21 years after the September 11 attacks, Washington’s wars under the pretext of combating terrorism have had catastrophic effects on the world

21 years have passed since the 9/11 attacks in the United States of America, and the world is still experiencing challenges related to the danger of terrorist organizations, as well as political crises and economic disasters. Large part of the challenges was the result of Washington’s exploitation of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers to launch preemptive wars with flimsy pretexts, as happened in Afghanistan, Iraq and others.

Since the fall of the World Trade Center towers in New York on that day, the world has entered a cycle of irreversible change through American military wars that were based on Washington’s exploitation of these attacks to create terms and policies that opened the door wide to its interference in the affairs of other countries at various levels. The consequences of those attacks are still present in turmoil in many parts of the world in which Washington intervened militarily under the pretext of combating terrorism. This was embodied in the American invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 under the pretext of eliminating weapons of mass destruction whose absence was confirmed in the first place, in addition to the proxy wars that the United States fought in other countries.

Two decades after the 9/11 attacks, the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in August last year came without achieving any of the goals announced by the United States at the time, leaving hundreds of thousands of casualties and catastrophic economic losses, not to mention the deaths of thousand American soldiers according to research conducted as part of the “Costs of War” project at Brown University.

Despite the passage of 19 years since the American invasion of Iraq to occupy and destroy it on flimsy pretexts such as weapons of mass destruction, which international reports and United Nations committees have proven their absence, the massacres and crimes committed by the American forces there are still present in the memory of Iraqis and the world.  Washington used internationally prohibited weapons against civilians that led to the killing of many of them and the damage to the health system due to the emergence of many deformed births and the increase in cancer cases due to the effect of these weapons, according to many international reports.

The number of victims of the American invasion of Iraq reached more than one million Iraqis, including women, men and children, and about 5 million orphaned children, or about 5 percent of the total orphans in the world, according to the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights.

In those wars that America fought under the pretext of protecting its security after the attacks of September 11, Washington did not neglect to empower to terrorist organizations such as “Al-Qaeda” and later “ISIS”, which it entrusted with the destruction of culture, antiquities and civilization.

The British Guardian newspaper revealed at the end of last year that after two decades of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly 5 trillion dollars were spent on those wars, so that there would be one winner represented by American arms companies.

In an article published by American Press, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama said that the consequences of the exaggerated American response to the attacks of September 11 were severe in the long run, as the United States claimed thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars under the pretext of protecting itself from exaggerated threats.

The term “war on terror”, which was presented by America as a response to the attacks, opens the door for reflection and sheds light again on all the justifications that were issued for the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq and for the military operations in many countries of the world, especially in the Middle East.  The US response to the attacks made everyone ask a very important question: What happened  after 21 years to democracy, equality and freedom that the American tanks were heralding. What was the summary of all those wars and how to get rid of the terrorist organizations that created them?

Inas Abdulkareem