9/11 pop quiz “Why?”

Like most white Americans I did not learn the history of the burning of Black Wall St until the George Floyd protests. And I am a bit embarrassed about my minimal knowledge of the history of Union organizing and civil rights. Unsurprisingly I do better with anti nuclear activism history

But the question I find surprisingly few US Americans (including highly educated ones) can answer is “Why was the US attacked on 9/11?” It seems like an important question for us to have a consensus historical answer to. It is not like this was something Osama bin Laden was cagey about. He gave three very specific reason for the attacks on the U

1. the US boycott of Iraq which had already killed 600k children 
2. US construction of military bases in Saudi Arabia
3. US political and military support for the Israeli’s war in Palestine

The more you dig into each of these reasons the more reasonable it becomes (if you lived in the region) to think the only way the US will stop doing these things is if you strike them dramatically at home. While bringing these issues to the attention of the world – because each represents an injustice or danger of US expansionism.

Merchants of death win!

But with perhaps the most dramatic terrorist attack in history, in the US least, bin Laden and friends lost control of the message.  Instead George W Bush told the country “they hate our freedom” as preposterous as that is.  I find that collectively we are much more likely to remember the “Freedom Fries” debate with France that the actual US instigated actions that sparked this retaliation.

Interestingly, this is another thing the US tends not to recognize – 9/11 did not start these wars. There were already happening, people in the Middle East were already dying because of US policy , but people in the west were just ignoring humanitarian organizations which were trying to call out these injustices. 9/11 was a surprise because we were happily ignoring our policy effects in the Middle East.

While we are fighting the Big Lie, it is important to remember we have likely been duped by other politicians.