On one hand, you could say that we never learned the lessons of September 11th. Our nation meddles in other people’s business and we provoke their enmity. We provided weapons to mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan in their battle against the Soviets during the 1970s, but they knew that we were not their friends because we also funded the slaughter of Muslims in Somalia, Lebanon, Chechnya, and India. In reprisal, they brought down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 Americans. We overthrew the elected government of Iran in 1953 to install our own king and when Iranians managed to force him out 25 years later they declared, “Death to America,” and held 52 Americans hostage for over a year. In the past 5 years, we have bombed Syria, kidnapped the leader of Venezuela, and started a new war with Iran. We keep meddling and keep wondering why other people hate us. 

But at another level, I think some Americans have learned the lessons of 9-11 very well. In fact, they knew those lessons long before that day and have applied them to their own advantage. Wealthy elites want money and power. They don’t care what happens to other people – from the USA or elsewhere. Defense contractors benefit from endless wars. The politicians benefit from their campaign contributions. And if thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of foreigners have to die for those elites to make money and amass power, so be it. In fact, those deaths create the will for more war, so American elites regard those deaths as a benefit. 

Unfortunately, their propaganda campaign to convince the rest of us to support their foreign interventions has been very successful. After September 11th, the American public largely moved in lockstep behind the national push for attacks on Afghanistan and then Iraq. We wanted someone to blame for the nearly 3,000 dead. Unfortunately, what we got was almost 7,000 American military casualties as we killed nearly one million people in those two countries. And for what benefit? 

I hear the response: “There hasn’t been another 9-11, has there? That is worth the cost we have paid.” The numbers of dead alone expose the fallacy – the deaths of 7,000 Americans are worth it to prevent the deaths of 3,000? But even more than that, how could the deaths of nearly 1,000,000 Afghans and Iraqis not provoke more hatred? Each of those people had dozens of family members who will hate the US for the rest of their lives because of what we did to their families. And all of that sets aside the immorality of our actions. 1,000,000 deaths to avenge the deaths of 3,000. Again, the numbers demonstrate what value we place on what life. And this skewed sense of value is also propagated by our elites. Just as they separate us within our own country, they spread the lie of how different we are from the people of other nations. “Muslims are not like us.” “Arabs don’t share our values.” “They hate our freedoms.” Utter nonsense fabricated to make us hate people who want the same things that we want – safety and health for our families. 

It is past time for us to learn the real lesson of September 11th: elites will never give up trying to separate us for their own advantage. They have the money and the power. All that we have is our far greater numbers and the moral rectitude to recognize our common humanity in the face of those who want to tear it, in the end, from all of us.

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