20^th anniversary of the day America changed
is upon us – a day that will live in infamy forever
Full of rage, America vowed to take revenge
Using every means and weapons in its quiver

Time stood still; fear gripped the nation
Rage and anger kept boiling over and over
People called for quick revenge – here and now
Drenched in sadness and consumed with war fervor

Congress gave President a blank check to wage war
on persons and organizations, he deemed as terrorists
Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) was brief*,
open ended, broad in reach and without any limits
(* just sixty words; reproduced at the end of this piece)

With this resolution, America declared War on Terror
The opening salvo was fired in Afghanistan
Where the perpetrators of the sordid event (Al Qaida)
had taken refuge under the tutelage of Taliban

Congress acquiesced to the President in the moment of grief
Only one vote was cast against the AUMF bill
The “brave” soul to go against the tsunami was
Barbara Lee, a congresswoman – lone voice on the Hill

Barbara said AUMF is too broad, not definitive, and open-ended
She was projecting forward to, possibly, an endless war
Looking back now, she was prescient in her fears
The 20-year long Afghanistan War has been the longest by far

Though majority of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis
America did very little to hold Saudi Arabia accountable
The pull of “cheap” oil gave them security shield
This power has proven to be unsurmountable

We decided to invade Iraq instead, though there
was no proof of their involvement in the 9/11 action
A phony rationale was created to justify the attack, i.e.
Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction”

Given the open-ended authorization for war by Congress
Presidents kept taking the war to new territories
Including Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria
The excuse being to destroy terrorist sanctuaries

Reverend at the 9/11 memorial service* cautioned us
“That as we act, we not become the evil we deplore”
Sadly, this caution was thrown to the wind and
we kept sliding into the rat hole deeper ever more
(*Reverend Nathan Baxter on  September 14, 2001)

We chose to discard our morality, civility, and values
in dealing with people, we labeled enemy combatant
Though torture is not allowed by our code of conduct
We called it “enhanced interrogation” to circumvent

We imprisoned “terrorists” in Guantanamo Bay
to whom we did not accord due process
Neither we tried them, nor we let them go
Guantanamo Bay is a moral failure, not a success

Hundreds of thousands of civilians in enemy territories got killed
By calling it collateral damage, we desensitized ourselves
I suspect if we were fed truth serum, we would say
An American life is worth more than their cumulative selves

We outsourced the act of war to minorities and the poor
Most of us are not impacted by the savagery of the war
It’s almost like playing a video game or watching a movie
from the comfort of our home w/o touching a mortar

In this war on terror, money has not been a constraint
Trillions have been spent in the name of security
We have fought this war on “credit card” using debt
burdening the next generation is our proclivity

The War on Terror opened the tap of federal money
Built a Security Industrial Complex with voracious appetite
Corporations of all shapes and sizes partook in the loot
Money flowed with little scrutiny, to their delight

Hundreds of billions of dollars went into the pockets of
Afghani/Iraqi “officials” and American contractors
There is no accounting of the money sent abroad
Spend now ask later was the MO of the perpetrators

Hate to think what these trillions could have done @ home
if directed towards physical infrastructure and human capital
We could have funded universal health care, childcare, and
other social safety net programs, not piecemeal, rather in total

The War on Terror has suffered from mission creep
We went to Afghanistan with a clear mission and goal –
to defeat Al Qaeda, which we accomplished quickly
Next came nation building, a venture proved to be a rat hole

We wanted to establish democracy in Afghanistan
We learned democracy is more than holding elections
Holding elections is the easiest part, the hard part
is building democracy enabling institutions

Isn’t it ironic that we wanted to build democracy
in the Muslim world, a world used to only theocracy
While the democracy in our own country is under
mortal threat due to populism and plutocracy

To our dismay after waging the longest war,
we are back to, after 20-years, where we began
We went into the war to dislodge Taliban from power
we left the scene ceding power back to Taliban!

Just like the Pentagon Papers exposed the lies
and deception about the conduct of war in Vietnam
Afghan Papers* have revealed the truths and lies
about the Afghan war waged without any qualm
(*”The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,”
by Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock.
Published August 31, 2021)

We must ask ourselves are we safer after 20 years of
“war on terror”, waged across the Muslim lands?
The answer is a qualified YES, if we think single dimensionally-
akin to 9/11 perpetrated by one or more terrorist stagehands

But we should not be so myopic in our definition of threat
Security is more than defending against 9/11 kind of threat
A far more menacing enemy entered our country unnoticed
A killer virus (Coronavirus*) successfully evaded our dragnet
(*as of Sept 11, 2021, Covid-19 has killed close to 700K Americans)

Let’s revisit the caution uttered by Reverend Baxter on 9/14/2001
“That as we act, we not become the evil we deplore”
If we look objectively and speak the truth
We would be lying if we said we did, doubt no more!

God bless America, land that I love.
________________________________________________________

Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). 60 words one sentence
“That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”