Tag: September 11

A 20 Year Delay

20 years since airplanes smashed into buildings in New York City and Washington DC, another US led disaster has come to a heart-breaking end with helicopters landing on an embassy roof and civilians desperately attempting to get aboard airplanes to escape.  

It was always going to end this way.  When we, in our collective grief, shock, and rage, decided to respond to a devastating criminal act by launching a global war on terror, we set the stage for the current catastrophe in Afghanistan.  The last 20 years only delayed this ending. 

A delay that cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Afghanistan alone.  A delay that did not spare Afghanistan from Taliban rule. A delay that cost trillions of dollars that could have been spent strengthening our societies’ resiliency against extremist ideologies, of any sort, that lead to terrorism.  A delay that has caused unknown harm to our own country’s morale, and morality.

This isn’t just a failure of the Biden administration.  To label it as such is to ignore the 20 years of government lies and secrecy, 20 years of “we’re turning the corner,” and 20 years of our own silence, our own willingness to show up for this global war on terror.

For what?

In those 20 years of death and destruction, we still have not successfully brought most of the criminals behind the crime of September 11, 2001 to trial.  We have only just begun to acknowledge in scattered reports that there are likely more criminals behind that crime that the US government has spent the past two decades diligently protecting.  

And we are only just beginning to see what two decades of war, a multi-generational war, will do to our own nation.

 

Rather than feeling completely helpless…


https://lirsconnect.org/get_involved/action_center/siv

https://refugeerights.org/donate

https://www.rescue.org/article/how-can-i-help-afghanistan

https://www.mediasupport.org/donate/#main-menu-toggle

9/11 victims’ family members speak out about recent secrecy ruling in lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

towersghostOn October 31, 2019, Fox News aired a short segment where Tucker Carlson spoke with Chris Ganci and Brett Eagleson who both lost their fathers in the attacks of September 11, 2001.  They discussed the US government’s decision to continue to keep information secret, 18 years after the attacks.  On September 12, 2019 the Department of Justice blocked the release of a 2012 FBI summary report about possible Saudi Arabian ties to the attackers.

Family members of victims of the 9/11 attacks sought the information as part of a long-running lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over allegations of the Kingdom’s involvement in the attacks.

Eagleson states in the interview that the Department of Justice invoked State Secrets Privilege in order to block the public release of the information.  The DOJ cites a reasonable danger that releasing the report risks significant harm to national security as justification for the rare invocation of the privilege.

When asked why he thought the DOJ blocked the release of information, Ganci says he thinks it is about one of two things.  Either they are “covering up their own malfeasance, or they are covering up the complicity of a foreign nation state.  Both of them are equally terrible.”

Saudi Arabia’s possible complicity in the attacks has been reported on numerous times in the years since the attacks.  But the reports are usually provided in a vacuum, with little to no connections that tie the information together into a complete picture.  This makes it all too easy to overlook these individual reports, or to miss their significance.

Similarly, the lawsuit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia gets little attention in the news.  Unfortunately, it seems to get most attention when it is an issue that can be trotted out for political purposes.  However, Dan Christensen at the Florida Bulldog has done a great job keeping up with the case, as has the website 28pages.org.