It’s a confounding time to be Muslim in this country. A degree of Muslim culture I would have never thought possible when I was a kid is now imbued in the lexicon of Americans. I’m still a little shocked every time I hear non-Muslims say “inshallah.”
In fact, much (though admittedly, not all) of what we’re witnessing today might simply be considered an escalation of the dire turn that this country took after the attacks of September 11, 2001, nearly a quarter of a century ago.
There are still 30 detainees at Guantánamo. Sixteen of them have been deemed no longer threats to the United States and cleared for release, but arrangements have yet to be made to transfer them... Now there are tiny steps toward closure.
As those Canadian wildfires suggest, we’re now living on a new, not terribly recognizable, ever more perilous world in which not just this country but Planet Earth itself is in decline. Climate change is quickly becoming the climate emergency.
The topsy-turvy nature of the Trumpian version of the American century is something this country — and certainly the Biden administration — still hasn’t fully come to grips with.
Reader Comments: 9/11 Failed Policy; Medicare Advantage for Profit Scam; Myth of Robert E. Lee; We Remember Birmingham Church Bombing; Chile; Resources - Jobs Report; Climate Change; Lots and lots of Announcements...
The tragic impacts of the September 11 attacks stretch far beyond the nearly three thousand people who lost their lives 20 years ago. Over the last two decades, government forces have trampled on civil rights and liberties in the name of 9/11.
A reckoning with America’s failed national security policy is long overdue. America’s current vision of security has been ruinous both to the world and to the American people. A different future is possible.
At the dawn of the new millennium, we directed our national resources in the exact wrong direction. But it’s not too late to turn things around.
In just 20 years, the total cost of the US increasing homeland security and waging wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere since Sept. 11, 2001, have exceeded $8 trillion, according to new estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University.
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