9/11 anniversary: how US's actions after the attacks helped Putin and what lessons should be learned
Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, American historian Timothy Snyder participated in a public discussion in Prague. Emotions ran high.
He recalls that a person wearing a person wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a Russian fascist slogan took the microphone and asked why Russia should obey any rules when the Americans had not done so in Iraq in 2003. Snyder replied that rules were rules: the American invasion had been illegal, but two wrongs did not make a right.
For the anniversary of the tragic events that took place in the United States on September 11, 2001, Timothy Snyder, the inaugural chair of the Department of European History at the University of Toronto, prepared an article. Read more: Timothy Snyder: how US failed after 9/11 and what Ukraine should learn from its mistakes.
Sadly, we Americans responded exactly as the terrorists would have wanted.
The obvious response to 9/11 should have been to liberate ourselves from fossil fuels.
Had the US funded clean-energy sources, they could have headed off global warming, prevented further Middle East wars, and prevented the rise of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hydrocarbon oligarchy.
It was not to be. Eventually, the invasion of Iraq began.
The United States lied about the reasons for invading Iraq.
The Bush administration invented the links between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists, which eventually led Americans to distrust their government, enabling the rise of someone like Trump. And these invented pretexts set the stage for violating the most basic precept of international law: the prohibition of unprovoked wars of aggression.
It would be wrong to say that the US-led invasion of Iraq caused Russia to invade Ukraine over a decade later, in 2014.
But the American war certainly made life easier for Putin, who concluded that great powers could invade other countries with the help of extravagant lies.
The Russians escalated the nonsense: Ukrainians were all gay, all Nazis, and all Jews. Their state did not exist, but oppressed Russians. Despite being an authoritarian regime, Russia would bring democracy to Ukraine, though it already was one.
Having been provoked in 2001, America responded as the terrorists wanted, helping to create a world in which terrorism is so normal that we hardly know when to use the word.
Putin and Trump use it to define their enemies, though they are themselves state terrorists. Trump himself normalized terrorism by seeking to stay in power by force in January 2021.
And yet Trump’s war is extremely unpopular–and obviously lost. He stays in it, even as the US midterm elections approach, perhaps because he is hoping the Iranian regime will do him the favor of striking inside the US.
Trump’s Iran war enables Putin’s Ukraine war.
But you should not do what a terrorist is trying to force you to do.
"I am writing this underground in Kharkiv, where the air raid sirens are sounding for the third time tonight. The Ukrainians shoot down most of the drones, but the missiles simply fall, explode, and kill, because Americans have chosen to deny them Patriot missiles. I recall Ukrainians I saw last night, meeting underground for a public event, smiling, drinking wine, and talking about ideas, not doing what the terrorists want, not giving in and going along, but thinking for themselves about the future," writes Snyder.
That is what Americans must do today, on this terrible anniversary. Do not be provoked; do not enter the mental world of the terrorist; think for yourself.