Twenty years ago today, two hijacked planes smashed into the World Trade Center, another slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania.

3,000 people lost their lives that sad and terrible morning.

Like so many of us, I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when the first and then second planes hit the Twin Towers.

Like so many of us, I remember the shock, the horror, and the fear that followed.

Our nation was traumatized.

The truth is, the whole world was shocked and horrified.

Though Americans pay far too little attention to what’s going on to people in other countries, people around the world can’t help but know what’s going on in the United States. People around the world cried, sympathized, and expressed solidarity.

At that moment, the United States had an opportunity to unite the world around diplomacy and shared humanist values.

This path would have rejected war and violence and embraced diplomacy, peace-making, and justice.

Yes, it was imperative that the conspirators behind the 9/11 attack be brought to justice — but that justice could and should have been pursued by global law enforcement and according to international law rather than military means.

But our nation chose a different path.

George W. Bush categorically rejected offers from the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden, without even exploring their viability.

And Bush — and the United States — went to war.

In Afghanistan.

Then in Iraq.

And around the world, as part of the so-called “Global War on Terror.”

Two decades later, the toll is clear.

Here’s the tally from Brown University’s Costs of War Project:

• More than 929,000 people — including at least 387,000 civilians — have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence.

• Several times more have perished from other war-related causes, like malnutrition and disease.

• 14 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq became war refugees or were internally displaced by war.

• The U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is more than $8 trillion.

• Over 7,000 U.S. soldiers died in the wars, as did more than 8,000 American contractors.

• There isn’t adequate data to assess the scope of injuries and trauma suffered by U.S. soldiers. We do know that more than 30,000 active duty personnel and war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died of suicide.

All those numbers, of course, fail to reveal the individual tragedies that have befallen people and families around the world.

The needless pain, sorrow, and heartbreak is utterly incalculable.

As the author and historian Garrett Graff writes in The Atlantic:

“The United States — as both a government and a nation — got nearly everything about our response wrong, on the big issues and the little ones.”

• We waged war on Iraq based on completely fabricated grounds.

• The Central Intelligence Agency adopted a full-fledged, illegal torture program that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later conclude was “brutal and far worse than the C.I.A. represented.”

• Military and political leaders repeatedly lied to the nation about purported progress in Afghanistan — now confirmed by the immediate collapse of the Afghan government and army upon U.S. withdrawal.

All of this had a horribly corrosive effect on our country domestically.

• The war and terrorism narrative inevitably led to a dangerous rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-immigrant sentiment.

• Fear and paranoia were used to justify intrusive surveillance policies — some of it legal, much of it not — that shredded civil liberties and privacy protections.

• And the lies and body bags boomeranged to deepen domestic cynicism about government, worsen alienation, and fuel conspiracism.

As Graff writes, “the fear and suspicion that came to dominate America’s reaction to the 2001 attacks ... yielded a long succession of tragic consequences, cynical choices, and poisonous politics.”

Which brings us to the current moment.

We all owe thanks to President Biden for showing the courage to end the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan and to declare an end to “forever wars.”

Yes, the withdrawal was done imperfectly — due in significant part to the surprisingly sudden collapse of the Afghan government.

But the most important thing is that the withdrawal was completed.

Yet there is no easy escape from 20 years of pursuing war instead of diplomacy.

The U.S. military budget now stands at roughly three quarters of a trillion dollars. And the defense committees in the House and Senate each just voted to bump it up even more.

It’s time now to make a fundamental turn away from war, fear, and militarism.

And, in doing so, to turn toward diplomacy, solidarity, and cooperative efforts to face our great global problems — including the coronavirus pandemic, poverty, and climate catastrophe.

Please join me in telling President Biden:

Thank you for ending the Afghan War. Now please oppose the proposed increases in the Pentagon’s budget. It’s time to redirect the nation away from war and toward addressing the giant global threats that do not yield to military might.

Add your name.

Thanks for taking action.

In memory of the lives lost on 9/11 and in the needless wars that followed,

- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
 
 
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