of them would be more brutally efficient in demonizing immigrants, and which would be more belligerent towards other countries. Neither pledged to guard the principles that once united America before they were casually discarded in the response to the 9/11 terror attacks.
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Harris suggested at one point that the war on Gaza started on October 10, 2023—conveniently forgetting the 75 years of military occupation and human rights abuses that preceded it and prompted the events of that day. Both she and Trump would effectively enable Netanyahu’s self-serving [ [link removed] ] genocide to continue.
Harris and Trump differed over where to target their belligerence—Harris would prefer to target Russia, while Trump seems to prefer focusing on China—but a vision of unrestrained [ [link removed] ] American militarism [ [link removed] ] standing above international law outrageously unites them. Neither of them appears willing to champion a rational or humane foreign policy, while both of them insist on demonizing the migrant workers and families responsible for America’s prosperity.
It is disappointing to witness yet again how little this country ever seems to learn from even its own history. While professional journalists continue to fail America, bipartisan fascism [ [link removed] ] continues to consolidate. Meanwhile, voters unwilling to support imperialism enjoy a better option [ [link removed] ] than either of the candidates who debated last night.
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