Nine Eleven Fifteen years later

Fifteen years have passed since September, 11, 2001.  In the years following, on other September 11’s (and other days), I’ve tried to keep you posted about what has resulted since.  I began the long task of trying to compare an excellent September 11 report with the government’s 9/11 report – the same government report that has recently been further released, although mostly redacted; the same report that talks about how our friend, Saudi Arabia, is more culpable than previously thought).

I was unable to complete that comparison of those reports.  The truth remains, and is sometimes mentioned, that we don’t know most of the truth that led to September 11, 2001, most of the truth that happened on September 11, 2001, or the truth of what has happened since 2001.

I don’t know a complete summary is possible.  However, there is a lot of information.  Consider this:

almost 15 years have passed and that air war has never ended.  In Afghanistan, for instance, in just the first four years of the Obama administration (2009-2012), more than 18,000 munitions were released over the country.  And this year, B-52s, those old Vietnam workhorses, retired for a decade in Afghanistan, took to the air again as U.S. air sorties there ramped up against surging Taliban and Islamic state militants.

And that’s just to begin to describe the never-ending nature of the American air war that has spread across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa in these years.  In response to al-Qaeda’s brief set of air strikes against U.S. targets, Washington launched an air campaign that has yet to end, involving the use of hundreds of thousands of bombs and missiles, many of a “precision” sort but some as dumb as they come, against a growing array of enemies. Almost 15 years later, American bombs and missiles are now landing on targets in not one but seven largely Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen).

Remember that the people you vote for are the people who decide if we should bomb people that never attacked us.