On this 20th anniversary, I have been thinking a lot about the events of 9/11/01, and I have concluded that the hijackers were just about the single most effective irregular fighting force in the history of warfare. 19 men, armed only with box cutters, have brought a once great nation to its knees. Sure, it has taken 20 years, but in my view all the political and social dysfunction we see today follows in a direct line from that event.
Today, the American people are at each other's throats like a pack of feral dogs. We hate and distrust each other so much that some of us would overthrow the government and others would be happy to split up the country. We are unable even to join together to defeat the most significant public health crisis we have faced in over a century. And why? Primarily because, in response to the 9/11 attack, we started not just one, but two foreign wars. The only thing that resulted from those wars is that the supporters of the wars and the opponents of the wars grew to hate each other with a vitriol that soon politicized every aspect of life and broke us into permanently warring tribes. And the trillions of dollars we spent on those wars have rendered us financially unable to address actual real world problems, like infrastructure deficiencies, climate change and education and employment opportunities for our young people.
The fanatics who attacked us that day could never, in their wildest dreams, have foreseen just how much harm they would cause us.
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