Never forget 9/11

As we pause tomorrow to mark the 15th anniversary of 9/11, let's not forget who did this.

The criminals who flew the planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were Islamic terrorists. Most of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia -- not Iraq, but Saudi Arabia. They learned to fly -- or aim the planes, at least -- in the USA, unnoticed by American "security" agencies. They owed allegiance to Osama bin Laden, a Saudi.

Saudi diplomats and members of the Saudi royal family were flown out of Washington, by arrangement with the government of Bush II, even before the dust settled. So who did Dubya, egged on by Cheney and Rumsfeld, decide to make war on? Not their good friends the Saudis. Not Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the north of Afghanistan or Pakistan. The target for retaliation became none other than Saddam Hussein. He was picked because the Americans knew where he was. Besides, Dubya had an Oedipal fixation on finishing the job his father started, thus proving that he was more of a man.

On 11 September 2003, Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times:

Our leaders have used goofball logic and lousy assumptions to trap the country in a cockeyed replay of the Crusades that could drain our treasury and strain our military for generations, without making us any safer from terrorists and maybe putting us more at risk....

Iraq never threatened US security. Bush officials cynically attacked a villainous country because they knew it was easier than finding the real 9/11 villain, who had no country.... By pretending Iraq was crawling with Al-Qaeda, they've created an Iraq crawling with Al-Qaeda.

The first paragraph turned out to be a considerable understatement. The last sentence was bang on except that the Islamic extremists changed their name from Al-Qaeda to the grander-sounding "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria", the so-called "Caliphate". But make no mistake. They are the same Islamic extremists, the same jihadis, bent on exterminating us "Crusaders", wherever they may find us, including in our homelands. The Bush War (continued half-heartedly by Obama) changed nothing, except to make things worse.

Further reading: "Why the '9/11 Truth' movement endures 15 years later", by Matt Kwong, CBC News, 10/9/16.