On the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a coalition of human rights, civil liberties and peace organizations issued a series of reports on the legacy of the United States’ response to the attacks. Their sweeping conclusion was that, “In the name of U.S. national security and counterterrorism, our government violated human rights; damaged the rule of law, international cooperation, and the United States’ reputation; set a dangerous precedent for other nations; fueled conflicts and massive human displacement; contributed to militarized and violent approaches to domestic policing; diverted limited resources from more effective approached; and, most consequentially destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, primarily of civilian, Muslim, Black, and Brown people.”
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, one of the founding organizations of UFPJ, joined in drafting the reports and is deeply engaged with issues raised in the report on the detention facilities and military commission system at Guantanamo. As the report details, these abhorrent and extralegal policies and practices have gone on too long; we can and must close Guantanamo and end indefinite detention. Moreover, it is the result of the torture carried out by the military and the CIA that has thwarted process to obtain justice for the victims of the 9/11 attacks; nineteen years after 9/11, a trial of the five men accused of plotting the attacks has not even begun. It is time to reckon with this state-sanctioned American torture. It is time for full transparency and accountability. We can and must take all the steps necessary to ensure prohibitions on torture are fully upheld.
A further stain on the rule of law is the U.S. policy of secretive and unaccountable killings of suspected terrorists and the pursuit of endless war. Over the last two decades, in the name of “prevention,” the U.S. has established a nearly worldwide government-sponsored project of killing based on “suspicion, alleged association, or affiliation—all without any judicial process. It is time to end this secret and unlawful use of lethal force. The tragic result of having adopted a strategy of an unbounded “war on terror,” is that for nearly two decades, successive U.S. administrations have pursued a “costly war-based approach to national security and counterterrorism policy that has no clear endgame in sight.” It is time to end endless war.
Whoever is elected president on November 3 will occupy the White House on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. He should work in advance to see that there is some justice for the attacks and equally important oversee the dismantling of the violations of the rule of law and international human rights standards that made true justice impossible while causing great harm to people at home and abroad.
