Today, 22 years ago on September 20, 2001, US President George W. Bush declared the start of the "war on terror" nine days after the attacks in New York and Washington DC on September 11. This started a series of bloodthirsty, destructive wars, bombing campaigns, and occupations, which began with the bombing of Afghanistan the following month and continued with the unjustified and illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The US and its allies practiced torture, extrajudicial killings, and abductions in the name of fighting terrorism, while their real motives were capitalist greed and colonial domination. According to a 2021 study by Brown University, up to 4.6 million people were killed because of the "war on terror," and 38 million have been displaced.

On September 13, 2001, NATO invoked Article 5, which considered an attack on one member an attack on all. Almost immediately, Osama bin Laden, a former ally of the US when he was involved in fighting the USSR in Afghanistan during the 1980s, was identified as the mastermind behind the attacks. The US claimed that the Taliban governed Afghanistan were sheltering Bin Laden. This was used as a pretext for the bombing of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, which led to a 20-year US occupation, which ended in a humiliating exit in August 2021 as the Taliban returned to power.

The invasion of Iraq was based on the lie that the Iraqi government led by Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and supported Al-Qaeda. Ignoring international opinion, the United Nations, and most experts, the US and its allies launched a destructive war that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, poverty, and civil war.

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#WarOnTerror #Imperialism #AntiImperialism