22 - 9/11

Still remembering the most deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.

I remember I was staying with my parents and we just got a new digital cable box. I wake up around 9:15am and turned on Comedy Central to see the World Trade Center buildings on fire. I thought it was a joke. I asked my dad what the heck happened.

He told me that two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center. At first I thought it was a reckless pilot but when it became apparent it was two planes hit, I immediately realized that the U.S. will be going to war. It was a terrorist attack carried out by 19 men who figured out a weakness in airline security. They managed to hijack four commercial flights and crashed them into the World Trade Center, The Pentagon and a rural part of  Pennsylvania.

This is the 22nd anniversary of the tragic attack on New York, Washington, DC and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Also this is the 11th anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The attack was inspired by men radicalized by the noise of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden declared a militant jihad against the United States, and issued two fatawa in 1996 and 1998. In the 1996 fatwa, he quoted the Sword Verse. In both of these fatawa, bin Laden sharply criticized the financial contributions of the American government to the Saudi royal family as well as American military intervention in the Arab world.

The 19 men dressed like normal travelers. They got on planes leaving Boston Logan, Newark Liberty and Reagan and hijacked the planes mid-flight. The first airline crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. As the New York authorities were trying to rescue those trapped in the building, another airline crashed into the South Tower. By that time, President George W. Bush was notified of the attack on New York. He abruptly left a Florida school during a reading session.

During his briefing, another plane would crash into the Pentagon. The Pentagon was not destroyed but it sustained heavy damage. By that time Vice President Dick Cheney was notified to evacuate the White House and Observatory Circle. Congress was also notified and had to take evacuations.

The news was zeroed in on the World Trade Center. All the cable channels went to live coverage. CNN was the first network to report the airline crashing into the towers.

On top of that, the FAA and U.S. military were notified to close off airspace and border crossings. The final plane was expected to hit Congress was averted by the victims. They managed to restrain several hijackers. The final plane would end up aborting by crashing into rural Pennsylvania. The hijacker deliberately crashed the plane to prevent them from taking back control.

The Pentagon was heavily damaged by the attack. They rebuild the structure.

These terrorists shook America and led our nation into war with two countries. 

George W. Bush declared war on Afghanistan after the nation refused to handover al Qaeda leaders and funders. The war started in December 2001 and ended in August 2021.

The U.S. overthrown the Taliban and it held them out until the U.S. forces formally left. 

The Taliban regained control shortly after U.S. forces left. 

The Republicans used the Afghanistan war to promote Islamophobia, hatred of immigrants and called anti-war protesters, traitors and enemies of the state. Fox led the way to generating public option and threw culture wars into the public discourse. It led to many noise makers using freedom and liberty as it was their rightful ownership.

Republicans would soon encourage the public to fight the war in Iraq. The U.S. was misled by allegations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and allied with al Qaeda. That led us to a 8 year war that ended in 2011.

When Barack Obama ran for president, he promised that he wouldn't rest until the leaders of al-Qaeda were captured or killed. His political rivals thought he was naive and foolish at the time. They were wrong.

After a landslide election, Obama was elected to be president. As the successor of George W. Bush, Obama inherited two wars, an economic crisis and congressional gridlock.

Obama managed to end the war in Iraq and is on the verge of ending the war in Afghanistan. The president is still trying to get a stubborn Congress to pass legislation that could spark growth in the economy.

Passengers managed to force the terrorist to divert his plane from the intended target.

And of course, the president kept his promise. May 2011, the president announced to the world that the leader of al-Qaeda was killed by the United States Military Special Operatives in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Obama was been really aggressive on disrupting al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

Republicans then started the drum brat of the Benghazi attack. It damaged Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she ran for president a second time. Republicans obsessed over Obama's handling of the attack and threatened impeachment for it.

September 11, 2012, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cairo, Egypt was mobbed by protesters  apparently in response to an anti-Islamic online video known as Innocence of Muslims. A group scaled the embassy wall and tore down the American flag to replace it with a black Islamic flag. This incident (and the coinciding armed attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that was widely misreported as a reaction to the film) launched a series of worldwide demonstrations against the film outside diplomatic facilities of the United States and other Western countries. However, other underlying issues of discontent have fueled the protests in some countries. The protests that continued in the ensuing weeks also expanded to other Western-related locations, some of which turned violent, resulting in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries.

The protest lays down in the groundwork for a sneak attack to infiltrate the U.S. Embassy compound in Libyan by militants. They ended up killing four Americans which included J. Christopher Stevens, a longtime ally to the president.

Obama's political foes in the Republican Party wish Osama bin Laden was still alive. They refuse to credit him for giving the orders to take out the world's most wanted terrorist

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri were both killed by U.S. forces.

The Republicans could never take responsibility for a tragedy. They'll blame the Democrats for every domestic or international incident whenever there's a Republican president. They scapegoated immigrants, Muslims and people who opposed war for being on the side of terrorists.

George W. Bush ignored the Richard Clarke warnings. He ignored the Bill Clinton memos. He wanted to chart his own goals. He should have been impeached for that.

The Republicans are too extreme. They are doused in the gasoline and are inflamed by culture wars, conspiracy theories and the lack of self awareness. They are shameless hypocrites with a need to "own the libs." It is very sad that we have came to the conclusion that America's democracy is in jeopardy of collapse. They will stop at nothing to undermine the country. Republicans are responsible for almost every  tragedy and instead of owning up to the tragedies, they want to rewrite it and blame everyone else for it,

Republicans claim that if it wasn't for Bill Clinton, the 9/11 attacks would of never happened. They claim that George W. Bush was responsible for taking down Osama bin Laden. To this day, they believe Barack Obama and Joe Biden are weak on the border, terrorism and are responsible for the crappy economy they inherited. 

Republicans place the blame of the Los Angeles/Rodney King riots, the Minneapolis/George Floyd riots, every war that doesn't go as planned, every mass shooting, every government shutdown, every man made disaster on the Democrats. Every wildfire, volcano, earthquake, tornado, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Maria is blamed the Democrats. They blame Democrats for crime and gun violence. They claim it was the Democrats most responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, mask mandates and closing businesses when it was a Republican president and most Republican governors who ordered shutdowns. 

In the minds of Republicans, George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump never done anything wrong!

Now 22 years later, Obama's former vice president and our current president Joe Biden is now honoring the memories of those lost on 9/11/2001 and 9/11/2012.

We will survive.

President Joe Biden ordered the killing of al-Zawahri who stayed in a luxury apartment in Kabul, Afghanistan. The death really shook al-Qaeda and they have no strong voices to radicalize.

Biden finally ended the war in Afghanistan and Republicans led the way to criticizing and blaming the president for the swifty evacuations and attack on 13 military members being killed by a suicide bomber.

A moment of clarity for all of us. 

Biden is currently in Asia at the G20 Summit. He will depart for a 17 hour flight. He will be doing a layover in Alaska and will mark September 11th from there.

Expect conservative outrage and literal ignorance of his predecessor not attending any since Biden defeated him.

Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, former president Barack Obama, former president George W. Bush and former president Bill Clinton will honor the victims of September 11th.

Former vice president Mike Pence will likely honor it as well. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Washington, DC mayor Muriel Bowser and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore will be participating in 9/11 events.

I doubt Washed Up 45 will participate in any events. So you won't hear conservative propagandist rant about it.