Fascism. Racism. Pro-life anti-vaxxers exposing their kids to Covid. Subsidized oil companies burning the Earth. Yeah, we learned zilch from that awful day.

In 2004, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke published an enlightening memoir called Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.

A holdover from the Clinton administration, Clarke was in the White House on September 11th, 2001. In his book, he gives an intense account of those first hours and the security officials’ brave efforts to respond after realizing that the country was under attack.

Clarke tells of an incident later that night. Dubya still had yet to land back in DC and Vice President Dick Cheney was in charge.

Though the attacks happened barely twelve hours before, Cheney cornered Clarke and ordered him to figure out how Saddam Hussein pulled this off.

Clarke had spent the previous eight months attempting to warn the Bush Administration about al-Qaeda. Nobody, especially Cheney and Dubya, seemed to care that intelligence pointed to the likelihood of an attempted attack on US soil.

And wouldn’t you know it? After the actual attack, Cheney made it a point to ignore the facts and attack Iraq. Maybe he was already envisioning that $50 billion, no-bid contract for his old company, Halliburton.

Clarke stayed on to work with the Bush Administration, post 9/11, but eventually quit in frustration after seeing how badly the chickenhawk fat-cats wanted to profiteer off of it all.

And here we are, twenty years later.

This news story sums up 9/11’s legacy and the current state of the USA. A teenager’s grandmother died from Covid-19 and he called for mask-wearing in his school. Parents and older folks shouted him down and made fun of him.

On September 11th, 2021, that’s the United States of America that I know.

Osama bin Laden understood us better than we understood ourselves.

Earlier posts:
• Romeo Whiskey Tango
• Bros: America’s new Jews.
• Swiftboating, seventeen years later.
• Before MAGA and QAnon, there was Doc.
• Open letter to a selfie of my drunk-ass self, taken on August 11th, 2001.
• September 11th, 2001. The best day ever for high-functioning sociopaths.
• The 1% pay enough in taxes to start wars, but not enough to finish them.

I write fiction. I have two dark comedies available, Fearkiller (Volume 1) and Notes from Trillionaire Island: Fearkiller (Volume 2), as well as Revolutionizer Alpha, the first book in a sci-fi series. I also wrote a story about God. It was weird, but then I decided to make the story and its sequel free. And all of the sudden, it didn’t seem as weird. Writing about God is much less weird when you write about God without charging money for it. Here’s my professional site, my trade.