Let Us Explain: 9/11

The events of September 11, 2001, have been burned into the collective psyche. The flames of the collapsing Twin Towers, the inferno that led to the partial destruction of the Pentagon, the New York air swollen with smoke, people throwing themselves from the upper floors of the World Trade Center to escape the agony of suffocation and burning. The Israeli-backed, George W. Bush-Dick Cheney-led U.S. invasion and bombardment of Iraq, the drone strikes killing Afghan children, the Libyan cities diminished to rubble. And the attachment of "terrorism" to Muslim—or Muslim-seeming—bodies, countries, and resistance.

9/11 reshaped the history of the world by fanning the flames of the War on Terror and fueling America's Forever Wars against the Arab world, namely Afghanistan, Iraq, and most recently, Iran. And though the West has tried to monopolize collective memory and manufacture consent for these Forever Wars—which generated poverty, mass death, occupation, and humiliation—it must be made clear that the U.S. is the greatest source of terror in the world. The tragedy of 9/11 was both a consequence of U.S. global domination and a weapon for its further expansion.

U.S. Imperial Policy as Breeding Grounds for 9/11

9/11 was not an unprovoked attack on the U.S., as the forces that carried out the attacks were, in some ways, a result of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. In the 1980s, during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the U.S. invested billions into training and funding Islamist militias with Operation Cyclone. As a young adult, Saudi Arabia-born Osama bin Laden volunteered to go to Afghanistan as a CIA-backed mujahideen to fight against the Soviet invasion. From this project emerged military organizations like Al-Qaeda ("The Base"), which bin Laden founded in 1988. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, these forces turned their weapons against their former sponsor in retaliation for U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East; its need to dominate oil-rich regions, mainly in the Arab world; as well as U.S. support for Israel. Bin Laden specifically cited the 1982 Lebanon War—in which U.S.-backed Israeli forces destroyed the Palestine Liberation Organization's military infrastructure and stopped rocket attacks on the Zionist entity—as a reason for the targeting of U.S. economic powers such as the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, which represented the center of global capitalism.

Across the four hijacked planes on September 11, all 19 hijackers were members of Al-Qaeda, while the attacks were coordinated by organization leader Osama bin Laden; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the main operational planner of the attacks; and Mohammed Atta, who led the tactical operation inside the United States.

Manufacturing Consent for the War on Terror

After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Eastern European countries abandoned communist rule for democratic governments and market economies, and major communist movements lost financial and military backing from Moscow. When global communism was no longer a "threat," the U.S. needed a new excuse to continue expanding its architecture and carrying out war, as military intervention is what kept, and continues to keep, the U.S. in power.

Even before they were in office, former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard "Dick" Cheney were destined to carry out the War on Terror. Bush is the son of former President George H. W. Bush, who carried out the Persian Gulf War, so the War on Terror was, in many ways, a continuation of his work. Prior to becoming Bush's vice president, Cheney was the CEO of energy services giant Halliburton, with its subsidiaries selling more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to countries like Iraq. Following the 2003 invasion, Halliburton and its subsidiaries swooped in to secure billions of dollars in contracts for oil infrastructure repair.

Though 9/11 was a tragedy for Americans, U.S. leaders, like Bush and Cheney, saw it as an opportunity to take advantage of people's fears and further their own interests by expanding a War on Terror to extract oil and gas and tighten Western imperialism's grip on the Global South by destroying Arab countries and trapping them into U.S. dependency. Avenging 9/11 was critical to maintaining the U.S., so Bush and Cheney made enemies of Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, directly killing almost one million people in the post-9/11 Forever Wars. Over 4.5 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, and almost 40 million war refugees and displaced persons remain.

The War on Terror Is Designed to Be a Forever War

The War on Terror makes it so that the U.S. isn't just killing its "enemies," but preemptively killing its enemies. It is a blank check for a never-ending war. For example, the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans were used to flesh out a burgeoning terrorist framework in which entire populations, especially those challenging the interests of the West, could be dehumanized and, eventually, exterminated. In other words, the mass fear of "terror" is needed for the U.S. to justify mass killing and invasions to generate more capital.

Rather than focusing on Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden's birthplace, the U.S. intentionally chose to target other, non-allied, oil-rich countries to exploit them for their mineral resources under the guise of protecting the American people from further "terror." 

Under the so-called mission of "dismantling" Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan was the first victim of the U.S.'s War on Terror. The country was invaded in October 2001 and remained under U.S. occupation until 2021. 70,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians were killed as a direct result of the occupation. 

Despite having no ties to 9/11, in 2003, Iraq was invaded under Bush's false claims that the country possessed "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs) and that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein himself hid chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. During the invasion, the country's infrastructure was destroyed, forcing its oil resources to be open to foreign monopolies. More than 300,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the invasion. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, Hussein was removed from power, giving rise to groups like ISIS, which received U.S. weapons and training and eventually spread into Libya, the Sahel (namely Burkina Faso and Mali), and beyond.

Former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as current President Donald Trump, intensified the War on Terror, as the network has expanded into military operations across more than 80 countries. Obama carpet-bombed Libyan cities, and he, as well as former President Joe Biden and Trump, oversaw thousands of drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, forcing the Arab world to be under a constant state of terror and violence—with or without the presence of American troops. 

Repression in the U.S. and Violence Abroad

Following 9/11, militarism, unchecked state power, and continued invasions and attacks for oil and more capital all went hand in hand. After starting several post-9/11 wars, the U.S. was left with the opportunity to expand its spheres of influence and domination everywhere, including onto the American people themselves.

In October 2001, the U.S. passed the Patriot Act, legalizing mass surveillance, the tracking of Internet history and calls, wiretapping, and indefinite detention, all in the name of national safety and security. Trillions of dollars were poured into defense budgets, intelligence agencies, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, rather than social programs, housing, and healthcare.

Islamophobia also became an unofficial policy, with an immediate round-up and detention of 1,200 Muslim, Arab, and South Asian men, while the FBI visited 11,000 more. Surveillance of Muslim communities also increased, particularly in New York City, where the NYPD has spent more than $3 billion since 2006 on license plate readers, facial recognition software, surveillance cameras, and informants.

In 2003, the Bush administration established the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of its federal reorganization following 9/11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to ICE, the Immigration and Nationality Service (INS) handled all immigration matters in the U.S. Post-9/11, since immigrants are seen as potential security threats, immigration is handled by three different agencies, two of which are militarized police forces.

Frameworks of Profit-Driven Surveillance and Torture in the U.S. and Beyond

After 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) set up a global network of secret prisons and torture camps—or black sites—across Afghanistan, Thailand, Poland, Cuba, and several other countries, to interrogate "terror" suspects outside standard military and legal rules.

On November 13, 2001, a month into the invasion of Afghanistan, Bush issued a military order, Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism. This order was the framework for the 2002 Guantanamo Bay operation, making it so non-U.S. nationals could be indefinitely detained without charge, and international citizens could be labelled as "terrorists" to further the urgency and threat around the U.S.-manufactured War on Terror. 

On January 11, 2002, the U.S. opened Camp X-Ray at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which later expanded into Camp Delta, where, to this day, prisoners are held without trial. At the end of 2002, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a range of "enhanced interrogation techniques," a term used to justify acts of torture. Still, prisoners are tortured by CIA-developed methods like waterboarding, the use of phobias to induce stress, prolonged isolation, 20-hour-long interrogations, and hooding. Since the opening of the camp, hundreds have reported unlivable, inhumane conditions as well as torture, abuse, and cruelty. 

The U.S. also established other torture sites, such as the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, from which explicit photographs of naked prisoners, mock executions, and beatings were revealed.

While civilians in the U.S. and abroad suffered, arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing gained massive profits from the post-9/11 wars and weapons contracts. The U.S. poured hundreds of billions of dollars into private defense and security firms for post-9/11 attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq, and private contractors like Blackwater profited from various security services in occupied countries—most notably the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, where Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians. Oil and energy monopolies benefited from the securing of resources and oil supplies in Iraq and other oil-rich countries. 

The coalition of private corporations, the military, and the state apparatus creates the infrastructure for never-ending wars so U.S. capital continues flowing—and to allow for resources abroad to continue being extracted and exploited for capitalistic gain.

Israel's Genocide in Gaza as an Extension of the War on Terror

The Zionist entity has played a significant role in shaping the War on Terror. In 2008, Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted admitting that Israel had "benefitted" from the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And in 2001, when asked what the attack meant for relations between the U.S. and Israel, he said: "It's very good." Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy."

Since 9/11, the Zionist entity has received significant military funding from the U.S., fueling its terror and genocide on the Palestinian people. In the nearly three years since the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, the U.S. government has spent $21.7 billion on military aid to Israel. 

As of September 2026, more than 180,000 Palestinians have been martyred by Israel, more than 90 percent of the Gaza Strip's infrastructure has been destroyed, and 90 percent of the strip's population has been displaced. At least 5.27 million people have fled or been forced to leave their homes after October 7, 2023, in Gaza, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and the West Bank.

Arab Resistance Prevails

Post-9/11 invasions and attacks accelerated the emergence of the Axis of Resistance, connecting resistance fighters across Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran, as well as the Wahdat al-Sahat ("Unity of the Arenas") doctrine used by Iran and its allies—such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the Houthi Movement in Yemen, Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and Syrian Government Forces, coordinated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. The doctrine states that an attack involving one member of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance is to be treated as an attack involving the entire region, unifying the region's resistance movements. 

Most recently, in September 2026, Yemeni Armed forces expelled Saudi forces from six districts in Taiz and Hodeidah governorates covering a total of 5,400 square kilometers, freed a number of Yemeni prisoners held by Saudi-backed forces along the western coast, and carried out 32 operations to intercept Saudi warplanes, drowning nine aircrafts, vowing to continue until the siege on Yemen is lifted. Within 24 hours, Ansarallah seized four airstrips along Yemen's western coast and the Red Sea.

Though the U.S.-Israeli powers attempted to weaponize the 9/11 attacks to dominate the Arab region, the people refuse to submit and are instead maintaining militant, anti-imperialist sentiments, mobilizing, and challenging U.S.-Israeli authority. From 9/11 to October 7 to the Forever Wars, as long as U.S. imperialism exists, the resistance will too.