Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-09-10 Thursday

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Democracy Now! Thursday, September 10, 2026

New York, this is Democracy Now. Every nation and every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. When the world trip like many Americans, Soutis al-Sultan, and I live here in New York City, I'm also an Afghan. I was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan. 25 years ago, President George W. Bush made the case for war days after the September, 11th attacks. Within 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 Massouda Sultan. She lost 19 members of her family when the U.S. military bombed their house. Then to Kabul, to speak with Janeglund of the Norwegian Refugee Council. We'll also look at the cost of war and speak to journalists Spencer Ackerman, his book, Reign of Terror, how the 9-11 era destabilized America and produced Trump. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, 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 in retaliation for U.S. attacks earlier in the week 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 election because they can't hold out any longer.

They're desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice, weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon. 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 in extra spending. Meanwhile, 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-Bakhthuthi movement have seized a strategic port city on the Red Sea after routing government forces and a lightning offensive.

The city of Mokha is less than 50 miles from the Bob Alman Dhab Strait, a critical choke point that typically sees about 12 percent of global maritime trade pass through it. The UN warns, 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 level since 2007, despite extraordinary efforts by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, to intervene in bond markets. On Wednesday, Bessent announced the Treasury would triple a planned buyback of certain U.S. bonds to $6 billion. That 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. Iran. Meanwhile, Norway's vast sovereign wealth fund has proposed cutting its investment in U.S. treasury

holdings by nearly $80 billion. The Pentagon's release video showing what it says is another strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. According to U.S. Southern Command, Wednesday's 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 raided an alleged floating refueling station for narco-traffickers in the Eastern Pacific, abducting the crew and turning them over to Ecuadoran 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 extrajudicial killings and murder.

On Wednesday, Secretary's State Marco Rubio defended the attacks during a visit to Ecuador. We still blow up shifts. No, I know, but they're empty now. Well, again, it depends. Every target is selected. Obviously, it goes through all the lawyers at the Department of War, but it's also, 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 in 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 approach. 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.

I 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 Federman made a surprise appearance at this midterm Republican convention. In a pre-recorded video, Federman 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 common sense Democrat. I'm always going to stand with America. I'm always going to reject the extremes in 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 we'll work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life right here in the Steel Valley. Senator Federman 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 en masse 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 and counted all U.S. residents, regardless of their immigration status.

If implemented, the changes would cause regions with larger immigrant populations to lose, to lose federal funding and congressional seats. Those areas are much more likely to vote for Democrats. Democratic New York Attorney General, Letitia James, is vowed to challenge the proposed regulation in court, saying, quote, the Constitution is clear. Every 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 his 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 for more than a million people from 13 countries. The Guardian reports federal immigration authorities. 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 in ICE custody to have a medical intervention forced upon them against their will. He's currently detained at the Montgomery Ice Processing Center or privately run jail near Houston. Human rights groups have denounced the practice of force feeding in detention. facilities as a form of torture. In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike flattened a home in the Beitlaha area on Thursday, killing a Palestinian couple in their two daughters while leaving others wounded or missing under the rubble. Palestinian sources identified the victims as

Mormon-Rafman Ahmed, his wife, Hanin Musa, Farah Salah, and their daughters, 12-year-old Lana and 8-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 in an Israeli raid on the town of O'Warta, south of Nablus, 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 Burkak. Soldiers reportedly stormed the town for six hours, raiding homes and arresting their owners before withdrawing.

In Lebanon, Israeli strikes a 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 inside 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 communicato, 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 lost to. for justice in Palestine, filed a Freedom of Information Law request, which New York City's public university system denied. According 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, Elbit Systems, and private prison companies geo-group and core civic. CUNY also had holdings in Israeli banks that provide financial support for illegal settlements and the occupied West Bank in East Jerusalem. This is Hedika Malik, a CUNY students 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. And 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. In 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.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Narmine Sheikh. Welcome to our listeners 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 lost her brother, Abe Zalmanovits, at the World Trade Center, and Afghan-American New Yorker, Masuda Sultan, who family in Afghanistan. This 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 in there 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, you know, you know, you know, volunteered for a few hours, but my immediate reaction was anger and shock. But that same day, I sensed that something like this was not going to go and punished. 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, you know, going to do something about that. And guess what, Osama's in Afghanistan. And that day, I started making phone calls. 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, you know, you're being too cautious. And as, you know, as time and the events sort of unfolded, that's exactly what happened. That's Afghan-American New Yorker Masuda Sultan talking to us about her experience of 9-11, just a few months after the attacks.

In December of 2001, Masuda Sultan traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to visit her family. She was accompanied by John Alpert and Tammy Alpert of downtown community television, who made a film about her journey called Afghanistan from ground zero to ground zero. Here's an excerpt. We're on our way to my cousin's house. They moved to Kuwaita after being hit by U.S. bomb. I don't know what we'll find there. Sala'a al-a-a-a-un-a-hized.

They were living near government buildings in Kandahar with Taliban close by, and they figured that the U.S. 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. This couple, they had four kids. There's only one mother-in-law left out of the whole family. So they need you? Yes. All of these children were there running from the bullets. And it's her leg 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 other sister over there. It was 19 people in total. His daughter died? His daughter-in-law. His brother, his nephew, one of his cousins, another cousin. He says 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.

is it, he says that when they realized what had happened, when 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 as their family shot on the floor. An excerpt from John and Tommy Alpert's Afghanistan from ground zero to ground zero, a 2002 film about Afghan American Masuda Sultan's journey to Afghanistan 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 al-Qaeda fighters. They were simple Afghans trying to stay safe in their own country. The events of September 11th really made me angry. But seeing these people and what they went through make me angry as well. You know, they say that in war, they say that you have to break a couple of eggs in order to make an omelette. But when those eggs are your family, what can you do?

Rita Lassar broke down listening to Masuda Sultan speaking. And then she herself, Rita, talked about her brother, Abe Salmanowitz. 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. And 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 they had 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. And 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 you survive, just hearing about yours.

But we're the same people. That's Rita Lassar, 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. She died at the age of 85 in 2017. September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrow's will be holding a vigil today at Union Square at 5.5.5.5.5.5. 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 Abad, 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 U.S. 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, you know, as a New Yorker, the shock and the horror and all of that and the thoughts about what would happen to us, knowing that it probably was Osama Bidla. And I had that feeling right at the beginning.

You know, 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. what would happen if it was indeed Osama bin Laden, 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 01 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 it was to belong in a place where your parents were from and they spoke the same language and the love that I received. And 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 then having that unfold of hearing that whole tragedy that happened to our family. And then coming back, not knowing. And just 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 U.S. military base there, John Tami Alpert, following you with a camera, and you asked them why they killed your family? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, 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, And then we went to the site 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 Alpert 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 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. Oh, but here's an AC130 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. He, I 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 at 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 crazies out there. But generally speaking, Americans are kind, compassionate, helpful people. 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 in your show, Rita Lassar, 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, was in shock. And I thought she might attack me. Like, 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, you know, so I was not prepared for the kind of response that she gave me. Because she lost her brother, Abe Zalmanowitz, 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, but 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 for peaceful tomorrows 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, Masuda, 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. Well, 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 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. Everybody knows that it's completely wrong. and it's the right within Islam. And actually, all the Taliban we talked to agree with us. But the Emir, because we went to Afghanistan, a group of us women, including Kelly Campbell and Medea Benjamin, went back after the Taliban takeover and wanted to connect with the women there. We talked to the education ministry of 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 Emir is not allowing it. He stopped it the day the girls were supposed to go to school. And that got them in trouble. And subsequently, all of them who say this get in trouble. And the emir is enforcing, you know, that people shouldn't talk about this.

So we're in a pickle with that. So you founded a new organization. I want to thank you, Masuda, for joining us. In a moment, we're going to go directly to Kabul, Masuda Sultan, Afghan American women's rights activist, co-founder of Abad, Afghan women forward. Coming up, we go to Kabul to speak with Jan Egland of the Norwegian Refugee Council,

and we'll look at the costs of war and speak with Spencer Ackerman, his book, Reign of Terror, how the 9-11 era destabilized America and produced Trump. Coming up. In a garden that you sowed with blood, because now our streets will own the flood,

it's wartime. We lost a chance to stop the flow so many millions of lives ago, and now we'll reap what we don't know. War time here on Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Nirmin-Shea. 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 have 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 U.S. troops, international aid dropped from $3.3 billion in 2022 to $1 billion last year. The U.S. this year has given half a billion dollars. For more, we go to Kabul, where we're joined by Jan Eglon, Secretary General of Norwegian Refugee Council.

This is his 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, 6 million in three. three years. It's 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. There were some non-governmental

organizations and UN partners on the ground, but were so overstretched and underfunded. So these these women with children who have been 30 years as refugees in in Pakistan come empty-handed back. They get 40 hours to leave. They dumped at the border. And then they are in 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 promised 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 or, you're going to,

harsh and actually quite unfathomable restrictions on women, whether women are still allowed to do humanitarian work, provide social and health services to Afghan women and children? I mean, the poverty, the deprivation is, of course, particularly big in the, in the countryside. I was in areas outside of Kandahar, and people are living under plastic sheds. cheating and were longing for the home that we were now building to them. One woman I met, a mother, several other children, cried when she told that she sold her 12-year-old daughter as a child bride for $600. I mean, she loved this girl and she had to sell it to get food.

for the rest of the family. The rights of Afghan women have been destroyed, really. There is no doubt about it. There is 100 edicts from the Supreme Leader, the Emir curtailing right to work, right to education, and freedom of movement. Of 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, doctors, nurses, midwives in some time from now. That's why I went to Kanda how I 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? We're too alone on the ground here in Afghanistan now. I want to correct something I said, Jan Eglund. I said that the U.S. had given half a billion dollars to the Taliban this year.

But in your news release, you said 500 million U.S. dollars have been provided for the humanitarian response. That's not necessarily from the United States, right? 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, you know, I remember what Barbara Bush promised there when she was the first lady, when what one politician after the other 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.

It's not because of the Taliban. We have been able to negotiate a return of all of our female colleagues, eight workers. They work as Afghan women to Afghan women in all of the provinces where we operate. Nyan, 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 Afghan society, many of whom were in both Iran and Afghanistan with refugee status,

some of whom had asylum status, the others, 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. Of 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 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, Pakistan and 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 may be out searching for work or being in the market or being traveling. So then 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 are often helped to distant relatives that are too poor to really be able to absorb them. 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, who have been in Pakistan 30, 40 years, had ever had education, ever. And their children had not had education,

neither boys, no girls. So it's a crassad. 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 Afghan refugees or the generations who were born in either of the two countries. No. Yeah, temporary status. I want to thank you so much for being with us, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council,

joining us from Kabul Afghanistan. Up next, Spencer Ackerman, author of Rain, of terror, how the 9-11-year-a-Distabilized America and produced Trump. Stay with us. Just an American boy, he's don't empty. I see in all them kids and so the pipe pads. None of them look like me. I started looking around. He censors the word with Muhammad peace be upon him. John Walker's Blues by Steve Earl in our Democracy Now studio.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nerman Scheher. As we continue to discuss the global legacy of the 9-11 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 11, 2001. Just nine days after the 9-11 attacks, President George W. Bush declared the beginning of a war that would come to define the next 25 years of foreign policy. This is President Bush speaking before a judge. 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.

We 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. President Bush declaring the start of the so-called War on Terror, September 20, 2001.

We go now to Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning journalist and author of the book, Reign of Terror, how the 9-11 era destabilized America and produced Trump, and the Forever Wars newsletter, his latest article for Zateo 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, Nourmeen. 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 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 U.S. 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, you know, allegedly attack them, so too 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. Indeed. 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 in 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, erasing Palestinian Christian and other secular identities, but overwhelmingly a war not to be limited by American pressure. And 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 citizen. 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, gave that interpretation to us in order to not question what U.S. 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 marauding, rapacious,

and irrational 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 handmaid 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 handmaidens 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 in MAGA movement's 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. That'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 will lose a midterm national convention in Dallas that the war will end right after the midterm elections. Your final comment, Spencer Ackerman. 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 Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize winning National Magazine Award winning, report. author of reign of terror, how the 9-11 era's 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 Nirmine Sheikh. We 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 nonpartisan Costs of War Project at Brown University, close to one 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 2021. 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 the war. 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, but 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. And this is because there's no longer hospitals or health care available to people because food has been, production has been disrupted. So the harm to bodies is substantial. A 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 waged 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. 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, the 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. 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. I want to thank you so much for being with us, Nita Crawford, co-founder of the Costs of War Project, which we will link to. That does it for our show. Tomorrow on September

11th, will be joined by Jameel Jaffer and Asma 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. I 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 Tia Lesson and Carl Deal. That does it for our show. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermine Sheik for another edition of Democracy Now, DemocracyNow. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.