On 9/11 – Nineteen Years Later

That morning a friend of mine, previously HHC, 75th Ranger Regiment, called me. I was living in LA, struggling along in Hollywood. He asked me if I was watching TV - I said no, but I would turn it on and I’d call him back later. Turns out our cable had been cut off, and I found my credit card with little room on it but still got it switched back on.

Well that shit sucked big time. Most people probably had never heard of Saudi extremism, and to be fair, I only had peripherally. But I did know about the attacks in NYC (1993 bombing of the World Trade Center parking garage), the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the attack on the USS Cole. Hundreds of people had been killed in these attacks and many more wounded. I sort of heard something about al Qaeda, but my focus was more on a Hollywood career, something that totally dominated my life. I do remember our rather ineffective retaliatory missile strikes under Clinton.

Well, that changed after 9/11 with nearly 3,000 dead. Who can forget the images of people leaping off the burning towers to escape a worse death. Real shit – horrible to watch. I saw some of it, but turned off the TV once I realized what was actually happening. 

Later I spoke to a friend from 3/75 - we knew war was coming. How could it not? But when it did, both of us thought it was stupid to invade Afghanistan. We argued for bribes to the Taliban or potential regional allies to turn over Bin Laden, small strikes, and letting our men and women in special operations and the intelligence community do their jobs without interference from the top. 

Well, we got nothing but failure from our civilian leadership. Who can forget all the grandstanding by politicians who a little while earlier were running and hiding and worse, were scared. The most powerful nation on earth was caught with weak leadership. Bush, Cheney, and all their neo-conservative chicken-hawks crowed for war. War, war, war… many had never served and had no clue what it meant to send people to their deaths, never mind the inevitable casualties and destruction that would be brought about. 

Rarely in history do the shitbags get what they deserve. But one thing was sure, our political leadership had minimized the foreign threat and ignored the Daily Presidential Briefings which included the threat posed by al Qaeda and look what happened. But our failed foreign policies during the Cold War and beyond had created blowback. America stationing its troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the First Gulf War was just one of many grievances, some were real, many were imagined by the extremists, but they used them all to build support against us. Saudi Arabia had done its best to promote extremism, and many Saudis supported anti-American sentiment. The Saudis certainly were active in spreading their version of extremist Islam – they still are. Why didn’t we “bomb them into the stone-age?” instead of Afghanistan or Iraq. In a few years, Saudi Arabia will have nuclear weapons, courtesy of Trump and his toxic extremist Republicans. Let us remember the very first trip that Trump took outside the US during his term as president was to personally broker a $350 billion arms sale to the country of Saudi Arabia. Amazing. Money talks, morality walks and certainly today’s Republicans are extremists themselves – a more palatable version of Saudi religious extremists because they are white and wear suits.

I remember Condoleeza Rice eventually detailed the chaos and fear post the 9/11 strikes and all I could, and still can, think is, what a bunch of fucking wimps. Loud-mouthed fake patriots, draping themselves in Old Glory with corporate media playing the piper’s tune for the rest of us to follow along obediently. Flags, enamel lapel pins, including “Israel and the US United Against Terror” – you could not make this shit up, and the rest of the western world followed along. Our propaganda shifted from teaching the Taliban a lesson for hosting al Qaeda, to spreading democratic freedom, to equal rights for women – all to be brought about to a stone-aged society courtesy of American military might, but absent any national strategy. Pitiful. Weak leadership, but experts at manipulation. To be fair, the US did need to respond to 9/11, but the response put together by the political leaders at the helm was a far cry from effective. Guantanamo, hello, we are now torturers?

The illegal invasion of Iraq only made things worse. I certainly had a feeling this was going to be the case, as did a few of my friends. We thought Afghanistan would suck us dry and Iraq would bring about some real shitstorms in the Middle East. If former, low-level enlisted swine could read the runes, why couldn’t they? Clearly, they did not care. Peace protestors were mocked and ignored, including by the media which colluded with the government’s drive to war. 

War! War! War! The neo-cons were going to spread democracy everywhere and bring about regime change throughout the world, removing evil dictators and replacing them with American-loving freedom fighters – seriously? Probably not – no way could those morons have been that stupid – or were they? 

But this was their opportunity, decades in the making, Afghanistan first, then Iraq – because they said Saddam Hussein had personally flown an aircraft into NYC – okay I’m kidding, but yet propaganda not so different from such claims was disseminated, and many Americans still believe that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks – any excuse to kill him and remove Iraq as a thorn in our side and of Israel’s. But Iran would only benefit from Saddam’s demise – did they not see this? 

And the media ate it up (US flag lapel pins became a staple accessory for major news network anchors) – corporations supported the war – questioning authority was akin to treason. Plans had been made to topple Libya, Iran, Syria, Russia, Germany, Finland, Switzerland and of course, evil Iceland – then the world! Remade in America’s image. Okay some of this is true, some not. We did have plans to overthrow “threats” in certain regions like Syria and Libya. Iran was too strong, and it turns out, more united than not against us. 

Who can forget super-Canadian neo-con David Frum’s speech, delivered by Bush, about the “Axis of Evil”, composed of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea – straight out of an action comedy starring the better Canadian Mike Myers. Now Frum is pissed at HIS Republican Party under Trump – when he helped it get there. Never mind that Iran and Iraq were not supportive of Sunni extremism, as both countries were threatened by the spread of it, but what a speech. I used a version of it in my little crusader film called Soldier of God. Iran even sought to support us against Sunni extremists – what an opportunity to have healed the generational rift and work through diplomatic means to achieve an alliance. Tossed away like the many trillions of dollars and too many lives along with it. Glorious in its insanity and propaganda. Now we have infants drowning while carried by their desperate parents crossing the Mediterranean Sea for a better life elsewhere, since US foreign policy has set off a sequence of events that has left their homes destroyed. But that’s okay, they are brown and black people - so who cares? How dare they want a better life at our expense? 

Nineteen years later, with millions killed, wounded and displaced, and far greater extremist threats emerging, we are nowhere further along than we were (37 million people have been displaced by the US’s post 9/11 wars, see the excellent study from Brown University https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Displacement_Vine%20et%20al_Costs%20of%20War%202020%2009%2008.pdf) . Our neo-con Republican national strategy was an abject failure that has made the world a worse, more dangerous place. The US politicians of this 9/11 era have all slunk away to their high paying corporate think tank jobs, or universities or newspapers - where they can continue to spread their lies – just look at Bolton. Our military became the best and most war-experienced on the planet, but sadly, it too lacked great leadership, and questioning them was also treated as treasonous and defeatist. Soldier-scholars and their political allies wrote a gazillion articles on war-fighting, often with an emphasis on superiority through advanced technology, with a million new acronyms to confuse civilians and themselves even more, and of course they touted their own successes. The media - obedient to a fault - hosted talking heads and printed all the glorious arguments why and how we won the wars. Hollywood did their part, too, with films like American Sniper and Lone Survivor. And the American public ate it up, with both films becoming blockbusters. We needed heroes and what better heroes than Navy SEALs, even if some are considered pathological liars by many in the spec ops community. Rah, Rah, Rah. 

We did not win. We failed. A debacle greater than Vietnam. Our casualties were relatively minimal (except for those who lost loved ones), and predator drones and biometrics became our choice of sanitized warfare – thanks Donald Rumsfeld, your network-centric warfare worked brilliantly, except for the “winning” part. Not much Clausewitz read by those neo-con decision-makers – that is obvious.

Along with achieving its greatest domestic expenditure on military spending, the US government entered contracts with private mercenary companies (didn’t our Founders say something about going to war because the King of England used mercenaries – the Hessians?). High tech collaborated wonderfully, and we got the Patriot Act (thanks for extending it, Dianne Feinstein) and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (thanks again, Feinstein and Inhofe) and more assaults on our Constitution and Freedom of Speech. I am grateful to Edward Snowden for his bravery, and all the other freedom fighters who seek to bring transparency to our corrupt government. To little avail sadly. But whereas Snowden and other actors of conscience go to prison, or are threatened with it should they return, awful people like Ellen DeGeneres host war criminals like George Bush to rehabilitate him and show his creative side. This is his treatment, twenty years later, instead of being locked up for lying about Iraq having WMD and getting us into an illegal and immoral war. And thanks, Obama, for giving an undeserving person like Ellen the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Obama also authorized the extra-judicial murders of American citizens – setting this precedent was arguably his worst offense on our Constitutional rights.

Poor Americans, we have really had some weak leaders undeserving of our votes and support, and definitely unworthy of our tax dollars thrown out to equally corrupt and undeserving people and their corporations. Our anger at “business as usual” led to Trump, and our resulting anger has now led to the rise of progressives – and for the latter I am grateful.

We should all spare a moment to think of all the victims of violence, including the too many people who have been shot and killed because of systemic racism. We need to clean our house. No American should be afraid of their own. No American, and no child of an American, should be without clean water or health insurance or suffer because of climate change. All Americans deserve the highest standard of living. We need to be the bright shining light, not the bright shining lie, that says Americans take care of each other, as well as take care of people across the globe who are in need. It should not be that hard. Of course, you cannot make money off that idea, so Trump, who lacks any decency, is definitely not interested.

To a better world for all living beings, including animals.