25 Years After 9/11: End the War on Terror at Home

Twenty-five years ago, 3,000 people were brutally and senselessly murdered by criminal members of Al-Qaeda. 

As the nation grieved, national security hawks within the Bush administration quickly set about exploiting the tragedy. Many of them, like Vice President Dick Cheney, harbored grievances going back to the restrictions on the intelligence agencies and executive branch put in place at end of the Vietnam War and Watergate. 

They used the horror of that day to ram through their longstanding agenda. They got Congress to pass the Patriot Act, extending the scope of national security surveillance. They rewrote the FBI rules to weaken protections to prevent a repeat of Hoover’s surveillance of Martin Luther King or the anti-Vietnam war movement. Behind closed doors, they cited a broad authorization of military force against the perpetrator of the attacks to warrantlessly wiretap Americans. And they cited that same authorization to claim they could detain without trial anyone anywhere in the world, even U.S. citizens. And the CIA began a program of forced disappearances and torture reminiscent of military dictatorships, not democracies. And in spite of prohibition on assassinations, they twisted the Authorization for Military Force to justify a global program of extrajudicial executions, one that was greatly expanded by Barack Obama.

In the days after 9/11, the FBI rounded up innocent Muslim immigrants, detaining them in abusive conditions. Mosques were infiltrated by informants and the Muslim-Americans as a whole were treated as a potential fifth column. So too was anyone who dissented, as Americans were told you were with the Bush administration or the terrorists. But Americans did dissent, including the millions of Americans who took to the streets as the Bush administration launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq.

One group that was particularly hit hard were Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights. Although they had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration, Department of Justice, and FBI needed easy victories in their war on terror. They staged a series of abusive prosecutions, touted as victories for the new Patriot Act, against those who supported Palestine. This included the Holy Foundation, who were convicted of material support for terrorism for the “crime” of providing humanitarian aid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. These prosecutions were made possible not just thanks to the Patriot Act’s loosening of the rules around when foreign intelligence surveillance could be use in criminal proceedings, but information provided by Israeli intelligence services, including information derived from torture. 

Twenty five years later, this cynical power grab by the national security state remains very much with us. It’s five years since the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, yet 15 men remain at Guantánamo Bay. And the new surveillance powers, not only remain on the books, but are ever expanding. In fact, it is much of counterterrorism, strengthened and expanded by the War on Terror, that Trump and Miller are using to wage war on their domestic enemies.

Today, we mourn those lives lost that day. And we call for an end to the War on Terror at home. 

Defending Rights & Dissent is also producing video programming in our campaigns to defend your right to know and freedom to act. See the video versions of this post: part one and part two.