Anniversaries provide us with an opportunity to examine the trajectory of political and economic policies, and evaluate their impacts. No doubt the commemorative activities marking the 22nd anniversary of the horrific 9/11 attacks were emotionally powerful and poignant. However, the practice of ‘never forget’ should not blind us to the fact that the American self-declared ‘war on terror’ is actually an imperial overreach of an economic empire hellbent on expansion.

Indeed, the millions of victims of America’s overseas wars, rationalised as cumulative vengeance, have perpetuated the kind of extrajudicial and extralegal violence that the rulers of the US claim to oppose.

While denouncing the antidemocratic values and socially regressive ideology (allegedly) motivating the Islamist militias who carried out the 9/11 attacks, the American military-industrial complex has implemented the kind of terrorist violence on a global scale it purports to oppose. It has enacted legislation that infringes on the individual liberties and freedoms which are theoretically sacrosanct in a capitalist-based democracy, freedoms which, we are repeatedly told, raise the ire of terrorist organisations.

The way we view migrants from the Middle East, particularly those from Muslim majority nations, shifted in the wake of 9/11. Rather than individuals trying for a better life, we view them as foot soldiers in a collectively radicalised partisan internal column for Islamism. The United States (and Anglophone nations generally), already moving towards surveillance capitalism, implemented intrusive over surveillance and intimidatory policing which targets the Islamic community.

The authorities who inform us that terrorist groups ‘hate our freedoms’ have done their utmost to legislate heavy restrictions on those liberties. Surveillance capitalism has done more to undermine democracy than any putative Islamist conspiracy.

Saudi complicity

The families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks have persisted in asking pointedly relevant questions about the degree of Saudi Arabian complicity in those terrible attacks. This is not to engage in deranged and paranoid conspiracist thinking, but simply to seek answers for the lingering questions regarding culpability for the terrorist atrocity.

Writing in The Intercept magazine, journalists Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, examine the intimate connections between the team of hijackers and Saudi Arabia’s intelligence fraternity. Add to that the ongoing and fruitful cooperation between Saudi intelligence and the American intelligence apparatus, and the questions cut deeper and closer to home.

It is no secret that Osama Bin Laden, hailing from a wealthy family, was tied up with Islamist groups intimately involved with Al Qaeda’s militant activity. While Bin Laden himself was not directly involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks, he praised the attackers and promoted their extremist ideology as a fellow co-thinker. Bin Laden provided funding for the perpetrators of the attack, and identified with the aims of the hijackers.

The Bush family have close business and political connections with the Saudi monarchy and its financial class. George W Bush, president at the time of the attacks, downplayed evidence of Saudi culpability. In fact, Afghanistan, then under the rule of the Taliban, repeatedly offered to hand over Bin Laden – a request routinely refused by Washington. The Bush-Cheney administration wanted to have their quick, little war in Afghanistan, and make a loud demonstration of American power.

That little war lasted twenty years, and ended with the humiliating retreat of US forces from Kabul in 2021.

While copious evidence of Saudi complicity comes to light, nothing is being done to uncover the potentially embarrassing links between Washington and Riyadh in the aftermath of the 9/11 bombings. Class action lawsuits brought by the victims’ families have kept the issue of Saudi involvement close to the surface, but Washington insiders cannot face the prospect of being complicit in such a devastating atrocity.

Not in the name of the 9/11 victims

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, then President Bush gave a speech upholding the example of Abraham Zelmanowitz. The latter, a victim of 9/11, stayed in the collapsing buildings, rather than escape, sacrificing his life to protect his quadriplegic friend. Bush seized on this episode to proclaim its poignancy as demonstrative of the American national character,

Matthew Lasar, Zelmanovitz’s nephew, responded to President Bush’s words in the following way. Lasar is worth quoting at length:

I mourn the death of my uncle, and I want his murderers brought to justice. But I am not making this statement to demand bloody vengeance. . . . Afghanistan has more than a million homeless refugees. A U. S. military intervention could result in the starvation of tens of thousands of people. What I see coming are actions and policies that will cost many more innocent lives, and breed more terrorism, not less. I do not feel that my uncle’s compassionate, heroic sacrifice will be honored by what the U. S. appears poised to do.

Note the prescience of Lasar’s views. His perspective is reflected by the families of the 9/11 victims, whose purpose is to fully uncover Saudi-US intelligence community complicity in these attacks. The families of 9/11 oppose the imperial wars, drone and missile strikes, which have only resulted in innocent casualties and the forcible displacement of millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and other nations around the world.

Scholars at Brown University, as part of the Cost of Wars project, have found that the US post-9/11 wars have killed 4.5 million people and displaced at least 38 million across Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and numerous other nations. When societies are unable to provide conditions of living for their people, malnutrition and child-suffering inevitably follow. The harmful health and economic consequences of conflicts long outlast the actual shooting war.

Let’s listen to the wishes of the 9/11 families, who have denounced the war on terror for producing precisely the outcomes they sought to avoid. Increased mass surveillance, horrifying wars overseas resulting in the destruction of societies and the outflow of refugees, illegal wars of conquest, drone strikes, draconian laws and indefinite detention – the war on terror is based on the values the Anglo-American alliance claims to oppose. It is time to hold accountable the American and British politicians who made such devastating and destructive domestic and foreign policy outcomes – all perversely carried out in the name of the 9/11 families.