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Welcome to Week 25 of Be the Change!
It's a sunny and tranquil Sunday here in Southern California. The 20th anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone. Wildfires are threatening the Giant Sequoias of Northern California; it's gotten so bad that some of them--including General Sherman, the world's largest tree by volume--are being wrapped in aluminum in the hopes of staving off disaster. So much of what we do these days is about staving off disaster.
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This week I share my thoughts on the past 20 years of the War on Terror and a poem about the absurd, but necessary, attempts to hold the world together.
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I intended to publish this essay on the 20th anniversary of the horrifying attacks of 9/11, but I needed more time to process my thoughts. On that day, I was 16, living in Los Angeles, a junior in high school. I remember three things in particular. The first is waking up and standing around the TV with my parents, watching CNN as they carried live pictures of the smoldering towers and the scenes at the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The second is walking into my first class and the teacher stating, simply, that everything was about to change. And the third is the persistent thought, which held fast to me as the surreal day stretched into a surreal week, that this felt like a movie.
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What I could not imagine, what even that prescient teacher could not have possibly imagined, was how the subsequent twenty years would unfold. Nothing captures the disaster that has been our response to unspeakable tragedy better than what happened, in our name, on August 29, 2021. It was then that, in response to an ISIS suicide bombing outside the Kabul Airport, we killed ten people in a retaliatory drone strike.
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At first, we were told that the attack was a "righteous strike" targeting the militants responsible for killing 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members in that suicide bombing on August 26th. But as with so much about our War on Terror, it was a lie. And after a NY Times investigation, the Pentagon was forced to admit that we had not killed terrorists but rather three adults and seven kids, including a father of four who worked for Nutrition and Education International, an aid group. At the time we murdered him, he was loading canisters of water to bring to his family. Who will be held accountable?
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Nor was this an anomalous event. Since 9/11, we have murdered civilians--and, yes, terrorists--not only in Afghanistan but Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, and elsewhere. I am not here to argue whether or not the War on Terror has made us safer; that is something worth debating. But the incontrovertible fact is that we have killed far more innocent civilians than people capable of doing us harm. In Afghanistan, for instance, it is estimated that we killed nearly 52,000 Talian and other fighters--the vast majority of which were poor villagers who may not have even known what 9/11 was about. During that time period, the chaos we unleashed by attacking--with no real plan--a war-torn, impoverished country, resulted in the deaths of over 47,000 civilians, 400 aid workers, 70 journalists, 66,000 Afghan military and police, 3,800 U.S. contractors, and 2,400 U.S service members. (All data from the AP.) And that is just one country.
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In the run up the invasion of Iraq I became heavily involved in the anti-war movement, attending countless rallies, big (500,000+ in San Francisco) and small (a handful of people holding placards). That the war was blatantly and obviously based on a lie didn't seem to matter, for we were already well into the "If you don't support everything supposedly done in the name of freedom and security then you are on the side of the terrorists." That attitude led, at least indirectly, to our torture program; the curtailment of civil liberties at home; Guantánamo Bay and indefinite detention; rising xenophobia; and, it could be argued, the polarization that eventually made fathomable an insurrection against our democracy, inspired by a sitting president.
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We could have honored the victims of 9/11 in so many different ways. Using it as a moment to build on the global outpouring of grief and support to strengthen international institutions; investing in the eradication of poverty and hunger; re-assessing our foreign policy; and tackling climate change and disease. Instead we devolved into renaming french fries "freedom fries" because that nation refused to support our invasion of Iraq. Instead we undertook to spend trillions of dollars on national security at the expense of social and environmental priorities. We chose the path of empty bravado and false patriotism--as though the best way to support freedom was to drop bombs, plant American flags, and slap Never Forget and These Colors Don't Run bumper stickers on our cars.
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Today the gravest threat to humanity is not terrorism; I find it hard to argue that it ever was. Millions are dying of a pandemic fueled by disinformation, distrust, and disinvestment in preparedness and response; more Americans are dying of COVID-19 every two days than died on 9/11. Authoritarianism is on the rise, domestically and internationally. And global warming has become a climate emergency. What we do in our name in the coming years--whether we secure voting rights and take the lead on climate change, whether we take ownership of our foreign policy--will determine to what extent my two-year-old son will be able to enjoy a prosperous future.
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We still live in a democracy--for now. There is always still time to do what's right and needed. Congress must pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the Build Back Better Act (the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill); those debates are happening right now. The correct response to 9/11 was not to go about our business while the guys in charge--and it was mostly guys--took care of us. Nor is the correct response to today's crises to look away. What's more, taking action can be fun, joyous, rewarding--especially on those occasions that we have policy victories (such as, earlier this year, when the state of Illinois passed the 36% APR rate cap for which Capital Good Fund had been advocating.)
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I slept poorly, but rose at dawn to tend to my garden.
First I wrapped the world's largest tree in aluminum.
Then I trucked seventeen million salmon to the sea.
By early afternoon I wore a crown of ash, my throat so dry
I may never speak above a whisper again. It's late now and
I'm still pumping water onto flames and out of subways.
If I don't make it out of here alive, tell my son I didn't die
for a God who does not exist, or beauty, which does.
Tell him we'd made a mess of things. Tell him I raked,
and watered, and pruned what I could. Tell him to do
the same, even if it's too late--even if it's not enough.
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Just a few weeks after moving to California I was able to vote in the recall election and contact my U.S. Senators and Representative. It takes so little time to engage in the most basic way in our democracy: a few minutes to register to vote, a few minutes to make some calls, a few minutes to fill out and submit a ballot. I can think of no better return on investment of time than these simple actions. Please take a few moments to go to Vote.org and ensure you are still registered and signed up for reminders about all upcoming elections. Then go to this link to learn how to get in touch with your elected officials.
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