How Two Trust-Fund Terrorists Destroyed America
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Terrorists → destroy → America
I can still remember the smell.
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I → remember → smell
But I’m at a loss to accurately describe it to you.
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I → ’m → you
It wasn’t like burning tires or plastic or even metal.
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It → burn → tires
In the quarter century since, I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve never experienced anything like the smell near the rubble pile at Ground Zero in September 2001.
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I → experience → September
The air was acrid and thick, a swirl of toxins and carcinogens made possible by turning two large, jet-fuel laden planes into cruise missiles and aiming them at gigantic office towers.
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air → make → towers
As it burned, we all inhaled a haze of pulverized cement, glass fibers, asbestos, lead, dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls (better known as PCBs), and whatever else.
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we → burn → PCBs
It remains a part of us still.
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It → remain → us
The 9/11 attacks — which killed almost 3,000 Americans, toppled New York City’s Twin Towers, wrecked the Pentagon, and took down a plane near Shanksville, Pennsylvania — marked the most devastating intelligence failure in U.S. history and sent the United States into a paroxysm of self-induced catastrophes from which it has never emerged.
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it → kill → which
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s spectacular coordinated assault supercharged what had been a slow-motion imperial decline, trapping the U.S. in a death spiral of ruinous intertwined economic debacles, foreign policy failures, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, and debilitating wars and military interventions.
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what → supercharge → debacles
Bin Laden’s plan was to trap the U.S. in expensive, foreign quagmire wars that would trigger a domestic economic collapse.
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that → trap → collapse
It was patterned on the strategy that the local mujahideen, he and other foreign fighters, and the U.S. and its allies had used to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
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mujahideen → pattern → Afghanistan
Not only does bin Laden’s strategy continue apace long after his 2011 death, but it also spawned an even more effective means of destroying America from within.
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it → continue → within
Bin Laden’s attacks turned the U.S. government into an engine for the destruction of America, inducing it to implement policies that have devastated the country and immiserated its people.
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that → turn → people
That includes unrestrained spending while cutting taxes on the rich, closer ties with despotic regimes, the sneak-and-peek warrants and roving wiretaps of the Patriot Act and other domestic surveillance programs, and the ruinous failed forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
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That → include → Afghanistan
This swirl of toxic policies and governmental overreach opened the door to something beyond bin Laden’s wildest dreams, the rise of an even more effective terrorist who has crippled the U.S. in countless ways and sought to strangle the best of the country: President Donald Trump.
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who → open → country
The so-called Pearl Harbor of the 21st century was no surprise.
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Harbor → call → century
Long before President George W. Bush, while vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, received a classified intelligence memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S,” the Al Qaeda leader had been honest about his plans.
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leader → vacation → plans
“The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation,” he announced in a 1998 TV interview, castigating the U.S. for stationing troops in the Middle East and its support of Israel.
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he → wage → Israel
“The Western regimes and the government of the United States of America bear the blame for what might happen.
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what → bear → blame
If their people do not wish to be harmed inside their very own countries, they should seek to elect governments that are truly representative of them and that can protect their interests.”
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that → wish → interests
When bin Laden made good on his threats, slaughtering thousands on 9/11, he knew it was bound to trigger a response.
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it → make → response
One possibility was a measured law-enforcement action that would end with arrests and legitimate legal proceedings.
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that → end → arrests
The other was a president standing on a rubble pile, vowing revenge, a never-ending fruitless war against a tactic (terror), a secret torture gulag, a forever prison, and a kangaroo court.
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other → stand → tactic
Bin Laden’s masterstroke was to attack the U.S. after it had elected a lightweight nepo-baby president and a power-mad vice president who had cut his teeth in Richard Nixon’s criminal-packed White House.
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who → attack → House
While he came to be an enemy of Donald Trump, it was Dick Cheney who paved the way for America’s current would-be tyrant, with the vice president’s relentless campaign to concentrate power in the White House, creating an imperial presidency predicated on the “unitary executive theory,” a misbegotten notion that the Constitution grants the president unrestrained authority over domestic and foreign policy, such as unilaterally removing government officials and waging wars.
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Constitution → come → wars
In both style and substance, Cheney prefigured Trump.
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Cheney → prefigure → Trump
In the immediate wake of 9/11, Cheney went on TV to announce the government would now operate on the “dark side,” as he put it, claiming “a lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion.”
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what → go → discussion
America has never emerged from those sinister shadows.
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America → emerge → shadows
Cheney was arguably the leading cheerleader for the ruinous war on terror, which began in Afghanistan, spread across the globe, and grinds on a year after his death; a prime architect of the disastrous Iraq War and the faulty, unverified, and cherry-picked intelligence that underpinned it; an enthusiastic supporter of torture, calling the waterboarding of detainees “a no-brainer”; a vocal supporter of domestic surveillance; a promoter of undemocratic, unprecedented, and unparalleled secrecy; and a belligerent bully.
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that → begin → secrecy
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a 2022 ad for his daughter, Liz, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump at the end of his first term.
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who → say → term
Trump has built on Cheney’s accomplishments and pushed America toward autocracy at an unprecedented rate.
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Trump → build → rate
After weakening American democracy during his first term, Trump launched a full-scale assault — literally — on it.
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Trump → weaken → it
Despite knowing he lost the 2020 presidential election, Trump refused to concede, worked to subvert vote counts and undermine the certification process, pressured state officials to “find” votes, and orchestrated what special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on it called an “unprecedented criminal effort” to remain in power.
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report → know → power
Bin Laden was never able to raise an army in America, lead an insurrection, and launch an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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Laden → raise → Capitol
(The plane meant to carry out that attack on 9/11 crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
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plane → mean → Pennsylvania
But on January 6, 2021, with Trump’s encouragement, MAGA supporters stormed the Capitol.
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supporters → storm → Capitol
The House Select Committee that investigated the “domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex and issues relating to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power” concluded that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 Presidential election.”
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Trump → investigate → election
It found that Trump, for hours, deliberately failed to act to stop his followers from attacking the Capitol.
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Trump → find → Capitol
Smith said that the evidence gathered by his team “was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” had the American people not reelected Trump.
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people → say → Trump
…and 91 more, not listed.
