Anniversaries are occasions for remembrance. This week, 25 years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans will rightly remember the nearly 3,000 innocent people murdered that morning, the families they left behind, and the firefighters, police officers, passengers, and other ordinary Americans who responded with such great courage.
But remembering 9/11 also requires remembering what happened, who did it, and why.
The 19 al Qaeda terrorists who turned passenger planes into missiles of war did not murder thousands of Americans because of a misunderstanding or isolated grievance. Their leader, Osama bin Laden, had developed an elaborate indictment of the United States and the civilization it represented that many on the Left and some political leaders embrace today.
In his 2002 “Letter to America,” bin Laden cast the U.S. as more than a country pursuing misguided policies. He portrayed it as an imperial power that oppressed Muslims around the world, seized the wealth and oil of other nations, and provoked the violence directed against it. “Because you attacked us and continue to attack us,” he wrote.
That false and deceitful cause-and-effect explanation of 9/11 is now heard from Democratic candidates. Aber Kawas, the Democratic nominee for a New York state Senate seat, has said “capitalism and racism and white supremacy,” along with Islamophobia, had been used “to colonize lands” and “take resources from other people.” She described 9/11 as a “manifestation” of that longer trajectory.
Colorado Democratic congressional nominee Melat Kiros made the connection even more directly. Asked whether 9/11 was a consequence of American foreign policy, she answered that it was inevitable “in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East,” leading people to believe violence was a justified response.
But the similarity goes beyond blaming America for terrorism. Bin Laden’s indictment extended to all of Western civilization, and similar language is routinely used in today’s socialist movement, in which the word “democratic” is used as a decoy.
Consider Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an organization that Democratic candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier helped launch while at Columbia University. It declared, “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” Bin Laden likewise moved far beyond particular American policies to describe the U.S. as “the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind.”
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed has similarly described American history as a story of dispossession and oppression. He invoked “manifest destiny” and the destruction of Native Americans, saying the country was founded on the backs of native people who were destroyed and enslaved people forced to work the land.
Taken together, the parallels form a recognizable worldview, which is why leftist extremism and political Islam are allies against the West. They say its power produces colonialism and exploitation, those injustices produce violence, and terrorism is a consequence of what America did first. The indictment broadens from particular American policies to the history, institutions, and the civilization that produced them.
For the Democratic Socialists of America, that critique does not end with history or foreign policy. It extends to our whole constitutional system.
Bin Laden rejected the legitimacy of America’s constitutional order, and many Democratic candidates now do too. The DSA national platform calls for abolishing the Senate and replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with bodies “chosen by and subordinate to” Congress, concentrating federal governance in a single legislative chamber of unchecked power.
That is antithetical to the vision of our Founding Fathers. The truth is that we were attacked 25 years ago, not because of our evil and our failures, but because of the great truth of our nation and shrine in its founding 250 years ago. These truths are a threat to those who cling to benighted belief systems and wish to establish an oppressive government by the few.
The enormity of 9/11 should have taught us that we should be more careful about who we allow into our country. We are under no obligation to take in people who have worldviews antithetical or hostile to our own. It is simply bad policy to pretend that all migrants are compatible with American values.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, remembrance means refusing to treat bin Laden’s indictment of America as a respectable platform and refusing to import or elevate those who share it.