Mehlaqa Samdani
As we mark the 20th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil and mourn the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent civilians on that fateful September day, are we as a country ready to ask ourselves and our leaders the hard questions that eluded us for so long?
Following the horrific attacks, pundits and policymakers alike speculated on the various reasons terrorists targeted the United States. Some talked about the hijackers’ rage and envy at our freedoms, our way of life, our prosperity. Others held the faith of 1.5 billion Muslims responsible for the carnage. Even though there were courageous voices speaking to the contrary, our national narrative was reduced to self-serving explanations, which prevented us from having honest conversations about America’s role in the world.
In this narrative, there was little mention of America’s conduct in the Middle East and SW Asia leading up to the events of 9/11. There was little discussion of how in its pursuit of oil and military bases, the U.S. had propped up unsavory regimes aligned with American interests, and toppled those that were averse to them. In those early days, we seldom talked about how in an effort to counter the communist threat, the U.S. had helped create the very same groups that attacked us on September 11. And that American military bases generated deep resentment and radicalization among local populations against America’s imperial ambitions.
Had we been more critical of our governments’ previous misadventures and the resulting blowback, we might have been less willing to send young Americans to fight in the Global War on Terror that would result in the deaths, displacement, detentions, and disappearances of hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians across the Muslim world.
Had we been more skeptical of our right to militarily impose our values on other societies, we would have been less willing to accept our 20-year, neo-colonial experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Had we been less susceptible to the fear-mongering and hysterical pronouncements of policymakers branding Islam as the enemy, we would have been less accepting of Islamophobic laws and policies (Patriot Act, Countering Violent Extremism, NSEERS, mass surveillance, religious profiling) that cast the entire American-Muslim population under suspicion. Policies which considered every Muslim guilty until proven innocent, and which created the space for anti-Muslim sentiment to grow to unprecedented levels.
Today as we remember the victims of 9/11, let us never forget to question those in authority, and hold them accountable for their policies, both domestic and foreign, past and present, for which ordinary Americans and innocent civilians around the world have had to pay the price.