Never Forget

Never forget 9/11. 

Never forget how the United States financially and militarily backed the “Mujahideen” Islamist terror group in Afghanistan throughout the late 70s and 80s, as it brutalized the Afghan people and overthrew their democratically elected government. 

Never forget how Mujahideen operative Osama Bin Ladin, was on the CIA’s payroll during the Soviet-Afghan war, and was close personal friends with the American Director of National Intelligence. 

Never forget how after being abandoned by the United States, the Mujahideen splintered into cells that would eventually become the Taliban and Al Qaeda. 

Never forget how the CIA was aware that a large scale attack was imminent, months before the September 11th attacks were carried out, and how Israeli intelligence knew long before the CIA — choosing to hold onto this information as they believed an American backed intervention in the region would be in their best interests. 

Never forget how the on September 11th, 2001, the United States was attacked by the same religious extremists they had once armed and trained. 

Never forget how the state government of New York worked with New York City’s local government to mislead and outright lie to New Yorkers about air quality following the collapse of the towers, leading to countless more deaths in the coming months and years. 

Never forget how even today, Americans living with chronic health issues as a result of 9/11, including first responders who were present at ground zero, are unable to access basic healthcare. 

Never forget how 9/11 saw the militarization of the NSA and the building out of a mass surveillance state which invades the privacy of Americans to this day. 

Never forget how 9/11 let the United States government justify a crackdown on air travel, and how the TSA is not only useless in detecting and thwarting terrorist threats, but is in reality used as a mechanism by which to regulate how Muslims and non-white Americans travel by air. 

Never forget how memories of 9/11 are weaponized by both fascist and liberal politicians in the United States to push a racist agenda. 

Never forget how racism and islamophobic paranoia stoked by 9/11 served as justification for the intervention in Afghanistan, in spite of Al Qaeda being a Saudi-backed organization, primarily operating out of Pakistan. 

Never forget how the intervention in Afghanistan was in reality a means by which American pharmaceutical companies seized control over Afghanistan’s opium exports, eventually leading to the opioid crisis in the United States. 

Never forget how that same islamophobic paranoia served as a weapon which the Bush administration would use to manufacture consent for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, and how because of narrative control on behalf of the state, many Americans still believe that there was a direct and material correlation between 9/11 and the Saddam Hussein regime. 

Never forget the 71,000 murdered Afghan civilians, over 40% of whom were children. 

Never forget the American children who will never see their parents again, as their parents were sent overseas to fight and die in these pointless and illegal wars for profit. 

Never forget the $2.26 trillion of taxpayer capital spent on replacing the Taliban with the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Ultimately, never forget how the attacks of September 11th, 2001, were much more than a national tragedy. That day marked a global tragedy. The United States war machine carries out acts of terror and destruction across the globe every day, all leaving more dead and more lives destroyed than Al-Qaeda could have ever dreamed of. 

Never forget 9/11, because that was the day the world stopped spinning.