Filenews 11 September 2021
As it is 20 years since the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers (World Trade Center) in New York, the inevitable flashbacks and comparisons between then and now are multiplying.
Especially in the U.S., as would be expected, opinions are being put forward, which mostly have one thing in common: A melancholic introversion around the events of September 11, 2001, what followed and how the greatest terrorist attack in the history of mankind is perceived today.
In this context, the issue raised by the journalists of the American news hub NPR, about "How to talk about the 11th/9th 2001 to a new generation of children", is of great interest. The text mentions the views of current teachers, who describe how they face the challenge of how elementary school students could understand a sequence of momentous events, about which they themselves do not have the slightest direct knowledge.
For example, the managers of the Morningside Center for Children's Education in Social Responsibility recommend a brief description of students from 3rd to 5th grade, based strictly on historical data. Of the type: "On September 11, 2001, a group of people captured two planes and drove them to the Twin Towers, two skyscrapers located in the centre of Manhattan. After several explosions, the two buildings were demolished. About 3,000 people died. On that same day, there were pirates on two other planes and by the same group. One plane was deliberately fired at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing 125 people. The other fell into a field in Pennsylvania, with all passengers and crew victims. Although it was never proven, for this last plane we believe it was aimed at the White House or the Capitol."
For educator Emily Gardner, based on her experience, it is considered crucial to make it clear to the children who these 19 perpetrators of the attacks were - and, above all, who they were not. "We are very careful in how we answer the question about who carried out the September 11 attacks," Ms Gardner tells NPR. Explaining that "we tell the children that they were members of a terrorist organization, al-Qaeda. They were not Muslims in general. Nor did they come from a particular country." As for the motive of the perpetrators, the same teacher points out that "I believe that adults, we teachers, should sit next to the children and tell them honestly, simply, 'I don't know'".
All wrong for the US
The website of the political analysis magazine "The Atlantic" hosts an extensive article by the journalist, historian and writer Garrett M. Graff, who claims that America, immediately after the unexpected and overwhelming - in every respect - attack, was drawn into a series of panicked and completely misguided moves.
Graff specifically states that, before September 11, the US was tackling terrorism with lawful, constitutionally correct methods. After the attacks, however, and since November 13, when President George Bush announced that operation "War on Terror" was beginning, America was actually put on a trajectory of imitating the TV series "24" in reality. This resulted in the creation of "black holes" in various parts of the globe, where the CIA had complete freedom to capture and treat "enemy fighters" as it saw fit.
In this way, concentration camps such as Guantánamo in Cuba were set up, where everything was allowed, even inhumane torture against suspects. The specially trained investigators were replaced with young and inexperienced from the ranks of the CIA and the army. Their main asset was that they had no hesitation in torturing the prisoners until they confessed. The tests, which included sleep deprivation, coffins among many others, were insumed by psychologists at the behest of the US government.
However, after 20 years it is not clear whether there has been even a little bit of substantial detachment of any information in relation to the attacks on the Twin Towers. Despite the torture at Guantánamo, despite the sexual abuse by the prison guards in Iraq's Abu Ghreib prison, none of the detainees confessed and none revealed anything useful for the strike. And yet, the White House has been extremely reluctant to admit the failure of these hellholes. In contrast, presidential candidates like Mitt Romney promised pre-election that he would double Guantánamo, while Donald Trump rewarded Gina Haspel for her services as a commander at a detention centre in Thailand, elevating her to head of the CIA.
Terrorist crimes became the jurisdiction, not of the civil courts, but of the military courts. But to this day Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks, along with 4 other accomplices, remains in custody, awaiting a trial that no one knows exactly when it will begin. And while the U.S. spends millions of dollars on the maintenance of the planet's "Guantánamo", a conspiracy suspect around September 11, 2001, Zakaria Musaoui, remains the only man convicted - but by a federal court.
According to the study done by Garrett M. Graff, the US government panicked and made knee-jerk, damaging reactions. Almost immediately it turned out that all the secret services ignored obvious evidence, which could have prevented the blow. The CIA even knew the names of two of the hijackers. And yet, the restructuring, instead of being carried out decisively and in depth, was carried out reluctantly and in the context of a foggy plan with the heavy-handed title "homeland security".
The creation of a completely new super-ministry that would coordinate all operations aimed at ensuring maximum protection for the American homeland proved to be a huge failure. Its executives hysterically engaged in a witch hunt, with the sole criterion of the question "can this harm us?" which was posed horizontally and vertically, for anything. The new ministry had at its disposal unlimited funds, which were wasted on supplying the local police forces with heavy, military weaponry. In Graff's view, this bellicose approach and the violent militarization of the police, increased the insecurity of citizens and the bloody outbursts. Perhaps, in fact, even the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement are ultimately due to how the American state institutionalizes the fight against terrorism.
At first, writes Graff, there was a global wave of sympathy and sympathy for the U.S. However, every operation that America then did cost them more and more allies who distanced themselves from the erratic campaign against terrorism. The most blatant proof of the lack of elementary understanding - or worse still, of the deliberate use of an unspeakable tragedy such as the attacks on the Twin Towers to promote hidden expansionist plans - is the intervention in Afghanistan. In the midst of which, while U.S. forces were beginning to impose themselves on the Taliban, Bush's staff decided to invade Iraq and relentlessly pursue Saddam Hussein. Who was the greatest enemy of Osama bin Laden, that is, the real culprit of September 11.
The ambitious war on terror absorbed trillions of dollars and caused a general conflagration in Asia and the Middle East. The U.S. has come to fund with the worst dregs of local communities, even with drug mega-traders and common criminals, in a futile and long-ineffective attempt to exterminate al-Qaeda.
Xenophobia and, worse still, Islamophobia are phenomena caused by the mishandling of the American Government - at least as Garrett M. Graff judges them today, based on years of research. He concludes that today the US, even after the extermination of bin Laden, is facing the current crisis in Afghanistan without even the unity and hope of vindication that existed after 11 September. Graff closes his article in The Atlantic with the following phrase: "Looking back, after two decades, I cannot avoid the conclusion that the enemy against whom we Americans fought after 11/9/2001 was ourselves."
