“Hindsight offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the official pronouncements and unheeded dissent that came soon after September 11, 2001,” Norman Solomon wrote last week in The Hill. “The outlooks that prevailed at the time set the stage for historic disasters.”

Headlined “Time to Reassess the War on Terror,” Solomon’s piece asks: “More than 20 years later, are we ready to face up to the human toll of the war on terror?”

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NORMAN SOLOMON, solomonprogressive[at]gmail.com,
Solomon is the author of the new book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine. He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

His piece for The Hill says: “The types of military responses that 9/11 set in motion have evolved over time, now with relatively few ‘boots on the ground’ and heavy reliance on what Biden has called ‘over the horizon’ air power. For the most part, the American public is left in the dark — unable to give the informed consent of the governed, while Washington’s bipartisan allegiance to perpetual war persists in the name of stopping terrorism.”

The article links to a news release from the Institute for Public Accuracy, issued two weeks after 9/11, with pleas from bereaved Americans who had lost loved ones on September 11. Those pleas included a statement from parents whose son had died at the World Trade Center: “We read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us. It is not the way to go. It will not avenge our son’s death. Not in our son’s name. Our son died a victim of an inhuman ideology. Our actions should not serve the same purpose.”