On July 31, three of the remaining four accused, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, each signed a pretrial agreement, which was approved by the Convening Authority (CA) of the Military Commissions, former Brigadier General Susan Escallier. Escallier, had been appointed as the CA by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in August of 2023. The CA, according to the rules of the Military Commissions:

(M)ay either accept or reject an offer of the accused to enter into a pretrial agreement or may propose by counteroffer any terms or conditions not prohibited by law or public policy. The decision whether to accept or reject an offer is within the sole discretion of the convening authority.

The agreements that Escallier approved included guilty pleas along with lengthy “stipulations of fact” describing each defendant’s actions related to 9/11. In exchange the government agreed to forego the death penalty, for sentences that would likely be life imprisonment. Then in near lightning speed, barely two days later, Secretary Austin overruled the prosecuting attorneys, who had worked for months to craft the agreements, and the CA issuing a terse statement:

I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009. Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself.

Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024 in the above-referenced case.

The developments have been described by legal scholars as a “train wreck and a serious embarrassment for the government.” The ACLU declared, “(b)y revoking a signed plea agreement, Secretary Austin has prevented a guilty verdict in the most important criminal case of the 21st century. This rash act also violates the law….” Analysis of the issues at stake by former government officials who have been close to the issues in the case for more than two decades explained, “(t)he history of torture-tainted cases in the military commissions demonstrates the near impossibility of obtaining death penalty judgements” and concluded that the pretrial agreements the were the only realistic options for achieving a conviction in the 9/11 case.

The former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, framed Austin’s action in an international legal framework, emphasizing its human rights consequences. She described revoking the agreements as a lost opportunity “to conclude meaningful and rule of law compliant plea agreements, finally redeeming the rights of 9/11 families…with an admission of guilt…(and) offering the potential to write a new chapter of international law compliance following decades of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment at the site (Guantanamo) and beyond.”

While just how the issues will be ultimately resolved, whether the agreements will stand, or whether Secretary Austin will prevail, is currently unclear. When the 9/11 pre-trial hearings resume following the 23^rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there will be lengthy litigation over the issues, as the judge in the case, Lt. Col Matthew McCall has ordered both the prosecution and the defense attorneys to file briefs and present arguments about a path forward.

The post 9/11 Pre-Trial Hearings at Guantanamo Enter Unchartered Legal Territory appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

The central issue in the pre-trial hearings, which began in May of 2012, remains unchanged: SUPPRESSION, whether the prosecution will be allowed to use information obtained by interrogators who questioned the 9/11 defendants after they were tortured by the CIA. The last five weeks of legal proceedings included some stunning witness testimony as well as several striking new developments that will have a bearing on the issue.

Testifying for the prosecution, former Naval investigator Robert McFadden described Walid bin Attash as participating voluntarily in interview sessions and eager to discuss his role in 9/11. McFadden also admitted the defendant was never read his Miranda rights nor offered legal counsel. McFadden previously testified in the USS Cole bombing case and the judge in those proceedings suppressed statements the defendant made to McFadden because of the defendant’s previous torture at a CIA black site. That decision has been appealed by the USS Cole prosecution, but there has been no decision after more than 10 months. READ MORE.

 Testifying for the defense, former CIA psychiatrist Dr. Charles Morgan (who played no part in the CIA’s RDI – “rendition, detention, and interrogation” – program) who is on the faculty of Yale Medical School and the University of New Haven, and works at the National Center for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), portrayed the post-CIA interrogations very differently. Mr. bin Attash, he testified, would have been suffering PTSD and unable to distinguish between CIA and subsequent interrogators; any confessions he made, regardless of their apparent voluntary nature, were in fact “conditioned fear memories.” Morgan added that the defendant’s PTSD would have been causing him “pain and distress and psychological despair” and that the interrogators were “interviewing a person (who had) been traumatized…a person who suffers from a significant mental illness.” READ MORE.

 Despite significant testimony from witnesses like McFadden and Morgan, it also became clear that failure to conduct a speedy trial in the 9/11 case is producing new problems for the prosecution. Increasingly, expert witnesses are dying, suffering from health issues that make their appearance in court impossible, or showing understandable lack of detailed memory now more that 22 years after the events of 9/11.

During the five-week session the judge also made an unprecedented visit to the CIA black site on the Guantanamo base, presumably to see the interrogation room first-hand and determine how similar it is to rooms where post-CIA interrogations were subsequently conducted. He issued a statement explaining that a site visit would be “beneficial for determining” how to rule on suppression. READ MORE. While the April-May hearings were on-going, the New York Times broke a story concerning the attempt to move the 9/11 case to federal court, in 2009. Federal prosecutors, at the time, had rejected using confessions the 9/11 defendants made during FBI interrogations because of the failure to “Mirandize” them. READ MORE.

9/11 pre-trial hearings are scheduled to resume in July and August for another four weeks as the judge attempts to hear from all the witnesses whose testimony bears on the issue of suppression.

The post Hearings in the 9/11 Case at Guantanamo Move Closer to Crucial Decisions on Admissibility of Key Government Evidence appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Increasingly, however, activists and human rights advocates are learning of the profound challenges men face after Guantanamo, which can be particularly difficult if one is relocated to a country other than where he was initially from. These men are often unable to find work, they struggle with housing, may have no access to medical care (and many of them have severe health challenges after the torture and hunger strikes that they experienced.) Few former detainees ever obtain passports that grant them freedom of movement. Again, from the UN Special Rapporteur, “For the men who the U.S. government has transferred or resettled, my report documents the despair, challenges, and undisputable harms most continue to face following release. Former detainees need the essential means to live a dignified life.” On the occasion of the 22nd anniversary, Ms. Ní Aoláin emphasized that activism by released detainees now forms the frontline of advocacy for their rights. READ MORE.

 No one better embodies this role of detainee activism and advocacy than Mansoor Adayfi, author of Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo. Mr. Adayfi was one of the lead organizers of the hunger strikes by detainees that captured world attention in 2005, 2008 and 2013. Living in Serbia since 2016, he writes frequently about the situation former detainees now face. Just one example is Saudi engineer Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, who the U.S. repatriated to his home country in March of 20223 and shortly later he disappeared. Others have experienced torture and even execution after being relocated. It’s what former detainees cynically refer to as GITMO 2.0. READ MORE. Mr. Adayfi is also the Outreach Director of the No More Guantanamos Survivors Fund which had pledged to provide limited assistance to former detainees until the U.S. fulfills its responsibilities for reparations and torture rehabilitation.

Mansoor Adayfi and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin were joined by Aliya Hussain, from the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Daphne Eviatar, from Amnesty International—USA, in a powerful webinar “Guantanamo, Where Do We Go From Here?” discussing the long history of the Guantanamo detention facility, the work that remains to finally shutter the facility, and the many issues that must be addressed to provide accountability for the wrongs, harms and violations of law that took place. Watch the webinar here.

The post Guantanamo at 22: Continuing Violations of Human Rights and the Growing Challenges and Harms Experienced by Former Detainees appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

On February 1, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the counter-terrorism and human rights, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, announced she had come to an agreement with the U.S. government to visit and review practices at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Here technical visit will include meetings in officials in Washington D.C. followed by a four-days spent at the U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba where she and her team will talk with detainees and military personnel. Over a three-month period, Ní Aoláin will also interview individuals in the U.S. and elsewhere, on a voluntary basis, including victims and families of victims of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and former Guantanamo detainees in countries to which they have been repatriated or resettled. At the conclusion of her mission, Special Rapporteur Ní Aoláin will issue an end-of-mission report on her findings and recommendations to address violations of human rights and international law.

Then on February 2, Majid Khan, who had been detained for nearly a year more than the sentence he received from senior military officials in October of 2021, was finally resettled to Belize, where his wife and daughter will join him. Khan was captured, in 2003, forcibly disappeared by the U.S., imprisoned, and tortured at overseas “black sites” operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, before he was brought to Guantanamo September of 2006. Khan pled guilty, in 2012, to war crimes including supporting al Qaeda by transferring money to individuals who carried out terrorist attacks in the years after 9/11. Although he completed his sentence in March of 2022, Khan remained at Guantanamo. In June of 2022, he filed a case in federal court, Khan v. Biden, challenging his continued imprisonment. The government never responded to the merits of Khan’s filing but arranged his resettlement in advance of a court-ordered deadline to do so. Read more about the many years of Khan’s legal challenges to Guantanamo justice.

The same day that Khan left Guantanamo, Theodore Olson, who coordinated 9/11-related litigation for the Bush administration and who is himself a 9/11 victim family member, became the highest-level member of the Bush Administration to acknowledge publicly the fundamental failure of the Guantanamo military commissions to deliver justice and accountability for the crimes of 9/11 and other terrorist acts. As Olson, who served as the 42nd solicitor general of the United States from 2001 until 2004, wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “we made two mistakes in dealing with the detained individuals at Guantanamo. First, we created a new legal system out of whole cloth…. [T]he commissions were doomed from the start. We used new rules of evidence and allowed evidence regardless of how it was obtained. We tried to pursue justice expeditiously in a new, untested legal system. It didn’t work.” The second mistake was to pursue the death penalty in the newly created commissions, Olson continued. Although federal courts could have handled the cases 15 or 20 years ago, he concluded, that today, “the only guarantee that federal court prosecution brings is years of appeals resulting from the legal morass of the past two decades. This is no resolution…. The American legal system must move on by closing the book on the military commissions and securing guilty pleas.”

As the month drew to a close, on February 23, the Rabbani brothers, were returned to Pakistan after spending 20 years at Guantanamo without ever being charged with a crime. Although Pakistani by nationality, the brothers were born and raised in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and are ethnically Rohingya. They were captured by Pakistani security forces in 2002 and then held at a CIA detention site for 550 days before being taken to Guantanamo in 2004. The younger of the two brothers, Ahmed, became well known for his artwork and also for his participation in the hunger strikes Guantanamo detainees have mounted. The Pentagon recently partially lifted its ban on the release of detainees’ artwork, but it is unknown whether Ahmed was able to take the more than 100 paintings he made at Guantanamo with him to Pakistan.

The post GTMO UPDATE: Detainee Releases and High-Level Reviews of Guantanamo Policies and Practices appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

The post If Biden Doesn’t Close Guantánamo, What President Will? Take Action Today! appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

You can watch a video recording of Colleen Kelly’s testimony and that of the other witnesses at the hearing, “Closing Guantánamo: Ending 20 Years of Injustice.” Colleen emphasized the lack of truth, justice and accountability for the crimes of 9/11. “The rule of law is a bedrock principle of our nation, and after 9/11 we expected our government to uphold the rule of law in seeking accountability for our relatives’ deaths. It failed to do so and as a result we still are awaiting justice twenty years later.”

Colleen’s testimony went on to describe a way forward in the 9/11 case that would clear a path for the closure of Guantánamo: pre-trial agreements. “We understand that in exchange for guilty pleas the government would in all likelihood no longer seek the death penalty; this would be in part in recognition of the torture each of the defendants experienced. What we would hope to finally get, however, is answers to our questions about 9/11 from the defendants—answers and information that we have been denied for two decades.”

Currently, 39 men remain at Guantánamo. In addition to the five men accused of planning and supporting the 9/11 attacks, seven other men have been charged in the military commissions. While two men have been convicted, trials of the other ten have not even begun. Pre-trial agreements could end that legal limbo. Another 14 men are being held in indefinite detention as “law-of-war detainees,” and the remaining 13 men have been cleared for transfer to another country (many of them cleared during the Obama Administration and have therefore been awaiting transfer for many years).

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows believes the Biden Administration needs to transfer those cleared for transfer with all due speed; next either charge or clear for transfer the 14 “indefinitely” held men, and also negotiate pre-trial agreements with all those charged. This is the only option as the military commissions have demonstrated, after more than a decade, that they are fundamentally broken.

In addition to Colleen Kelly, the Democrats called three other witnesses:

Brigadier General John Baker, Chief Defense Counsel for the Military Commissions

Major General Michael Lehnert (ret.), Who supervised the construction and served as the first commandant of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp

Ms. Katya Jestin, One of the defense attorneys for Majid Khan, Guantánamo detainee who pled guilty, negotiated a plea agreement and then made a public statement about his torture by the CIA

General Baker stated that it was clear to him that the military commissions were today further away from convening trials than they were two years ago. He firmly supported pre-trial agreements as the only way to end the paralysis caused by the death penalty, illegal intrusion into the defense process, and the legal stalemate over discovery of evidence of the torture that all the accused experienced. Katya Jestin concurred with Baker’s support for pre-trial agreements. Major General Lehnert stated bluntly that the Biden Administration needed a detailed plan to finally shutter Guantánamo. Recalling that he has been given 96 hours to set up the detention facility in 2002, he suggested 96 days would be a reasonable timeframe for closing them today. Lehnert stressed how leaving the facility open posed an ongoing risk to U.S. security as Guantánamo remains a recruiting tool for anti-American organizations worldwide.

Republicans and Democrats found little to agree on, other than their shared frustration that the Biden Administration sent no one from the National Security Council, the Department of Justice, or the Department of Defense to the hearings to present the Administration’s plan for closure. Indeed, the Administration’s record, after 11 months, in meeting its avowed goal of closing Guantánamo – one detainee transferred (whose terms of transfer were negotiated by the Obama Administration) and one additional detainee cleared for transfer – suggest that it may have no plan.

The Republicans called two witnesses:

Mr. Jamil N. Jaffer, Founder and Executive Director, National Security Law and Policy Program, George Mason University

Mr. Charles “Cully” Stimson, Manager, National Security Law Program, The Heritage Foundation

They used most of their time to argue about the failed exit strategy from Afghanistan and the likelihood of released detainees “returning to the battlefield” and rarely focused on the issues that Guantánamo’s continuation presents.

Despite the partisan gulf, it does seem that at long last the failure of the military commissions at Guantánamo to deliver justice is getting recognition. Pre-trial agreements are being openly promoted, which was not common a year ago. As the 20th anniversary of Guantánamo, January 11, 2022, follows the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks it is time to shutter the detention facilities at last. Can we heed the words of former detainees who wrote to President Biden urging action:

“Many of us were abducted from our homes, in front of our families, and sold for bounties to the US by nations that cared little for the rule of law. We were rendered to countries where we were physically and psychologically tortured in addition to suffering racial and religious discrimination in US custody—even before we arrived at Guantánamo….

“Most of the prisoners currently or presently detained at Guantánamo have never been to the United States. This means that our image of your country has been shaped by our experiences at Guantánamo—in other words, we have only been witnesses to its dark side.

“Considering the violence that has happened at Guantánamo, we are sure that after more than nineteen years, you agree that imprisoning people indefinitely without trial while subjecting them to torture, cruelty and degrading treatment, with no meaningful access to families or proper legal systems, is the height of injustice. That is why imprisonment at Guantánamo must end.”

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows agrees. CLOSE GUANTÁNAMO NOW, IT CAN BE DONE!

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

Senator Durbin denounced Guantánamo during Senate debate on the NDAA.
Senator Durbin wrote the Department of Justice criticizing positions it had taken in federal courts that undermined the Biden Administration’s stated goal to close Guantánamo.
Senators Durbin, Leahy and other Democrats wrote Biden to close Guantánamo.

The post Guantánamo: 20 Years of Injustice Must End! appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

The Ban Killer Drones campaign asked peacemakers to protest drone war on Nov. 29, and PeaceWorks-KC answered the call. Fourteen of us witnessed for peace that day at Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster, Mo. We condemned both the Aug. 29 drone killing of 10 members of the Ahmadi family in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the ongoing US drone strikes.

The US military mistakenly identified Zemari Ahmadi as a terrorist and killed him, seven children, and two others with a Hellfire Missile shot into his family’s courtyard. Ahmadi was categorized as a terrorist and, only after he was killed, was identified as an employee of a California-based food charity. Furthermore, drone attacks like the one that killed the Ahmadi family are not unusual. Daniel Hale is now serving four years in prison because he disclosed US government documents showing that, in Afghanistan over a five-month period, “Operation Haymaker” killed someone other than the “intended target” 90 percent of the time. What is unusual in the case of the attack that killed Ahmadi and nine of his family members is the international coverage it received during the US withdrawal from Kabul.

PeaceWorks-KC is grateful to Kathy Kelly and others from the Ban Killer Drones campaign for announcing the nationwide drone protest, “Don’t Look Away.” Activists demonstrated at 11 US bases that launch drones as well as train drone operators.

Our demands:

ban killer drones

reparations to the Afghan people

lift the sanctions that are inflicting further pain, suffering,

and starvation on the Afghan people

Brian Terrell, a longtime drone war protester from Maloy, Iowa, was our main speaker. He served 6 months in prison for trying to deliver a no-drones letter to Whiteman authorities in 2012. Before the Nov. 29 peace witness, Terrell charged, “Not only are drone operators trained at Whiteman; the Air Force 20^th Attack Squadron is involved in around-the-clock remote-control combat missions with the MQ-9 Reaper drones.” The Pentagon won’t say which base fired the MQ-9 Reaper that killed the Ahmadi family, Terrell said, but it was possible it was launched from Whiteman.

Christopher Overfelt, of Veterans for Peace and of the PeaceWorks Board, welcomed us Nov. 29. He served in the US Air Force from 2002 to 2011, and he regretfully acknowledged his part in the Afghanistan war. “It’s important that I acknowledge my own role in the war on terror and the hurt that the war has caused,” he said, adding that he was pleased to see so many traveling to Whiteman to demand an end to drone warfare.

Terrell told us that Americans are being sold a Big Lie. He quoted President Joe Biden’s announcement Aug. 31: “Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan.” Terrell objected, “The US war on Afghanistan did not end—it has only adapted to technological advances and morphed into a war that will be more politically sustainable, one more intractable and more easily exportable.” He called drone attacks “war made easy,” with the US having the ability to strike terrorists and targets with little to no “boots on the ground.” In actuality, Terrell affirmed, drone warfare makes war easier to spread, easier to maintain, and easier to sell for our political and military leaders. Drone warfare is also harder to eradicate once established.

“The first lethal drone strike in history occurred in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, when the CIA identified Taliban leader Mullah Omar, ‘on the 98 percent probability it was he,’ but the Hellfire missile launched by a Predator drone killed two unidentified men while Mullah Omar escaped,” said Terrell. And the war supposedly ended 20 years later, with the fatal drone strike that killed the Ahmadi family on Aug. 29. And in between those 20 years, thousands of innocent civilians were killed, Terrell said.

One relative of the Ahmadi family, Terrell reported, said, “America is the killer of Muslims in every place and every time; I hope that all Islamic countries unite in their view that America is a criminal.” Another mourner, said Terrell, noted, “We’re now much more afraid of drones than we are of the Taliban.”

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, openly stated in 2010 that “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies,” said Terrell.

No, the war in Afghanistan is not over.

In 1972, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, [and] in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Terrell shared that quote and then reflected, “All of us in the US, the politicians, voters, tax payers, investors, and even those who protested and resisted it, are responsible for 20 years of war in Afghanistan. We are also all responsible for ending it.”

—Mary Hladky, the mother of a veteran, serves as vice chair of the PeaceWorks-KC Board. Photos by Bennette Dibbins, PeaceWorks-KC.

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Continuing detention without charge of men at GITMO and the failure to hold anyone accountable for the horrific torture they endured at the hands of the CIA and members of the U.S. military are policies endemic to our endless wars. Until these policies are addressed those wars will still be with us. Torture and the prodigious efforts of the CIA to keep the details of what the detainees endured highly classified has virtually paralyzed judicial proceeding at Guantanamo. But last month, a remarkable breakthrough at the sentencing hearing for Majid Khan offered a potential path to resolution.

Majid Khan is unique among Guantanamo prisoners.  While he is a citizen of Pakistan, he and other members of his family have held political asylum status in the U.S. Khan grew up outside of Baltimore, graduated from a suburban high school, and later lived and worked in the area. He then traveled to Pakistan, became involved with al-Qaeda and in March of 2003 was captured, disappeared, and tortured by U.S. officials at overseas “black sites” operated by the CIA. He arrived at Guantanamo Bay in 2006, at the age of 26. In February of 2012, Khan was charged and pled guilty to several offenses before a military commission at Guantanamo; most importantly he acknowledged delivering money to men who carried out the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August of 2003. Since his guilty plea, Khan has been cooperating with U.S. government officials.

At Khan’s sentencing hearing, October 28-29, 2021, he addressed the jurors and read a remarkable personal statement that lasted over two hours. Khan began by stating, “To those who tortured me, I forgive you – all of you.” He went on to relate details of his youth, why he turned to al-Qaeda, a full confession, an apology to everyone his actions had killed or injured, and a lengthy description of his treatment in the black sites. This included being hung naked with his wrists shackled to a high beam for hours on end in a cold room, sleep deprivation, ice baths, and “rectal feeding,” a form of rape. Khan described how when he was moved from his cell to an interrogation room the prison guards would shackle his arms and legs behind his back and knock his head into the walls and stairs as they carried him. Khan’s statement was the first time a CIA torture survivor has spoken in any official forum about his experiences. Because Khan was giving personal testimony at a sentencing hearing, it was subject to far less censorship than the evidence allowed in the Military Commissions at Guantanamo. The Washington Director of the Center for Victims of Torture described Khan’s testimony as a “stark reminder of impunity for torture.”

The jurors were clearly deeply concerned by what they heard from Kahn. Seven out of eight voluntarily signed a clemency letter that was a stunning rebuke of the CIA’s practices. “[T]he treatment of Mr. Khan in the hands of U.S. personnel should be a source of shame for the U.S. government,” they wrote. Khan “has been held without the basic due process under the Constitution” and in “complete disregard for the foundational concepts upon which the Constitution was founded,” which they described as “an affront to American values and concept of justice.” The physical and psychological abuse Khan suffered resembled “torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history” and “is a stain on the moral fiber of America,” they concluded.

What lessons might be drawn from Khan’s sentencing that might help resolve the other cases before the Military Commissions at Guantanamo—including the case of the five men accused of planning and supporting the attacks of 9/11? Every single man facing trial at Guantanamo was subjected to the CIA’s practices at one or more black sites. None of the ten men charged are even close to a trial date; instead, most of the cases are stalled as prosecution and defense attorneys litigate how much evidence of the men’s torture will be made public. Pre-trial agreements could end the judicial deadlock; the commissions could accept a defendant’s guilty pleas in exchange for a “stipulation of the facts,” a defendant would receive a reduced sentence (less time or foregoing the death penalty), and a defendant would have the option to make a “personal statement”. It would allow victims and their families to learn the truth and would afford some redress (though not accountability) for torture.

As one of Majid Khan’s attorneys has written, “Justice is frequently imperfect and true accountability can be illusive. But the lack of both in the context of Guantanamo exacerbates the still raw pain associated with the 9/11 attacks and also highlights a failure to reckon with the worst excesses of the post-9/11 period which, unfortunately, Guantanamo continues to epitomize.” Plea agreements, though they offer imperfect justice, may be the only way to close Guantanamo.

The post GITMO’s 20th Anniversary Approaches and the Policies of Endless War Persist appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

September 11th, 2001, fundamentally altered the culture of the United States and its relationship with the rest of the world. The violence of that day was not confined, it spread throughout the world as America lashed out both at home and abroad. The almost 3,000 deaths of September 11th became hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of deaths from wars the US launched in retaliation. Tens of millions lost their homes.

The webinar reflected on the lessons of 9/11 and the lessons of the 20 year Global War on Terror and included testimonials from John Kiriakou, Vijay Prashad, Sam Al-Arian, Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans, Assal Rad, David Swanson, Kathy Kelly, Matthew Hoh, Danny Sjursen, Kevin Danaher, Ray McGovern, Mickey Huff, Chris Agee, Norman Solomon, Pat Alviso, Rick Jahnkow, Larry Wilkerson, and Moustafa Bayoumi.

In the name of freedom, and of vengeance, the United States invaded and occupied Afghanistan. We stayed for 20 years. With lies of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ a majority of the country was convinced to invade and occupy Iraq, the worst foreign policy decision of the modern era. The Executive Branch was given sweeping authority to make war across borders and without limits. The conflict in the Middle East expanded under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, leading to US wars in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and more. Trillions of dollars were spent. Millions of lives were lost. We created the greatest migration and refugee crisis since World War II.

9/11 was also used as an excuse to change the relationship of the US government to its citizens. In the name of safety the national security state was given expansive surveillance powers, threatening privacy and civil liberties. The Department of Homeland Security was created and with it ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Words like ‘enhanced interrogation,’ a euphemism for torture entered the American lexicon and the Bill of Rights was tossed aside.

After the events of September 11th, 2001, “Never Forget” became a common expression in the United States. Unfortunately, it was not only used to remember and honor the dead. Like “remember the Maine” and “remember the Alamo,”  “never forget” was also used as a rallying cry to war. 20 years after 9/11 we are still living in the age of the ‘War on Terror.’

We must never forget the lessons of 9/11 or the lessons of the Global War on Terror, lest we risk repeating the pain, death, and tragedy of the past 20 years.

This webinar is co-sponsored by:

The Coalition for Civil Freedoms

Historians for Peace and Democracy

United for Peace and Justice

World BEYOND War

Project Censored

Veterans For Peace

CovertAction Magazine

Military Families Speak Out

On Earth Peace

National Network Opposing The Militarization of Youth

The post Never Forget: 9/11 and the 20 Year War on Terror appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

The post The War in Afghanistan is Over, It’s Time to Face the Truth appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.