09/06/21 09/06/21 democracy now! test [captioning made possible ■ amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> the people would like to know where this roadmap leads because people are thirsty for peace. amy: in the special broadcast we look at the crisis in afghanistan with bilal sarwary, an afghan journalist who was based in kabul and reported on afghanistan for 20 years before he fled for hifamily's safety after the taliban seized power. plus, we will speak to the pulitzer prize

winning reporter spencer ackerman about how the u.s. could have ended the war in afghanistan two decades ago when the taliban offered to surrender and hand over osama bin laden. >> it was the bush administration, the u.s., that said such a deal was unacceptable, not to the afghans, but to the united states, that now took it on itself as it has so often in so many parts of the world, to tell afghans the way their country was about to be. amy: we will speak to spencer ackerman about his new book "reign of terror: how the 9/11 era destabilized america and produced trump." all that and more coming up. ■ this is democracy now!. democracynow.org. the war and peace report. i am amy goodman. today, in this special broadcast, we begin with the longtime afghan journalist bilal sarwary.

we first spoke to bilal on august 18th, three days after the taliban seized control of afghanistan after the u.s.-backed afghan president ashraf ghani fled the country. i began by asking bilal about whether he was surprised the taliban seized power before u.s. troops withdrew from afghanistan. >> i have spoken to government officials. some of them were my friends. the next morning i was heading toward those offices when i heard presidential palace employees were told to leave. the presidential protection service, the afghanistan equivalent of the secret service at the time, were taking up positions. there was a lot of confusion. in a matter of 30 minutes or so, we found out that then-president

was supposed to go to the ministry of defense to have a meeting within a short drive but instead he had told his secret service detail he would want to fly there. the minister of defense was waiting, the army chief of staff was waiting. the helicopters changed direction and they were having toward the international airport heading toward the international airport. once that fact was revealed, things crumbled just as they did when mass surrenders were negotiated. i think it is a taliban strategy. they offered this surrender deal. this was the work of months, if not years.

it was surreal in many ways. i had started my career in 2001 when the americans were bombing the taliban. i was a translator. i saw the fall of afghanistan. it was unbelievable to see how the tables turned. there was panic and fear. my family was at this time here. i'm a father to a baby girl. i was not exempted from the panic and fear. would there be fighting? bloodshed? what would the taliban do? there was a vacuum created, some looting and harassment and irregularities of the citizens of afghanistan. for me, it was almost like in no time this happened. i just couldn't believe it.

amy: as we begin to wrap up, you wrote a piece for the tegraph. you said "it has broken me from within." you write "i became a father recently because my own family and relatives saw so much heartbreak these past few years. i pray that if god gave me a baby girl i would name her "peace" and i did that thinking my daughter might grow up and a normal country. you are trying to leave right now. how do you go about that? have you thought about staying? do you think you could possibly be safe in kabul, in afghanistan? >> i would love to tell the story to the people of afghanistan. everything that is happening including the loss of friends, inside and outside the government --

i have friendships within the taliban. i have a classmate and we went different ways. it left me thinking, what would make me think i am doing something better? over the years i have been having this conversation with myself and i commit myself to telling the story of this country to the world, not only the news side. i created a hashtag where i showed people the other side, the beautiful natural beauty, what afghanistan could offer in the future if tourism was to come back here. to be honest with you, i would love to be here, like the rest of my colleagues and be able to tell the world our story. for 20 years, this country did not have a generation of reporters. we owe the international colleagues,

where we started working with translators 20 years ago and they helped us get where we are. it is very important for the world to have a credible media where different voices can be heard. we live in a world where we are interconnected. there is no country in the rest of the world -- humanity is something that gives me hope. people care about any country and anyone, especially when you look at the activists on social media and such platforms. i hope i am able and that my daughter is able to one day go to school here. there are things that are beyond my control, that people like myself and my colleagues, simply are powerless. we cannot do that. i hope this generation of leaders,

both the taliban and former officials and politicians can leave a legacy where we walk away from historical and political pasts where governments came with tanks and bullets. for this, i think the people of afghanistan, have faced a lot of sacrifices. i will not go into the mistakes and failures and corruption. i will let history judge that. the people in this country, the lives, when i look back, you know, blood literally flowing. people gave their lives for education or health. ordinary people. dedicated land to make sure his daughter could go to school. those are the type of things i hope one day will give us that peace. that has remained extremely elusive in our lives.

amy: afghan journalist bilal sarwary speaking on august 18th, just three days after the taliban seized control of afghanistan. at the time, bilal was hoping to stay in his country but just days later he and his family boarded a flight to doha. he posted a message on twitter reading "the day i leave my country, my city, my kabul. a massacre of my dreams and aspirations. a tragic day in my life." on august 25, a ek after our first conversation bilal joined us again, this time from doha. i asked him to talk about his decision to leave afghanistan. >> extremely painful decision. all of a sudden i had to leave my office, which was next door to my home without being able to tell my sisters or family members where we're going. i took my wife, my baby daughter with me.

we were hiding for a couple nights and we headed toward the international airport. since i know the city so well, it is my hometown, it is my city, it is where i grew up, i felt like nowhere was safe for me. as the taliban fighters and certain members of factions continued to knock on doors -- i don't know why they were doing that, what exactly they wanted and why did the taliban political leadership failed to prevent such searches, which are widespread across many parts of the city? the only thing i could really leave was a pair of clothes. only two weeks ago, i had gone to the northern part of kabul city, speaking people who were forced in that province and in that moment, i was talking to them.

i immediately went back to the 1990's when i was a kid and we were forced to leave kabul because of theighting. i would never have thought two weeks later on it uld be my fate as well. the fact i could only pick up my own computer and a couple iphones and charges and a pair of clothes and not knowing if we would make it to the airport and outside afghanistan was i think, a very very painful period of time for my family sake and my daughter's sake. once i was on my plane, 150 people evacuating on that flight, i could see everything afghanistan was over the last 20 years. i saw the country's most popular tv presenter. i saw the most famous woman who started every warning --

every morning on the most popular show. my wife recognized her. i could not immediately because she was covering her face. you talked about burials of dreams, as we spent the next 12 hours altogether. a lot of these are people i know. there was an artist, he was known as the outlawed. he was painting a lot of these messages on these walls and streets of kabul. he was there. no matter what i did to not think about it, i thought, this is the tsunami. this is afghanistan going down the drain in a matter of seconds. some people were crying. some were quiet. others simply did not want to talk. that literally summed it up for me.

when i first arrived at the military airport, it really had a very very negative impact on me because it was that location over the years i traveled to across the country with officials covering their operations. coming back to it knowing nothing exists anymore, afghanistan's institutions, national security force, air force, all crumbled also hit me hard. amy: in your article for the bbc, you write about the fall of the taliban after the u.s. invasion in the fall, 2001. you say "i saw general willingness among the rank-and-file to lay down arms and resume their lives but the americans didn't want that. from my reporting, it seemed to me their motivation was revenge after 9/11."

we are coming up on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. can you talk about the moments lost when you actually had the secretary of defense under bush saying no to the taliban saying they would surrender if omar could remain living in dignity and even the taliban saying they would turn over before this, osama bin laden? >> in hindsight, when the taliban government was toppled by the americans at that time, there fighters and most of their mid-level commanders did go back to rural afghanistan. they wanted to start their normal lives. they were jailed and killed, mostly at the hands of warlords who were allies back then with the americans.

there was a lot of family politics, tribal and clan rivalries. people wanted to settle old scores. or people simply wanted to lie to the americans so they could get something back in return. those mistakes would cost afghanistan immensely. it is also through the americans shutting down the door early on negotiations, refusing the president's request for back channel talks. we know there was a lot of levers and communications at the highest levels of the taliban leadership. the other mistake was also the fact the leadership went back to pakistan, where they got help from the pakistan intelligence services and army, institutnal support, somethinthat has been well documented.

on the ground, the afghan government failed to curb corruption and injustice or provide basic services. the afghan government was seen as a milking cow, you know, among these various powerful figures where government positions were handed over as trophies. when you think about that and the u.s. decision at the time to invade iraq, the hijacking of resources, i think all of those mistakes, all of those policies of the time contributed to the bigger problem. i would also say the taliban, over the years, had this feeling, this very prevalent feeling among the leaders and commanders that they can win militarily, when they found out the americans were withdrawing, the announcement in the absence of a piece process

or cease-fire, it was just a matter of time when the taliban would take over. no one thought this quick. i also think a 9/11 style commission report must be launched to find out what led to the crumbling of state institutions in afghanistan to the billions of dollars worth of sensitive military equipment the taliban now control. this is taxpayers money from many of these countries invested. i would also cite a personal example. when i lived in a different part of kabul, my next-door neighbor appeared as a neighbor. we had a good relationship with them. we were on friendly terms. after the fall of kabul, it was clear to us that was the taliban intelligence operations, in a street that was home to special forces commanders, former interior minister, the head of the defense committee and many intelligence chiefs across many provinces.

you're talking about a massive intelligence failure that should go back to a few years on the taliban were able to recruit university students who had a job at the central part of kabul. i knew a guard and a bank employee over the years, would going talk to them. the fact the taliban were able to recruit, right into the heart of the afghan capital, right under the es of the afghan intelligence service, i think also shows you that this is a massive process of failures, the responsibility of which, with the afghan government, the institutions and leadership and how could they have failed? the people of afghanistan on so many levels?

amy: afghan journalist bilal sarwary speaking from doha after fleeing kabul. to see our full interview with bilal, visit democracynow.org. when we come back, the pulitzer prize-winning journalist spencer ackerman, author of "reign of terror: how the 9/11 era destabilized america and produced trump." ■ >> ■ war, what is it good for ■ ■ absolutely nothing ■ ■ war, what is it good for ■ >> ■ absolutely nothing ■ war, what is it good for ■

■ listen to me, war i despise ■ ■ innocent lives, when they go to fight and lose their lives ■ ■ war, good god y'all ■ war, lord, what is it good for ■ ■ absolutely nothing ■ amy: war by edwin starr. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org. the war and peace report. i am amy goodman. we turn now to look at the roots of what became america's longest war. the u.s. invadedfghanistan october 7, 2001, less than a month after the al-qaeda attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon. within days of the u.s. bombing of afghanistan, the taliban offered to hand over al-qaeda leader osama bin laden,

but the bush administration rejected any negotiations with the taliban. this is bush's press secretary, ari fleischer, responding to a question in october, 2001. >> would you go so far as to say no matter what the taliban might say at this point --? are you ignoring whatever they may say? >> the president could not have made it clear when he said there would be no negotiations. so what they say is not as important as what they do. it is time for them to act. it has been time for them to act. amy: in december of 2001, just a month or two later, the taliban offered to surrender control of kandahar, if its leader, mullah mohammed omar, would be allowed to, quote, "live in dignity" in opposition custody. u.s. defense secretary donald rumsfeld rejected the offer. >> if you are asking wooden arrangement with omar,

where he could "live in dignity" in someplace in afghanistan be consistent with what i have said, the answer is no, it would not have been consistent with what i have said. amy: that's donald rumsfeld speaking december 6, 2001. the u.s. war in afghanistan would continue for almost 20 more years. according to the costs of war project, the u.s. has spent over $2.2 trillion in afghanistan and pakistan. by one count, at least 71,000 afghan and pakistani civilians have died in the fighting. afghanistan is now facing a massive manitarian crisis, and the taliban is back in power. we turn now to pulitzer prize-winning reporter spencer ackerman, author of the new book "reign of terror: how the 9/11 era destabilized america and produced trump."

the book is based in part on his reporting from afghanistan, iraq and guantánamo. talk about this moment, as the u.s. began bombing afghanistan when the taliban said they would surrender and also give osama bin laden over. the u.s. rejected both. >> this was a central aspect of the war on terror and a foreshadowing of what its implications would be. once we accept the frame bush offered, the war on terror, we were then locked in a struggle not just against al-qaeda, the entity culpable for the 9/11 attacks, but a much broader struggle against an enemy that a president could redefine at will and leave in the popular imagination with something along the lines

of a civilizational challenge to america for t future, one in which america itself was in the balance. now, let's look, in particular, at that moment in kandahar. the united states' northern alliance allies had routed the taliban from kabul. the islamic emirate of afghanistan had fallen, after about five, six years in power, and they recognized, after a last stand, they tried to put on in kandahar didn't go the way they expected, that the end was near for them. and then they offered to hamid karzai, the u.s.'s appointed leader for a post-taliban afghanistan, that as long as mullah or could live in some kind of house arrest, basically not be killed, not be put up on trial, they were prepared to entertain negotiations

for what their role might be in a post-taliban afghanistan, basically, a political settlement at that point. karzai, for all his flaws that the united states would both contribute to and then criticize him for over the coming years, nevertheless knew afghan history and recognized that unless there was some kind of political future for the taliban, the taliban would opt for a violent future. and they had a proven capacity not just to wage an insurgency, but to triumph in one. and karzai took the deal. it was the bush administration, the united states, that said such a deal was unacceptable, not to the afghans, t unacceptable to the united states, that now took it on itself, as it has so often throughout its history in so many parts of the world, to tell afghans the way their country was about to be. and everything that happened since, the 20 years of war

since, has contributed on, if not quite a straight line, a kind of nausea-inducing glide path to the abject horror we're seeing at the kabul airport with people desperate to flee, desperate to, so desperate as to grab onto c-17 cargo planes and fall to their deaths. this is nothe alrnative to fighting in afghanistan, this is the result of fighting in afghanistan. amy: so, if you could take it back even farther, to the u.s.-backed mujahideen, to the u.s.-backed osama bin laden, and talk about what happened when the u.s. decided to fund the mujahideen in fighting against the soviet occupation of afghanistan, and then the mujahideen turning their, setting, literally, their gun sights,

their u.s. weapons, on the united states, and how the taliban came out of that? spencer: yeah, it's important, because, like, an objection to this is always going to be that we, you know, portrayed, like, the 1980s afghan mujahideen as the taliban. they weren't the taliban. they were the precursors of the taliban. what happened in the 1980s is the soviet union invaded afghanistan, and the united states saw an opportunity. it saw an opportunity to inflict upon the soviet union, its great geopolitical adversary, a defeat as humiliating and as psychologically devastating as the one the united states suffered in vietnam for its own imperial hubris. over the course of the next 10 years, the united states, the pakistani isi and the saudi intelligence services funded

and equipped islamic extremists, rebels who would come in from pakistan, among them, a figure who would become intimately familiar as taliban ally, gulbuddin hekmatyar, a particularly brutal person. and over the course of the 1980s, they inflicted tremendous damage on the soviets, made the occupation, which was a brutal occupation by the soviet union, ever more violent and ever more protracted, to the point where the soviets withdrew and, a couple years later, the regime the soviets installed collapsed, much as like we're seeing the one that the united states installed collapsed. the ensuing chaos and civil war was devastating for afghanistan. out of the ashes emerged the taliban, an extreme group, a group that, you know, used mechanisms of extreme suffering and repression on the long-suffering afghan people.

and something that the united states never recognized throughout this entire period was that it had destabilized afghanistan, not simply as a pawn of, not simply as a consequence of fighting the soviet union, but that was what the cost of fighting the soviet union was, that an entire country, millions of people, suffered tremendously, that they were treated as tools by the united states, that their aspirations, their desires for freedom, their desires for security ultimately didn't matter to the united states, much as they didn't matter to the soviet union. and in the chaos that resulted, the taliban took power. they sheltered osama bin laden. but they weren't the same thing as al-qaeda. and the united states, after 9/11, decided that there was no relevant distinction between al-qaeda,

between the taliban and between what it called "terrorist groups of global reach," which ultimately washes out to saying that while the spectable version of the bush administration's policies were already an extremely expansive conception of who could be targeted, moving from terror groups like al-qaeda to, ultimately, entire regimes, the deputy defense secretary, paul wolfowitz, spoke in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 about "ending states" but in the broader political, journalistic and then popular conception, the enemy could be all of islam, or it could be something just short of all of islam. and from there, it was an extremely short, rather immediate, transition to fearing american muslims, fearing your neighbors,

thinking your neighbors posed a threat to you -- not that this apparatus of war and repression posed a threat to you. amy: you know, spencer, one of the things that hasn't gotten reported very much is that as the taliban seized control in these last weeks of afghanistan, a key person that they executed he was imprisoned, and they executed him, was abu omar khorasani, the former head of the islamic state in south asia. the significance of this? spencer: yeah, this is an extreme complication that has come up in the lascouple yea of particularly u.s.-taliban negotiations, by which i mostly mean back-channel negotiations. i shouldn't say back channel. to be a little bit more specific, they weren't authorized before they were authorized.

it was somewhat of a freelance effort by a retired u.s. army colonel named chris kolenda and a retired u.s. ambassador to pakistan named robin raphel. what they discovered in their talks with taliban figures in doha was that the taliban were rather concerned about the rising presence of a so-called islamic state branch in afghanistan, what called itself, or the u.s. also called it, isis khorasan, or is khorasan. essentially, the taliban feared a kind of next generation of extremist entity insurgency using islamic justification inside afghanistan and with somewhat, i think it's fair to say, good reason, given the way that isis fought and displaced al-qaeda, the organization and entity that it emerged out of, as well. amy: and again, they killed him. they executed him, took him out of a prison in kabul

on that fil day, sunday, as they took control of the country. spencer ackerman, talk about the role the u.s. war and occupation, the brutality of the u.s. airstrikes, the torture at bagram, the night raids played in gaining new recruits for the taliban. spencer: the united states tends not to attribute its brutality to any of the circumstances that it comes to bemoan when they manifest in the world. and afghanistan is certainly a tragic example of that. the fact that, after 9/11, the united states, in its political and journalistic and intellectual elites, generally speaking, refused to accept that there was a direct and tragic and awful historic consequence of its destabilization of afghanistan in the 1980s,

to the degree that taliban facilitation of osama bin laden in the country helped the execution of the 9/11 plot, which, it's important to note, did not involve ghans and was not staged from afghanistan, nor was it even planned in afghanistan, it was far more planned in germany. nevertheless, that was an early foreboding of what we would see over the next 20 years, not just in afghanistan, but throughout the war on terror, a disconnection, an unwillingness to face that americ's violent and imperial actions breed their own next generation of enemies. that was on display once the united states went back into afghanistan. and throughout the afghanistan war, even during periods where counterinsurgency campaigns, at least on paper, paid lip service to the idea that protecting afghan lives and property and so forth

s going to ultimately be decise in the war, it never acted that way. it never acted as if what the point of the war was was the protection of afghan lives. it more often acted in such a way that it did not draw distinctions between afghan lives and afghan enemies. and amongst the major reasons for this is not necessarily like a specific decision to target afghan civilians, but an inability to understand the country, understand its dynamics and understand the rather complicated relationships, in many ways, between people who fight for the taliban and the taliban itself, or people who aid the taliban under threat to their own life or threat to their family, or simply seek to endure the war, as so many people throughout so many wars simply aspire to, simply by not taking action that harmed the taliban,

because they understood the consequences that could, that they could experience. over time, all of these things strengthened the taliban, made the taliban seem like, once again, a viable alternative to the united states. and then, on a different level, the united states's contribution and not just the united states alone's contribution to the misery in afghanistan came through the corruption that it always blamed on the afghans but was a significant driver of itself, so-called development experts. development aid and development money poured into afghanistan far beyond a consideration of what a devastated afghan economy could in fact absorb. and some of this money was very deliberately flooded in from the cia to pay o warlords to ensure that they would ultimately be responsive to american interests, which would often be violent interests,

which would often be things like, as the joint special operations command would perform throughout the afghanistan war, army special forces, in particular, throughout the afghanistan war, raids on people's houses suspected of being, aiding or facilitating the taliban, and again, the taliban, not even al-qaeda, not the thing that attacked the united states, certainly not the core of al-qaeda that plotted, planned and executed 9/11. the united states was now in extended war with a one-time harborer, ally of al-qaeda rather than the thing itself, responsible r all of afghanistan, but never acting responsibly toward the afghan people. amy: i want to go to january 2015. this is the obama years. two hostages, one american, one italian man were accidentally killed

by a u.s. drone strike along thafghan-paktani border. here's then-president obama later apologizing for the killings. president obama: this morning, i want to express our grief and condolences to the families of two hostages, one american, dr. warren weinstein, and an italian, giovanni lo porto, who were tragically killed in a u.s. counterterrorism operation. since 9/11, our counterterrorism efforts have prevented terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives, both here in america and around the world. and that determination to protect innocent life only makes the loss of these two men especial -- especially painful for all of us. amy: so, there you have president obama apologizing. spencer, you have spent a good amount of time in afghanistan. you were embedded there,

and then you also reported independently there. can you talk about the significance of this moment? spencer: this was a profound moment. this is the only time that the united states, particularly the president of the united states, has not only acknowledged drone strikes that killed civilians, but apologized for it. and the reason why it's such a significant moment in its singularity is both in the book and for an earlier series that i did for the guardian 2016, i interviewed people, pakistanis and yemenis principally, who were survivors of drone strikes or whose relatives were killed in drone strikes. and one of the stories i tell in "reign of terror" is from a young pakistani man named faheem qureshi. faheem qureshi was 13 years old when obama launched his first drone strike.

and it blew up faheem's compound, where he lived with his family. and they were gathering for a celebration of one of his relatives who had just returned from a successful business trip to the united arab emirates. forty days later, faheem woke from his coma. he had burns over most of his body. he was missing an eye. and he had learned that most of his family's breadwinners had been killed in the strike, so that when he left the hospital, his responsibilities would immediately be providing for his family, however it was that his mangled body would perform. and i talked to him about the difficulties he experienced throughout the, you know, next, at that point, about seven years. and among the things he discussed was that he had tried, through pakistani authorities and through the u.s. embassy, to get some kind of acknowledgment that what had happened to him had in fact happened,

and that it didn't just happen as an act of god, it happened as an act by the united states of america. and none of that ever came. what did come was a supply of blood money, essentially, a payoff essentially to say, like, "ok, this is what will count for restitution, and your account is settled, and you're not going to get any public acknowledent, let alone an apology." and i kept heang, when i interviewed people, not just faheem, but other people whose lives were changed irrevocably by drone strikes about how obama had apologized when he had killed white people, and never when he had killed people like them, never when he had killed their loved ones, never when the consequences of his actions had left someone maimed, had left someone in a position where he had to give up his dream of being a chemist and work however he could in the hope that,

as he had put it to me, some of his younger cousins and his brothers would be able to live happy and prosperous lives. and i asked him, "what do you think of barack obama?" and he said, "if there's a list of tyrants somewhere, barack obama's name is on it because of his drone strikes." amy: spencer ackerman, we're going to break and then come back. spencer is author of reign of terror: how the 9/11 era destabilized america and produced trump. he's a national security reporter who publishes the forever wars newsletter. ■ >> ■ they'll never come down ■ they're not happy unless, like never before ■ ■

amy: generals and majors. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we're spending the hour with spencer ackerman, the pulitzer prize-winning national security reporter, author of reign of terror: how the 9/11 era destabilized america and produced trump. spencer, you begin your book, with the prologue, with timothy mcveigh visiting the far-right paramilitary compound in elohim city, oklahoma, before what you call, the prologue's chapter heading, "the worst terrorist attack in american history." talk about the connection you see between the rise of right-wing extremism in the united states and the so-called war on terror. spencer: i thought it was extremely important to see the war on terror in its fullness,

in its totality, and only then can we understand its implications. and i think the only way to really do that is to look at who re the exceptions to the war on terror, who the war on terror didn't target, despite fundamentally similar actions. and there we can understand not just what the war on terror is, but its relationship to american history, which shapes it so deeply. and so, i also wanted to kind of start with a journalistic cliché, where the reporter kind of zoologically takes a reader through this unfamiliar and scary world of violence committed by fanatical people who are training with heavy weapons and talk about committing mass atrocity for a sick and supposedly divinely inspired religion. but i wanted those people to be white.

i wanted the reader to see how similar these actions were, how similar some of the motivations were, how similar some of the justifications were. but we never treated them like that. the whole purpose of the phrase "war on terror" was a kind of social compromise amongst respectable elites in order to not say the thing that they were in fact building, which was an expansive war only against some people's kinds of terror, only against non-white people's kinds of terror, only against foreigners' kinds of terror, and not against the kind of terrorism that is the oldest, most resilient, most violent and most historically rooted in american history, one that seeks to draw its own heritage out of the general american national heritage, people who call themselves not dissenters,

not rebels, but patriots, people who are restoring something about america that they believe a corrupt elite, that is now responsive to non-white power at the expense of the extant racial caste, that has been deeply woven inside not just the american political structure, but the american economy, that drives american politics, how that ultimately never gets treated. this is exactly what timothy mcveigh was about. this is what timothy mcveigh had as his motivations for murdering 168 americans in oklahoma city, including 19 children. and we looked away from it. we looked away from how deep the rootedness of white supremacist violence was in this country. we listened to what i believe

are principled civil libertarian objections against an expensive category of criminalized association. treating people who might have believed as mcveigh did, odious as i believe that is, but ultimately not committing acts of violence, treating them as, essentially, indistinct from mcveigh was absolutely intolerable, as it always should have been, to the american political elites, but that intolerability did not extend to muslims. and there it was easy, after 9/11, to construct an apparatus fueled by things like the patriot act, that expanded enormous categories of criminal association, known as material support for terrorism, authorized widespread surveillance, that certainly would not be focused simply even on american muslims, as disgusting as it was that it was focused on them primarily.

but, ultimately, all of these things that both parties, that the leaders of the security services and intellectuals created, maintained and justified, so readily, against ththreat of a foreign menace, seen as civilizational, seen as an acceptable substitute for a geopolitical enemy that had served as a rallying purpose throughout the 20th century, the war on terror is kind of a zombie anti-communism in a lot of its political caste and association. and never would any of this be visited upon white people. from the start, the war on terror showed you exactly who it was going to leave out from its carceral, from its surveillance and from its violent gaze. amy: so, i want to go to donald trump, this week,

considering a 2024 challenge to president biden, said in a statement biden surrendered to the taliban. meanwhile, republicans on the house armed services committee demanded a plan from biden to stop afghanistan from becoming a, quote, "safe haven" for terror groups after the taliban takeover. this is republican congressman michael mccaul on cnn. rep. mccaul: we are going to go back, jake, to a pre-9/11 state, a breeding ground for terrorism. and, you know, i hate to say this, i hope we don't have to go back there but it will be a threat to the homeland in a matter of time. amy: so, you have the republicans now talking about a foreign terrorist threat. the republicans, who have been denying the insurrection of january 6, calling it, you know, no worse than a group of tourists coming to washington, d.c., and not wanting to investigate that, even though, under bush, under trump,

the intelligence agencies have said the number one domestic terror threat is right-wing white supremacists. spencer: we see who the war on terror, then as now, is a mechanism for having terrorism excused, not terrorism dealt with, when that terrorism is white, when it is politically powerful, when, for reasons that they themselves probably ought better to explain, politicians sympathize with it, seek to draw strength from it, that's a real serious red flag for american democracy. we don't have to treat it as if it is a new red flag for american democracy. this is always how american democracy has been eroded. this is always alongside the ways in which capital has been extremely willing to ally with white supremacy. this is what the creation of jim crow was. this is how the maintenance of segregation

in the north of the country, which we don't often talk about as much in its diffent permutations, i'm a new yorker. this city isegregated even still. you see thatefinitely with the way the school system is constructed. ultimately, we are seeing, throughout this past week, the ease with which the republican party, supposedly now in the trump era, feeling antipathy to the war on terror, readily snapped to war on terror politics when it comes to the demonization of refugees, the idea that america has a responsibility to take in the refugees that it itself creates, out of this psychotic, racist fear of white replacement, that demographics are ultimately driving the erosion of, you know, in its respectable settings, white political power, not just on the fringes, but at the centers of american governance.

and that is a politics of the war on terror that has been here from the start. trump makes it vastly less subtle, to the extent that it was subtle, than it was before. and his hold on the party is not an accident. his hold here has everything to do with the way that he was able to recognize the ways in which the war on terror is an excellent sorting mechanism for figuring out who is a real american and who is a conditional american. and then, as we saw him using the tools of the war oterror on the streets of cities like portland and washington, d.c., and new york and in the skies over as many as 15 cities last summer, he's willing to use it on americans that he calls terrorists. amy: spencer ackerman, you write repeatedly about adham hassoun. tell us his story. spcer: amy, i just want to thank you so much

for asking about adham. i knew you would. you have truly been one of the journalistic heroes of this era. and adham hassoun is a symbol of the ways that the war on terror criminalized people. adham hassoun is a palestinian-born man who survived, he grew up in the lebanese civil war of the 1980s and immigrated to florida in the 1990s. and as a refugee himself and an active participant in his community in miami, in south florida, in the islamic community there, he wrote a lot of checks to refugee charities, people that he had thought were helping refugees and helping war victims in places like bosnia, where the wars became genocidal in the balkans against balkan muslims. and, ultimately, among the people that he met and tried to help was a convert named josé padilla.

josé padla would, after 9/11, become famous as someone john ashcroft accused of trying to set off a radiological weapon inside the united states. and very shortly after that happened, padilla was at first placed in military custody, an american citizen, thatas allowed at the time, the feds came for adham. and even though adham had committed no violence, adham had done nothing criminal, the feds and immigration authoritielocked him up, and they leaned on him to try and inform on his community, to try and be an informant. and he refused to do that. he considered it an affront to his dignity. he considered it unjust. and as a result, he spent a tremendous amount of time, he spent years in jails in florida, while, ultimately, the fbi and the local prosecutor, who eventually would be the trump cabinet member alex acosta,

came up with pretexts to prosecute him. he was originally charged as a co-defendant with josé padilla, who is now placed in federal custody. and even though there was no way that the government could connect him to any act of violence, thanks to the patriot act and thanks to, frankly, the atmosphere politically in the years after 9/11, that he could be chged with things that simply were not acts of violence or acts of active contribution to specific people committing specific acts of violence that the government could name, and he was convicted. and as he was sentenced, the judge reduced his sentence, the feds were seeking life for adham because the judge recognized that the government couldn't point to any act that he, you know, act of violence that he was responsible for. that was in 2007. he served until 2017 in federal prison,

a variety of federal prisons. and then, in 2017, when he had finished his sentence, he had figured that he would be deported, that ultimately he would go back to probably lebanon. he was kind of done, as you can imagine, with the united ates at that point. but heidn't. what happened instead was that he was sent into ice detention in western new york, outside of buffalo, at a place called batavia. and after the patriot act became law in 2001, there was great civil libertarian fear over one of its provisions, seion 412. section 412 said that any nondeportable noncitizen, which is to say a stateless person who doesn't have a country that will take that person in, who is deemed a threat to national security by the authorities, ultimatelyin this ca, the determination is made by the secretary of homeland security, could be imprisoned indefinitely. at never happened throughout the whole war on terror,

until it was time to keep adham hassoun locked up. ultimately, in early 2020, around like late february, early march, adham gets sick, to the point where he, we don't know for sure, but he thought that he got covid. by april of that year, batavia was the ice detention facility with the highest covid outbreak inside. so, here was a figure who the united states criminalized, robbed of his freedom, and then ultimately endangered his life by the incompetence and indifference that it showed in allowing covid to run wild in facilities filled with people that the united states functionally treated as non-people. and it took a very valiant effort by local attorneys and by the american civil liberties union to challenge his detention. ultimately, instead of outright losing the case,

as a judge indicated after she ruled adham had to go free, because the fbi admitted. amy: we have 30 seconds, spencer. spencer: adham was ultimately successful, once the government dropped its case in order to preserve its power to do this. and he lives in freedom, i'm happy to say, right now in rwanda. amy: we have 30 seconds. what has surprised you most about what is happening today? spencer: very little at this point, i'm sorry to say, surprises me. but the general indifference by the american political and intellectual elites to the relationship between the war on terror and the erosion of democracy is also a very deep thread and ry historically rooted, not just in the war onerror, but before, and certainly seeing that those connections have to be made in order to have any form of real democracy in this country and safety and dignity for so many people. amy: spencer ackerman,

i want to thank you so much for being with us, pulitzer prize-winning national security reporter. his new book, reign of terror: how the 9/11 era destabilized america and produced trump. i'm amy goodman. thanks so much. [captioning made possible

♪ hello and welcome to nhk "newsline". i'm catherine kobayashi. taliban fighters have raised their flag over the last part of afghanistan not under their control. they claim to have captured a holdout in the northeast, but opposition forces say they haven't given up. >> translator: we have conquered