Democracy Now! Thursday, September 10, 2026

0:00From New York, this is Democracy Now. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. When the World Trade Center was attacked, I was shocked and angry, like many Americans. My name is Miss Souther Sultana and I live here in New York City. I'm also an Afghan. I was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan. I knew the events that took place here would have repercussions for my family, back in Afghanistan. Twenty-five years ago, President George W. Bush made the case for war days after the September 11th attacks.

1:02Within a few weeks, the U.S. bombed Afghanistan, launching the decades-long so-called war on terror. Today, we'll be joined by Afghan-American women's rights activist Miss Souther Sultana. She lost 19 members of her family when the U.S. military bombed their house. And then, to Kabul, to speak with the uneglend of the Norwegian refugee council, we'll also look at the costs of war and speak to journalist Spencer Akramin, his book Rain of Terror, how the 9-11 era destabilized America and produced Trump, all that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now. The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Iranian media is reporting several explosions rang out early this morning in coastal areas of southern Iran. The apparent U.S. attacks came after Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned it would target oil tankers, docked in Kuwait and Bahrain,

2:08in retaliation for U.S. attacks earlier in the week to say that disabled or destroyed several Iranian-linked vessels. Meanwhile, CBS reports several U.S. fighter jets at a Jordanian military base were damaged in Iranian strikes Wednesday. The escalating violence came as President Trump predicted the war would end after the midterm elections. I think the war will end immediately after the elections, because they can't hold out any longer. They're desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice week group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapons. President Trump also said oil prices, which have surged past $100 a barrel, likely won't come down until after the midterm elections. This comes as a Brown University research project finds higher fuel costs triggered by the war in Iran have cost the average U.S. household more than $780 an extra spending.

3:16Meanwhile, an analysis published by CNBC finds President Trump's investments in oil stocks have made him $4.4 million richer since the start of the war. In Yemen fighters with the Iran-backed Houthi movement have seized a strategic port city on the Red Sea after routing government forces in a lightning offensive. The city of Mokha is less than 50 miles from the Bob Al-Mandab straight, a critical choke point that typically sees about 12 percent of global maritime trade pass through it. The UN warrants renewed fighting in Yemen has displaced nearly 20,000 families and less than four days. Yields on long-term U.S. treasuries have surged to their highest levels since 2007 despite extraordinary efforts by Treasury Secretary Scott Besant to intervene in bond markets. On Wednesday, Besant announced the treasury would triple a planned buyback of certain U.S. bonds to $6 billion.

4:20That wasn't enough to come investors who continued a broad sell-off on Wednesday as crude oil prices top $100 a barrel amidst renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran. Meanwhile, Norway's vast sovereign wealth fund has proposed cutting its investment in U.S. Treasury holdings by nearly $80 billion. Dependent guns release video showing what it says is another strike on alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. According to U.S. Southern Command Wednesdays attack killed three so-called Narco Terrorists. As in previous strikes, the Trump administration provided no evidence the boat was carrying drugs. A day earlier, Southcom announced U.S. forces raid in the alleged floating refueling station for Narco traffickers in the Eastern Pacific, abducting the crew and turning them over to Ecuadorian authorities before blowing up the vessel. Over the past year, the Pentagon's claimed attacks on boats that killed at least 230 people, human rights groups, have condemned the strikes as extra judicial killings and murder.

5:24On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the attack during a visit to Ecuador. We still blow up ships if need only over there. Again, it depends every target is selected. Obviously it goes through all the lawyers in the Department of War, but it's all to these are joint operations. So you're operating in conjunction with another nation state. The Republican Party kicked off its first ever midterm political convention on Wednesday and Dallas, Texas. At least 33 House Republicans and several others locked in tight Senate races opted to skip the two-day event, which comes with President Trump's approval ratings at historically low levels. Trump delivered the keynote address on Wednesday evening and will appear again tonight for closing remarks. In his one hour and 44-minute speech, Trump pledged to send every adult in the U.S. a cash dividend, but only if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate in November's elections.

6:24I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. Trump did not say how he would fund the estimated $1.3 trillion cost of his proposal or whether it would break federal laws against vote buying or bribery. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman made a surprise appearance at this midterm Republican convention. In a pre-recorded video, Fetterman introduced Pennsylvania's Republican Senator Dave McCormick as his great friend pledged to work with President Trump and took a swipe at the surging popularity of Democrats aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA. Well, I'm a comment-sense Democrat. I'm always going to stand with America. I'm always going to reject the extremes and socialism and that anti-American way of life. Right back over my shoulder, that's the iconic U.S. steel mill, and that's exactly the kind of thing that will work together and will work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life right here in the steel valley.

7:35Senator Fetterman ran a successful Senate campaign in 2022 as a progressive Democrat, but his politics shifted after he suffered a stroke and was later hospitalized for clinical depression. Former staffers who've left on mass say he's shown deep indifference to his constituents and is mostly interested in appearing on conservative TV programs and advocating for Israel. The Trump administration Wednesday announced a sweeping overhaul of the 2030 census proposing to no longer count immigrants without green cards or ask about race and ethnicity. The proposed regulation would also bar the census from asking about sexual orientation. Previously, the census had asked Americans about their race and ethnicity encountered all U.S. residents regardless of their immigration status, if implemented. The changes would cause regions with larger immigrant populations to lose federal funding and congressional seats. Those areas are much more likely to vote for Democrats. Democratic New York Attorney General Leticia James is vowed to challenge a proposed regulation in court saying, quote, the Constitution is clear.

8:41Every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted in the census, unquote. In immigration news, an estimated 200,000 Salvadorans living in the U.S. face an uncertain future after a program providing TPS that's temporary protected status to them expired on Wednesday. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it would announce the fate of TPS for Salvadoran immigrants and asylum seekers, quote, at the appropriate time, unquote. And until then, Salvadorans would retain protected status. This comes after the Trump administration allowed TPS to lapse more than a million people from 13 countries. The Guardian reports federal immigration authority secretly obtained a judge's approval to force feed a Cuban prisoner on hunger strike through an uncommon surgical procedure performed without his consent. He's the 19th person on hunger strike and ICE custody to have a medical intervention forced upon them against their will.

9:44He's currently detained at the Montgomery ICE Processing Center, a privately run jail near Houston. Human rights groups have denounced the practice of force feeding and detention facilities as a form of torture. In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli air strike flattened a home in the Batlahia area on Thursday killing a Palestinian couple and their two daughters while leaving others wounded or missing under the rubble. Palestinian sources identified the victims as moment Abdul Rahman Ahmed, his wife, Hanin Musa Farhassala, and their daughters, 12-year-old Lana, and eight-year-old Bana. Israel's latest attacks come despite a U.S.-brokered so-called ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, two Palestinians were injured and an Israeli raid on the town of Oartos, south of Nobles. As soldiers fired live, ammunition, tear gas, and sound grenades. Separately, Israeli forces detained 15 Palestinians during a raid early Thursday on the town of Burka.

10:48Soldiers reportedly stormed the town for six hours, raiding homes, and arresting their owners before withdrawing. In Lebanon, Israeli strikes have killed at least 28 people and wounded 79 others in recent days. That's despite a ceasefire in place since June. Meanwhile, the UN is warning against Israel's military activity and side Syrian territory, saying some actions, including the detention of civilians, could amount to war crimes. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria found Israel had detained 49 Syrians, including two children. And it transferred them against their will to Israel. Some of the detainees have been held in Kaminakato, raising fears of torture or maltreatment. Here in New York City, students and faculty held a news conference Wednesday announcing the disclosure of the City University of New York's CUNY Investment Portfolio. This came after a two-year-long legal battle that began when two student organizations, CUNY for Palestine and CUNY law students for justice in Palestine, filed a Freedom of Information Law request, which New York City's public university system denied.

12:03According to CUNY's 2025 Holdings Report, the university system invested in military and defense contractors such as Caterpillar Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Palantir, Israel's largest arms manufacturer, Ilbit Systems, and private prison companies Geogrupe and Corsific. CUNY also had holdings in Israeli banks that provide financial support for illegal settlements and the occupied West Bank in East Jerusalem. This has had decommalak, a CUNY student speaking to democracy now Wednesday. So CUNY is funded by New York State tax dollars and CUNY's tuition as well in general that students are paying to the university. So that makes it not only a student issue, but an issue for all New Yorkers, anyone who lives in New York State, to know that instead of being used on education, for New Yorkers, your tax dollars are being used to further the genocide in Gaza. And President Trump falsely claimed at a 9-11 memorial event Tuesday that two firefighters lifted him up and carried him away when he visited ground zero after the attacks.

13:09In fact, according to footage, Trump was watching television the morning of the attacks. Trump also repeated claims he took a construction crew with him to Lower Manhattan and was involved in cleaning up the site of former fire official involved in the recovery effort disputes that claim. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now. Or the Warn Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Nermine Sheikh. Welcome to our lessons and viewers across the country and around the world. Tomorrow, Friday is the 25th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Less than a month later, the United States began bombing Afghanistan. One of our most moving shows from our archives was from January 2002, when we brought together two women whose lives were deeply impacted by 9-11 and its aftermath. Rita Lazar launched her brother, Abe Salmanovitz at the World Trade Center and Afghan-American New Yorker, Masuda Sultan, who'd family in Afghanistan.

14:13This is Masuda speaking in our studio in January 2002. When September 11th happened and I watched those buildings collapse and I thought about all those people and they're like Rita's brother, I was angry. I was angry just as any New Yorker and my immediate feeling was, who are the jerks that did this and what are we going to do about it? And I went down there that first week and actually got through some police barricades and watched what was going on and volunteered for a few hours. My immediate reaction was anger and shock. But that same day I sensed that something like this was not going to go unpunished. I mean, I would want to figure out who did it too. I realized that Osama was probably in some way responsible and that the United States was probably going to do something about that and guess what? Osama is in Afghanistan.

15:16That day I started making phone calls on September 11th to family here in New York to tell them to also call some family back in Afghanistan to sort of alert people to the fact that this may happen. And some of them didn't think that it would go that far and they said, oh, you're being too cautious. And as time and the events unfolded, that's exactly what happened. That's Afghanistan, a New Yorker, and my Suthan talking to us about her experience of 9-11 just a few months after the attacks. In December of 2001, Masuthas Suthan traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to visit her family. She was accompanied by John Albert and Tammy Albert of Downtown Community Television who made a film about her journey called Afghanistan from Ground Zero to Ground Zero. Here's an excerpt.

16:16We're on our way to my cousin's house. They moved to Kweta after being hit by a US bomb. I don't know what we'll find there. Hello. I'm a Qizaiyananizh Dehli. They were living near government buildings in Kandahar with Taliban close by. And they figured that the US would target those buildings and they didn't want to get hurt by those. So they moved outside of the city and went to their farm just on the outskirts. They were there for two weeks before they were hit. There was a low flying plane and they came out of their houses and many of them were shot at. I was going to jump out of the house. This is the door that she lost.

17:20This couple had four kids. There's only one mother and a wife after the whole family. So they need one? Yes. All of these children were there running from the bullets. And it turned like this as well. That's another one of the bullets. This is a daughter of one of my cousins. Her mom was killed and that's her sister over there. It was 19 people in total. His daughter died. His mother was on the way. His brother. His nephew. One of his cousins. Another cousin. He was the same. He said he lost three grandchildren and a nephew. When the plane started shooting at them, they lost track of where everyone was and it was chaotic. It was a very important thing. I was very happy to see him.

18:25He says that when they realized what had happened, one of his sons yelled out that there are many sheep lying out here. When they went to find out, they saw that it was humans. Is there a family shot on the floor? An excerpt from John and Tommy Albert of Rannesthan from Ground Zero to Ground Zero, a 2002 film about of Rann American Masuda Sultan's journey to of Rannesthan in December 2001. Right after Masuda met with her family, she also called into democracy now to describe what she'd seen. We played a clip of that phone call when she and Rita Lazare met for the first time in our studio in January 2002. These people were not Taliban supporters. They weren't all Canadian fighters. They were simple, Afghans trying to stay safe in their own country. The events of the camera 11 really made me angry. But seeing these people and what they went through, make me angry as well.

19:31You know, they say that in war, they say that you have to break a couple of eggs in order to make an omelet. But when those eggs are your family, what can you do? Rita Lazare broke down listening to Masuda Sultan speaking. And then she herself, Rita, talked about her brother, Abe Salmanoets. He was on the 27th floor of the World Trade Center and 9-11 and did not survive. This is Rita talking about her brother Abe. President Bush mentioned him in the National Cathedral speech, and cited him as being a hero. And I realized that my government was going to use my brother as justification for killing other people. And that had a tremendous impact on me. I didn't want that to happen, not in my brother's name.

20:35And so I wrote a letter to the Times, which they printed, asking our government to please be cautious and not do something they couldn't take back. And then I was asked to speak at a peace rally and I did it. And just before I went on, I was told that it started bombing Afghanistan. And I realized something I had never realized before. I'd heard the term collateral damage all my life. It was always used about people far away from us. And I realized now what it meant, because my brother was collateral damage, in a war that he didn't want. And Masuda's people didn't want. And I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know what.

21:36And then I got a call from this wonderful woman from this marvelous organization called Global Exchange. And she said, would you like to go to Afghanistan and meet people like you who have lost their families? And I thought, that's perfect, because Masuda and I are the same. There's no difference between us. My family member died. I'm grieving. And her family, God, I don't know how. How you survive, just hearing about yours. But we're the same people. That's Rita Lesar speaking on democracy now in January of 2002 across the table from Masuda Sultan. Rita was on her way to Afghanistan with Global Exchange. And then go on to co-found September 11th families for peaceful tomorrows.

22:43She died at the age of 85 in 2017. September 11th families for peaceful tomorrows will be holding a vigil today in Union Square at 5 o'clock. Joining them will be our guest right now. Masuda Sultan, the Afghan American women's rights activist who is now the co-founder of a bad Afghan women forward. I only wish that you and Rita could be sitting across from the table now. Masuda, this is 25 years later. As you talk then about being an Afghan New Yorker and like all New Yorkers horrified on September 11th. But then going back to your family in Afghanistan, 19 members of them killed in a house that was bombed by the US military. Your thoughts today? It's really difficult to process that day without getting very emotional. I'm going to try not to get emotional. And as a New Yorker or the shock and the horror and all of that and the thoughts about what would happen to us knowing that it probably was Osama Bidlan.

23:57I had that feeling right at the beginning. As Muslim New Yorkers, we were grieving the tragedy of 9-11 and then at the same time we were having to be questioned about whether we belonged. And you know, that's what happens when a whole population is folded into one act. And then at the same time thinking about Afghanistan and what would happen if it was indeed Osama Bidlan, what would happen in Afghanistan. And it was really just a very confusing time. And of course, then going to Afghanistan with just the intention of connecting again with the family I had. So recently met I had left Afghanistan as a child due to the Soviet war. I was barely five and I had gone back the summer of oh one to connect with my family and it had been this incredible trip where I really got to understand where we came from and what the love of family meant and what what it was to belong in a place where your parents were from and they spoke the same language and the love that I received.

25:06And so I was worried about them and that was why I wanted to go back just to see what was happening. I had no idea that this had happened when I went on the trip with John and and then having to that unfold of hearing that whole tragedy that happened to our family. And then coming back not knowing to say they left Kabul because they were afraid of being bombed and went to the family house in the country and that's where they were bombed. And you went to a US military base there. John Tommy opera following you with a camera and you asked them why they killed your family. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's incredible that I actually was able to with the help of John get on to the base in Kandahar so they had been living in Kandahar city. Some buildings around them were bombed and they had been Taliban occupied or they thought they were and they decided to go to their farmhouse about 60 miles north of Kandahar just to get away from it all. And that's where it happened. So yes, after we discovered that we discovered them in Pakistan because they had left Afghanistan after that.

26:16And then we went to the side of the bombing and discovered that. And then we you know just like big gaping holes in the ground and a man cleaning up from the village, you know, just a very distraught scary scene. And then we went to the base in Kandahar and I didn't want to go to the base in Kandahar after seeing all of that but John Albert said, you know, this is your chance to ask questions. And of course I wanted to know what happened and how this happened. So I did. And and when I went to the base, you know, I asked a question from a guy who was like a guy went to college with who was standing there saying, you know, like, oh, yeah, I don't know what happened to your family. I don't have any information. But here's an AC 130 gunship, which is probably the type of gunship that attacked your family. And you know, and I looked at him and I thought he's here because he's, you know, wanting to protect his country. He's a good guy.

27:23He's a good guy. He went to school with guys like this. Like how is, who do I blame? Like how did this happen? And that question of how that happened really was eating it me because I thought, why would they kill innocent people? Like I know I'm an American. Like I love Americans so much. I grew up in New York City. Like everyone's kind, compassionate. I mean, yeah, you have some crazy out there. But generally speaking, Americans are kind, compassionate, helpful. And that was what I could not reconcile. I was sure it had to have been some terrible mistake. And I thought as soon as this was understood that there would be some kind of resolution or help or apology coming to our family, because our family did not support al Qaeda. They did not support the Taliban. They were happy that the Taliban were gone. And that apology never came. And I guess that that, you know, just was too much to expect. But of course, through that process, I met the incredible human beings like thanks to you and your show Rita Lesar, who that was the first time that I met her. I had no idea what to expect on your show. I had just come back.

28:39I was come back. Wasn't shocked. And I thought she might attack me. Like I was, I thought she might say to me something along lines of what some reporters had been saying to me, like, how do we know what your family was up to? And how can you know, so I was not prepared for the kind of response that she gave me. And she lost her brother, Abe Salmano, what's that day? Yes. And he was a hero that stayed there. And so, and she was very, very thoughtful about the fact that innocent people were in Afghanistan should not suffer. And she's an incredible human being. But then the other incredible human beings. I met like Medea Benjamin, Colleen Kelly, Kelly Campbell. Like these were people that even though they had their own grief to deal with, they said, wait a minute, we don't want other people to go through this. And they thought that it would be a good idea to try to help these people, which was, you know, wonderful.

29:44But how are we going to help them? So that was when we lobbied the U.S. Congress to create the victims fund for innocent Afghan civilians. And Senator Leahy actually passed a bill to assist victims, which now that I think about it, given all the polarization and grief, it's incredible that we were able to actually get that through. But that was because people like Medea Benjamin and the 9-11 families were peaceful tomorrow's were knocking on doors a Congress at State Department and elsewhere saying we need to do something about this. And it's really like a very American story in that way, like civil society really engaging and saying like when we would go to some of these Congress people's offices, they would say, we'll get those terrorists. We're going to get them. And then, you know, people like Rita would say, yes, but we need to be careful not to kill innocent people. And finally, I assume that if you could talk about your assessment of where things stand now, your response, first of all, to the 2021 withdrawal of the U.S. and NATO troops and the situation today under the Taliban.

30:54Well, I wanted the war to end for a long time. I think we definitely stayed way too long. We empowered the wrong types of people. They were abusive and corrupt. We did not listen to the Afghan people's grievances. But I think one of the things we need to keep in mind, based on all that we went through in Afghanistan, is not to repeat the 1990s of turning our backs on the country. We need to engage with the Afghan people, support Afghan women and support civil society. The fact that Afghan girls are being denied secondary education and beyond is unprecedented in the whole world. And so, you know, it's completely wrong. And it's the right within Islam. And actually, all the Taliban we talked to agree with us. But the amir, because we went to Afghanistan, a group of us women, including Kelly Campbell and Medea Benjamin, went back after the Taliban takeover.

32:02And we talked to the Taliban, we talked to the Taliban, we talked to many other officials and said, why are you doing this? And they said to us both privately and publicly that we want the girls to study. And we want women to work. But the amir is not allowing it. He stopped it the day the girls were supposed to go to school. And we want them in trouble. And subsequently, all of them who say this get in trouble. And the amir is enforcing, you know, the people shouldn't talk about this. So we're in a pickle with that. So you found it a new organization. I want to thank you, Masoodah, for joining us in a moment. We're going to go to directly to Kabul. Masoodah Sultan, Afghan American women's rights activist, co-founder of a bot, Afghan women forward. Up we go to Kabul to speak with Yann Eglend of the Norwegian Refugee Council. And we'll look at the costs of war. And speak with Spencer Ackerman, his book, Rain of Terror, How the 9-11 Era Distabilized America and Produced Trump coming up.

33:19And it's war time. We lost the chance to stop the flow. So many millions of lives ago. And now we'll reap what we don't know. It's war time.

34:20War time here on Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org the warring peace report. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermy and Shay. We go now to Afghanistan where a deepening humanitarian crisis is being largely overlooked by the international community following the withdrawal of NATO troops in 2021 and the return of the Taliban. The crisis is most severe for women and girls whose basic rights to education, freedom of movement and access to services have been severely restricted over the last five years. Afghan women are banned from outdoor parks among other spaces and books written by women have been removed from libraries. Women venturing beyond the home must be accompanied by a male guardian and so-called morality laws curtail their rights to speak, sing or recite out loud in public. Nearly six million Afghan refugees who've been living in neighboring countries including Pakistan and Iran have returned to Afghanistan following mass deportations and have been met with very little support following the withdrawal of US troops. International aid dropped from $3.3 billion in 2022 to $1 billion last year.

35:27The US this year has given half a billion dollars for more we go to Kabul where we're joined by Jan Eglund, Secretary General of the region Refugee Council. This is fifth visit to Afghanistan since 2021. Jan Eglund, what have you found on the ground in Afghanistan right now as we speak to you from blocks from ground zero 25 years after the 9-11 attacks? Well, I've been these last days together with the poorest people on earth really and people who have especially then come back from Pakistan to Kandahar in the south of Afghanistan also here to Kabul and to elsewhere. These are people deported as you rightly said six million in three years is one of the biggest deportation processes on earth in this generation. And the world is not here. The international community is not really here to help them.

36:31There were some non-governmental organizations and UN partners on the ground but were so overstretched and underfunded. So these these women with children who who have been 30 years as refugees in in Pakistan come empty handed back they get 48 hours to leave. They dumped at the border and and and then they are desperate search of shelter of water of food of some protection. We're able to help some but we would like to help many more and that's why we're calling on all of those countries who promise to stand with the Afghan civilian population girls, women, families in particular. Don't forget your promises when you went for the door abruptly five years ago. Jan, could you talk about specifically the situation in rural areas as well as whether given these severe harsh and actually quite unfathomable restrictions on women, whether women are still allowed to do humanitarian work, provide social and health services to Iran women and children.

37:52Yeah, I mean the poverty the deprivation is of course particularly big in the in the countryside. I was in areas outside of of Kandahar and people are living under plastic sheeting and were longing for the home that we were now building to them. One woman I met a mother several other children crying when she told that she was she sold her 12 year old daughter as a child bright for $600. I mean, I mean, if she loved this girl and she had to sell it to get food for the rest of the family. The rights of of Afghan women have been have been destroyed really. There is no doubt about it. There is 100 e-tics from the Supreme Leader, the Emir, curtailing right to work, right to education and freedom of movement.

39:03Of those the right to education is possibly the worst because after sixth grade primary school girls cannot get further education, which means we will not have female new female teachers, the doctors nurses midwives in and in some time from now. That's why I went to Kandahar and met the Taliban leadership. That's why I met the Taliban leadership here in Kabul to confront them with this factor saying to them, you promised us there would be education. You said it would just take time for you to organize it in the Islamic and Afghan fashion. It's five years now. And you cannot have an economy which only involves half of the population. Where are the other diplomats, where are the other countries that should come here and fight with us for the women of Afghanistan? They were too alone on the ground here in Afghanistan now.

40:05Correct something. I said that the US had given half a billion dollars to the Taliban this year. But in your news release, you said 500 million US dollars have been provided for the humanitarian response. That's not necessarily from the United States, right? Now there is zero funding from the United States of America to humanitarian work that I know of here in Afghanistan this year at all. And I remember what Barbara Bush promised there when she was the first lady, when what one politician after that from both parties promised they said we will stand with the women and girls of Afghanistan. Well, I don't see that here because the reason we have to lay off female aid workers, female teachers teaching primary school girls is because of lack of funding.

41:08It's not because of the Taliban. We have been able to negotiate a return of all of our female colleagues, aid workers, they work as Afghan women to Afghan women in all of the provinces where we operate. Neon, you mentioned this extraordinary mass deportation campaign from Pakistan and Iran, six million refugees in total. If you could say a little bit more where are they and how are they being assimilated back into Iran society, many of whom were in both Iran and Afghanistan with refugee status, some of whom had asylum status, the others who had gained effective access to the Afghan women. Who had gained effectively citizenship. Yeah, they had all sorts of rights, which is natural because they had been there for decades both in Iran and in Pakistan and I met these refugee communities.

42:12Of course, again, the rest of the world did not help Iran and Pakistan that much in hosting all of these refugees. There is a lot of talk in the United States and in Europe, even more in Europe, that, oh, we have two and many Afghans, we have to say we have to get them back and so on. There's a very small number of Afghans in North America and in Europe compared to Pakistan and Iran. So in the last three years, the Pakistan Iran said we will not anymore shoulder this on our own, we will send people back. So they give one day, two days, three days notice and then they come and by force take people and in many cases, it's only the women and children they find the grandparents, the father of the household can maybe out the searching for work or being in the market or being traveling.

43:18Then they are dumped at the border by Pakistan, by Iran on the other side and there we are some humanitarian groups trying to help them and there is then some transport to the places where they want to go and then they often helped to distant relatives that are too poor to really be able to open up. So they would be next to a relative's house but with no real shelter and there's where I found many of the families because we were already giving them some cash assistance and we will now give them shelter and water and sanitation. By the way, none of these girls that women that are met, we've been in Pakistan 30, 40 years, had ever had education, ever and their children had not had education neither boys nor girls.

44:23So it's a crisis for human rights really, it's a crisis for humanity this. Jan, very quickly I just want to make one clarification neither Iran nor Pakistan granted citizenship to Iran refugees or the generations who were born in either of the two countries. Jan, I want to thank you so much for being with us Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council joining us from Kabul Afghanistan. Next, Spencer Akramen author of Rain of Terror, How the Nine-Elevenia Oranguero-Industabilized American Produced Trump Stay With Us. I started looking around, full light out of the dim, first thing I heard it made sense was the word, Muhammad peace be upon him.

45:39I should do. John Walker's Blues by Steve Aurole and our Democracy Now Studio. This is democracynowdemocracynow.org. I mean me goodman with Nermin Shae. As we continue to discuss the global legacy of the Nine-Eleven attacks, we turn now to look at the devastating impacts of the decades-long so-called war on terror. A series of wars launched in the name of those killed on September 11th, 2001. Just nine days after the Nine-Eleven attacks, President George W. Bush declared the beginning of a war that would come to define the next 25 years of war. This is President Bush speaking before a joint session of Congress on September 20th, 2001. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign. Unlike any other, we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success.

46:40We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. Oh, is it? President Bush declaring the start of the so-called war on terror, September 20th, 2001. We go now to Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize, a National Magazine, award-winning journalist and author of the book, Rain of Terror,

47:41How the 9-11-era destabilized America and produced Trump. And the Forever War's newsletter, his latest article for Zeteo, is headlined, How the War on Terror went global and backfired on the United States. Why don't you explain that, Spencer? Thank you, Amy. Good morning. Good morning, Nermeen. I really appreciate you having me on the show. The war on terror was always a construct to be waged, never quite to be ended, that involved a tremendous violent exertion of American power as a demonstration effect to, on the theory that it would ward off the next 9-11. A whole lot of regimes around the world, rising powers, looking for their own advantage, saw what the United States was constructing and realized they wanted that for themselves. Eventually, that would be Vladimir Putin rejecting US unipolar hegemony and deciding that much as the United States in Iraq wanted the ability to attack its adversaries before they had a chance to fight.

48:55So, to Russia would reserve that right for itself, we see that most recently in Ukraine. In China, they looked at the Muslims of their Xinjiang province and decided they wanted to construct the same sort of Panopticon and repressive apparatus of surveillance and re-education in their sense we didn't have that part here. But certainly the surveillance and the law enforcement repression of Muslims inside the United States. And in Israel, they looked at the United States as going on an open-ended war against what, certainly, subtextually, to very many, was on Islam and said to themselves, finally, the United States is going to act the way we seek to act against the Palestinians and the long legacy of that is on display in the genocide of the Palestinian people. And Spencer, you write in that same piece about going yourself to Israel in December 2001. If you could talk about what happened during that visit and what you were told by the people you spoke to.

50:01Indeed, in 2001, in December, I went on a junket by the American Jewish Committee for college student journalists like myself. What we heard from Israelis of a variety of different stripes was that, finally, the United States understands what Israel is experienced. And they didn't understand that they certainly didn't interpret that to us student journalists in any material sense emerging from any historical context of the dispossession and the land theft over generations of the Palestinian people. But instead, interpreted Israeli history as the manifestation of 9-11, that this had been a religious conflict that admitted of no material solution and accordingly had no diplomatic settlement. The implication being that much as the United States was seeing itself justified as waging an open-ended war against Islam so too the United States must support Israel in waging an open-ended conflict against Palestinians that were defined by often the Islamic faith of racing Palestinian Christian and other secular identities, but overwhelmingly a war not to be limited by American pressure.

51:18And Spencer, if you could talk about how 9-11, the effects of 9-11 continue to reverberate today. Talk about the election of Trump and how it's connected to 9-11 and what followed, as well as now another war of attrition in Iran. Most certainly, we saw beginning at the very outset of the war on terror. Our leaders told us to understand 9-11 as an assault of a foreign civilization, one that had nothing to do with the consequences of American extractive and exploitative foreign policy in the Muslim world or its support for Israel. It was given that interpretation, it gave that interpretation to us in order to not question what US foreign policy had been and what it was about to become. Then it was a disaster. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan became nightmares and they were easy for a demagogue to attribute to the weakness of American elites that sought to limit this war against what they had already said was a moroting, repatience and irrational foreign civil war against Iran.

52:28So, foreign civilization, a great deal of its believers, were already inside the United States and that would justify a campaign of repression inside the United States against them and against other immigrants. From this start, nativist strain in American politics said that immigration was the handmaiden of terrorism and that the institutions that sought to restrict that response to evicting those immigrants, campaigns of surveillance and deportation were essentially no better than the handmaiden of terrorism themselves, all of which contributed a great deal. It was almost like a hollowing out of American institutional capacity to inhibit nativism that opened the door to people like Donald Trump and with all of the Trump and Maga movements rhetoric of violence, it was, I would argue, inevitable that while they postured themselves as critics of the war on terror, they would simply wage it more violently and more expansively.

53:32That's exactly what we're seeing in Iran right now and it's what we're seeing on our streets with ICE, a creation of 9-11 that is acting essentially like a death squad. And in the last 20 seconds, President Trump now says at his Trump illusion midterm national convention in Dallas that the war will end right after the midterm elections, your final comment, Spencer Ockerman. Over the 25 years of the war on terror, various presidents have portrayed to the United States like they can control the consequences of the overwhelming violence they have unleashed. They've never been able to do so, they won't be able to do so now. Spencer Ockerman Pulitzer Prize winning National Magazine Award winning reporter author of Rain of Terror. Have the 9-11-year-old destabilized America and produced Trump, also author of Forever Wars newsletter speaking to us from Brooklyn, New York. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, I'm Amy Goodman with Nermine Shea.

54:33We end today's show with a look at the human, budgetary and environmental costs of these Forever Wars, according to the latest numbers from the non-partisan costs of war project at Brown University. Close to 1 million people were killed due to war violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and beyond. At least half of them are estimated to be civilians. The indirect death toll from these wars is far higher between 3.6 and 3.8 million people. In terms of budget costs, the U.S. federal government has spent more than $8 trillion on the post 9-11 wars through 20-21. For more, we're joined by Nita Crawford, the co-founder of the Costs of War project in these last few minutes that we have lay out the costs of war as we are here today on this 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Well, you've already touched on the direct death, the killing that results when bombs and bullets and fire are rained down on people and the soldiers who are fighting for the United States and its allies die.

55:42But there's the indirect death, the consequences of the destruction of infrastructure, which can be two or three times the number of people who are injured. This is because there's no longer hospitals or healthcare available to people because food production has been disrupted. So the harm to bodies is substantial. The second harm, which Spencer Ackerman discussed briefly, was the harm to U.S. democracy. There's decreased congressional and judicial oversight of the executive, increased executive power. There's been a decline in the rule of law. The United States wage preventive war in Iraq. That's a real consequence which has led to more easily waging war in Iran. So there's the human toll, the political consequences, and the environmental consequences are devastating because not only did the United States increase its use of force immediately after the attack on Afghanistan began.

56:56The United States military has increased its use of force even after those wars ended. The United States has a global military presence, more than 750 bases around the world. And its presence has caused environmental harm because of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the world's largest petroleum user, which is the Department of Defense. So it's human, political, and now just to conclude with the economic costs which are increased debt to the United States increased risk spending, but also because these wars were not paid for through taxes like previous wars, they were paid for by borrowing the United States debt has grown. And the interest to pay the debt will be coming out of the treasury for many years to come. So the consequences are all around us.

58:02I want to thank you so much for being with us, Nita Crawford, co-founder of the Coss of War Project, which we will link to. That does it for our show tomorrow on September 11th. We'll be joined by Jamil Jaffa and Asmab Khan, who have been running an event the Forever War and the First Amendment, a symposium on how the war on terror has shaped the freedoms of speech and the press. I'll be speaking on September 17th after the screening of Steel the Story, please about Democracy Now in Bayshore, New York. Can't wait to go home to see my friends at Bayshore High School. Then on September 22nd, we'll be at the IFC for the screening of the film with T. Alesson and Carl Diel. That does it for our show. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermine Shake for another edition of Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, The War and Peace Report.