Why 9/11 Memorials Should Also Acknowledge the Victims of America's Post-9/11 Wars
Source: Jill Filipovic. "Why Abdul El-Sayed has a point about 9/11 memorials.." September 11, 2026. slate.com
The Gist
The author argues that when we remember 9/11, we should also remember and mourn the huge number of people who died in the wars America launched afterward, especially the Iraq war, which was started based on lies. She says doing this doesn't disrespect the original 9/11 victims or excuse the terrorists—it's just facing the full truth of what happened, including that U.S. leaders made terrible, deadly decisions that have gone largely unpunished.
Conclusion
American memorialization of 9/11 should expand to acknowledge the deaths and devastation caused by U.S. wars in the Middle East that followed the attacks, without diminishing grief for the original victims.
Premises
- The post-9/11 wars, especially the Iraq war, resulted in a staggering human toll: nearly half a million civilians killed directly and 3.5 million more dead from war-caused disease and infrastructure collapse, alongside thousands of American service members killed and wounded.
- The Iraq war was launched on the basis of faulty intelligence and outright lies, meaning the deaths and devastation it caused were not a justified response to 9/11 but a war of choice built on deception.
- The suffering caused by these wars is comparable in scale and moral weight to the original 9/11 attacks, making it inconsistent to mourn one tragedy while ignoring the other.
- Acknowledging these additional victims does not diminish or dishonor the memory of original 9/11 victims, nor does it excuse the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks.
- The Bush administration's decisions—shifting focus from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, engaging in torture, indefinite detention, and unconstitutional surveillance—betrayed the very American values (freedom, diversity, rule of law) that 9/11 united the country in defending.
- Those responsible for these post-9/11 policy failures and abuses have faced little to no accountability, and current politicians should be willing to acknowledge this rather than treat any critique of the wars as taboo.
Assumptions
- Moral responsibility for war deaths can be meaningfully attributed to U.S. policymakers who initiated wars based on false premises, not just to the terrorists who provoked the initial response.
- Public memorialization is capacious enough to hold multiple, even morally complex, forms of grief without one diminishing another.
- There is a meaningful moral distinction between the 'reasonable' war in Afghanistan and the 'war of choice' in Iraq that justifies differentiated blame.
- The scale of human suffering (measured in death tolls, displacement, injuries) is a valid metric for determining what deserves collective public mourning.
- Political and cultural willingness exists (or should exist) to hold expanded, more complicated national conversations about 9/11 beyond simple patriotic narratives.