Never Forget (The Sins): How a Chilean 9/11 Led to the 21st Century Afghan War
September 11th of this year was the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda. They are of course most infamously known as the World Trade Center attacks but lost in the shuffle is that two other planes went down---one in Washington D.C. and the other in Pennsylvania after the hostages in the vehicle decided to fight back. This extreme level of violence was planned for years, it remains one of the most brutal terrorist attacks in the history of the modern world.
But its not the first 9/11.
As a matter of fact that previous one was part of a dark era in United States politics that can directly link itself to the terrorism as well as the events we’re currently seeing at the border. Before turning to the U.S. on that fateful day in 2001, we have to go back to the beginning of the Cold War.
The Cold War the United States battled against the Soviets resulted in a plethora of global conflicts that had long-standing consequences that to this day have affected everyone negatively except for the United States---until 2001 anyway of course. Anything with close-enough ties to Castro, Soviets, and the concept of communism was going to get a visit from the United States whether directly, indirectly, hidden, or widely out in the open. Korean and Vietnam Wars were both battled because of the Cold War, and dominated the news media for multiple decades.
But underneath all that were the hidden atrocities of the U.S.-supported Operator Condor and the plethora of U.S.-involved incidents of coups, overthrows, civil wars, political massacres, and other terrible actions occurring throughout Latin America. To of course be fair, it wasn’t just Central/South America that felt the overarching hands of the United States trying to rearrange how their countries are politically set up, but most of the worst examples do come from all the nations to the south of the U.S.
Starting with the late 1950s through the 1960s, we saw the U.S. successfully help overthrow elected leaders in Guatemala, Brazil and the Dominican Republic, while constantly hounding Fidel Castro and Cuba. The 1970s would see the U.S. at its most brutally active, as they meddled with Bolivia, Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and of course Chile. U.S. would try to destabilize any foreign government’s economy if their political system didn’t resemble that of their own, and any sort of leftism was met with brutal resistance from the top superpower in the western hemisphere.
Chile’s example is the most striking because as the capital city was literally getting bombarded, the president committed suicide shortly after broadcasting his final message to his supporters from within, and the person that ended up taking over became a brutal dictator whose constitution remains in existence four decades later----and all this happened on September 11th, 1973. While U.S.’s battling of the Chilean socialist government had already been happening behind the scenes for years, everything reached fever pitch on 1973, and to this day Chile has yet to fully recover nor have they been able to bring justice to everyone that participated in the coup.
Imagine the surprise of Chileans around the world as they woke up on that Tuesday morning in 2001, on course towards remembering and reminiscing the anniversary of this dark day, only to see the United States dominate the news cycles with the brutal hijacks and using planes as the nation-altering missiles that only the U.S. could afford. And of course, those responsible for the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks have links with the CIA and the United States during the Cold War when they were allied to battle…..the Soviets.
The one thing that ties Chile’s 9/11 to the U.S.’ 9/11 to the vast migrating we see today from the Haitians and Central Americans is that these are all consequences of the United States constant meddling against communism or anything they recognize as such----which nearly every single time was wildly inaccurate. Juan Bosch got along with Castro? COMMUNISM! Joao Goulart wanting to distribute extreme profits of big business to help the lower class? COMMUNISM!!! Nationalizing certain industries to improve the working conditions of the working class? COMMUNISM!!!
Even after the fall of the Soviets, this attitude of battling communism and anything that seems Soviet-ish was carrying over to the next century, whether it be Venezuela’s Chavismo or the U.S.’ cold reception towards leftist leaders in Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Then of course, old habits die hard in 2001 as the United States wanted to retaliate by overthrowing any government that helped the terrorists thrive, plan, and execute; especially after a terrorist attack that shook the nation to its core followed by the anthrax scares, the footage of certain places outside the U.S. celebrating, the attempted bombing of another plane months after 9/11 (Richard Reid), and the infamous Bin Laden videos. It became a scary time to be living in the United States, the predator became the prey for the first time in decades, and this era of fear made the U.S. once again a Cold War-esque predator hounding the entire Middle East (which I continue to theorize for different reasons---Bush Jr. wanting vengeance and others in his cabinet wanting to profit off of all the fighting).
But at the end of the day, you can tie it all to the decisions made and actions committed during the Cold War: both 9/11s, the current ongoing widespread migration within the Western Hemisphere, the terrible 20-year war in Afghanistan that led to the Taliban controlling the entire nation, as well as other large-scale conflicts like Iraq and Syria. Even if its 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, the consequences of such harsh actions like government overthrows and political meddling takes a very long time for recovery, especially if the country involved cannot stabilize itself quickly enough. Side-note: United States still hasn’t fully recovered from the Civil War, so how can you expect a non-superpower nation fully recover from a military turning against their own people and their own elected leader?
Fast-forward to today, where we have the migrants from several different countries at the border; and its incredible how the majority of Americans cannot seem to mentally link what’s happening now to the event we just spend an entire month remembering.
Haiti, the nation with the most representation at the border right now, is another (and among the biggest) victim of United States meddling as well as historical mistreatment from other countries---especially France. It took decades for the U.S. to even initially recognize Haiti as an independent country, and this happened while they “owed” France over 20 billion dollars before they can find a trading partner to grow. Haiti paid France all the way through the 1940s, which ended shortly after the nearly two decades of U.S. occupation. So yes, even before the Soviet fears, the U.S. had already messed up Haiti pretty badly by invading and looting them of their resources. These things have consequences, and we have to constantly bring this up as destabilized governments, climate change tragedies, and slow recoveries thwarted by a global pandemic are producing migrants and asylum seekers all over the place.
Slowly but surely the United States is recognizing its sins and deadly misinterpretations and actions of the past, but they quickly get forgotten whenever the subject of immigration and asylum emerges. So it drives me crazy that we want to “never forget” 9/11, but we always forget about the events and decisions that surrounded this terrible day. You can’t name a Latin American country that got attacked in such a manner, it doesn’t happen because we don’t spend all foreign policy focused on changing governments elsewhere. Never Forget? More like Never Learned Their Lesson.
Therefore, it is imperative that we stop this nonsense of deporting Haitians back to the country we helped wreck to the ground. It is irresponsible and cruel to mistreat Haitian migrants this way while trying to maintain political leverage with the Afghanistan recovery. This entire century has given us disappointing administration after disappointing administration in terms of how we’re handling the immigration and asylum process. And most wild of all, we still do not equate the terrorist attacks to what the United States did in order to achieve such deadly retaliation. In a parallel universe, the United States stays put after World War 2 and issuing their punishments to the enemies, doesn’t fear the rise of the Soviets (who had lost a dozen million people in the span of a few years), and Latin America becomes the powerhouse cluster of countries that we’re seeing happening in the European Union.
The United States became the top economy in the planet because of their destruction of virtually every western hemisphere country and government at one point or another within the past century, and when 9/11 rolled around and some of their former allies became the perpetrators, the lessons weren’t learned, the sympathy towards victims of THEIR behavior never developed, and thus we’ve spent the 21st century seeing the United States still not quite come to terms with what they’ve done in the last 100 years.
THIS is why Afghanistan fell to the Taliban once again, THIS is why we have tens of thousands of migrants risking their lives and trying to enter the U.S. in search of a better future, THIS is why the U.S. still has targets on their back from nations in the Middle East, and THIS is why that until we truly -do- remember 9/11 and its before/during/afters, we’ll politically never properly respond to the situation involving the millions of people having to change countries because their homelands cannot reach their full economic and political potential. Maybe in the next life, maybe beyond my lifetime we’ll see Latin America evolve into the organization and stability of Europe, but it starts with the United States atoning for its actions and truly seeking changes, partnerships, and proper reparations.
Never forget 9/11, but also never forget Chile’s 9/11 and the history that binds all the current events we’re seeing together.