23 years later. The conditions that led to 9/11 are set, once again. BLOWBACK! Nuclear war? Is anyone else seeing this?!
Have we learned ANYTHING?!?!
23 years ago today, I was in 6th grade. 11 years old. I didn’t understand the significance of what happened but afterwards nothing would be the same.
It was playing on the tv in our classroom, the teacher couldn’t look away, needless to say, we didn’t have homework that day. I still learn more everyday about that fateful day then I knew at the time.
Parents were pulling their kids out of school, we didn’t have a car, so I stayed. Soon after I would be berated for not standing during the pledge of allegiance, called anti-American by the rednecks that bullied me, we would talk a lot in class about the draft and how we have to sign up for the military when we turned 18. I remember being very afraid of this. I wasn’t by any means, a tough kid. The stories I’d hear from my convict relatives I couldn’t imagine, I ran away from fights, and my bullies tended to be the ones who couldn’t wait to enlist and take on the terrorists. Now I believe that to be the more moral stance—against violence under all circumstances.
When I got home that day Dad was watching the news and when he started talking about it his voice broke and his eyes teared up, he gave me a big hug and asked if I was okay. This was when it got real to me. My father was the toughest man I knew. He seen the—now infamous clip—of the person falling from the window of the tower in real time. On live tv. He couldn’t let it go, how that person must’ve felt having to make the decision between fire and falling. He often wondered what he would’ve chosen. I wonder the same. I wonder what it must feel like to be so sure that there’s no other way out. It’s death or death. How must that feel?
There was a lot of empathy for one another that had been neglected for too long in the months that followed. Most people who were against the Iraq war believed the Afghanistan war was moral. Even the staunchest anti-war activist considered the first intervention following 9/11 to be moral.
The attack on the WTC towers on September 11th, inspired a lot of things. There was music inspired by this, movies, documentaries, several wars, and millions of lost lives. I found out who Marvin Gaye is from an album with many versions of the song What’s going on? The All-Star Tribute, which I believed was for the lives lost on 9/11, but apparently it was a benefit for AIDS victims.
I thought for 23 years that the All-Star Tribute of Marvin Gaye’s What’s going on? Was the gathering of stars across many genres to make music together in the post-9/11 world. Damn, oh well, I wasn’t the only one that thought this.
Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect was yanked off the air because Maher disagreed with George W. Bush’s characterization of the terrorists as “cowards” — noting that “we” (the U.S. military) have been the cowards for remotely bombing countries while the terrorists stayed in the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
There was roll back of civil liberties and an advancement of corporatism, Federal institutions, and the military industrial-complex unlike anything we could fathom. The Department of Homeland Security, the TSA, the PATRIOT Act, don’t exist without the events that took place on 9/11 and did not exist before.
So, what lessons have we learned? I can think of a few. Including, don’t trust anyone named Dick who’s died more times than he’s been alive (New Rule for Kamala Harris). Seriously, how old is that guy!?!?
Also, when hiring someone for your cabinet, maybe find out if he was part of a think-tank with a name that declares us kings of the New American Century and has plans for a regime change for every country who isn’t us! Or at least, if something like that shows up on someone’s background check, that you already hired, maybe get a second opinion when he says you should invade one of the countries on his list. More specifically, if he’s involved in something like this:
The report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” which suggested billions more in the Pentagon budget annually for reimagining military capabilities across the forces, including nuclear and space, was based in part on the Defense Policy Guidance, crafted by Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney during the George H. W. Bush Administration “for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.”
The report noted that “the process of transformation” that PNAC envisioned, “even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”
Fire his ass, there are plenty of better choices out there.
Nobody said it better than Ron Paul. The following video should be the lesson from the attacks on September 11th:
From the dust and blood, and sweat and tears of these fallen buildings a question arose… Why do they hate us? Famously George W. Bush, when addressing Congress, gave his best guess at the answer to this question, he said to Congress:
Americans are asking “Why do they hate us?”
They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.
Political commentator and stand-up comedian Dave Smith once said,
You wanna know who America’s next enemy is? Look at who they’re funding right now.
We could be walking the same path to the next 9/11 attack on our soil. Osama Bin Laden wasn’t unique, and neither were the circumstances. After the abundance of lessons learned from 9/11, you’d think we would see a repeat of it coming from a mile away, but we’re headed, full throttle toward the next attack on American soil as I write.
Let me explain….
In the 80’s when Ronald Reagan took office the Soviet Union were the enemies of the free world. There was a new Director of the CIA in town, William Casey. Casey was an old school relic of the Office of Strategic Services in the 40’s or, OSS. The OSS later became the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA. He was head of its Secret Intelligence Branch in Europe and served in the Naval Reserve until December 1945. He serves in several other government positions through the Nixon and Ford Administrations including the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC.
When he starts his duties as Director, the Soviet Union was enemy number 1 of the Reagan Administration and arguably of the world. They had been expanding outside their territory, America considered this to be a provocation. This was when America truly believed in the containment strategy, put forward by George Kennan, that communism spreading over there had to be stopped or it would make it over here.
In December of 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan the Afghans weren’t having it. This triggered a 9-year civil war. Bill Casey, newly appointed CIA director, makes it a mission of the CIA.
He calls on Milton Bearden a CIA Officer who becomes his point-man in the Aghan resistance of the Soviet occupation. In the documentary, Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror, Bearden reflects on this time:
Bill Casey says to him, “I want you to go to Afghanistan, I’ll give(fund) ya a billion dollars a year, and I want you to get these guys to win. We don’t wanna just ‘fight to the last Afghan’ we want you to go and drive these guys on. And if a billion isn’t enough, I’ll give ya more.” Bearden says, “the pressure was on from that moment forward, it was on.” He continues, “by 1985 a million Afghans had been killed, 1.5 million had been wounded or maimed, a million had been driven into exile into Iran, and 2 million had crossed the border into Pakistan, of a population of about 13 million at the time, that’s like a third have either been, killed, wounded, or driven into exile. The decision was made, we’re gonna go into this thing, so let’s get on with it and make it go away.”
The Afghans they were training and funding were known as the Mujahideen.
The Mujahideen were the fighters who rose up to fight the Soviets, they were willing to die for Islam. These were fierce Jihadists who were willing to go any lengths to fight and die for their country because this was the noble thing to do and guaranteed them a spot in the afterlife. These people, even way back then, were what we call terrorists, there’s no doubt, they were bad people. One of the leaders was known for throwing acid on woman’s faces who didn’t have their faces covered up. They were devils. We got in bed with these devils.
In 1988, after years of the Mujahideen resisting, Arabs from surrounding territories joined the resistance against the Soviets and they fought Shoulder-to-Shoulder.
This alliance would later form a more familiar group to the recent conflict, Al-Qaeda.
One of the Afghan countries who joined in the resistance was Saudi Arabia. The Bin Laden family was a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia, with a son named Osama who was always interested in Jihad and resistance, this was his chance. He joined the fight against the Soviets and later became the founder of Al-Qaeda.
Our support started as training, money, and AK-47’s, this support escalated all the way up to Stinger Missiles, which were state-of-the-art missiles that could shoot down Soviet planes. They were trained to shoot these planes down as they were landing at Soviet airports. After 9 years of war the stingers turned everything around on the Soviets. The Afghans had been waiting for martyrdom before this, afterwards they tore those fucking Soviets up.
The Stinger missiles supplied by the United States gave Afghan guerrillas, generally known as the Mujahideen, the ability to destroy the dreaded Mi-24D helicopter gunships deployed by the Soviets to enforce their control over Afghanistan. Three of the first four Stingers fired each took down a gunship. The guerrillas were now able to challenge Soviet control of the airspace above the battlefield. Mujahideen morale soared as Soviet losses mounted. By 1989, the Soviet Union had concluded that the fight was not worth the cost and withdrew from the country.
In 2 years following this event, the Soviet Union fell, and the rest is history…. Right?
Osama Bin Laden rose as a leader, with his message that America was stealing coming for the holy lands and our militarism throughout the middle east starting with the Gulf War when Saddam invaded Kuwait and continuing throughout the 90’s.
The reason I’m recounting this is because, there is a lot of parallels between this Soviet-Afghan war and the current War in Ukraine, and if America is fine with another 9/11 then by all means continue on and I’ll continue steering clear of coastal cities and significant landmarks that could be targeted, if not maybe we should do something about this now. Or just stop doing stuff, that’s probably our best bet, just STOP!! Stop escalating wars with global superpowers around the world by backing rebels to overthrow their governments. If you don’t think we’re doing this in Ukraine as we did with many other countries, listen to this, this, or this, or just scan her show notes, they’re on the same page, just scroll down. Jennifer Briney at Congressional Dish gives the most thorough show notes of any show out there. She doesn’t say shit without proof of what she’s saying in the show notes.
Present Day
It’s been 23 years today. The Soviet Union is gone but we are still challenging its ghost, we are treating present-day Russia like they are that same Soviet country that everyone has heard about, read about, or remember from long ago. We are still expanding NATO, the military alliance formed to defeat it. In fact, how close is this, the CIA has been training, funding, and providing intelligence to fighters who happen to go by a different name and live in a different place, to fight off the occupation of the same country but by a different name, because it worked back then so why won’t it work now. The only difference is now ex-Soviet Russia has nuclear weapons and are extremely aware of what we’re doing. If you’re following me, and I hope you are because that means I pulled this off, the next 9/11 will be a nuclear holocaust or a plane hijacked by the Al-Qaeda of Ukraine, the Azov Battalion. There’s a lot of talk about the New Cold War, everyone should be listening to what people like Jeffrey Sachs has to say on this. He was there when the Soviet Union fell, he was the economist tasked with bringing Russia back and way back then the United States goal was for the country and the citizens to be looted forever, to never come back. He’s afraid of nuclear conflict and we should all be too.
RIP to all those lost on September 11th, 2001, and all those lost either directly or indirectly in the wars that proceeded. Thank you for reading.
Jordan Lee Canter, Editor-in-Chief, Declaration of warLiberty