On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001 it seems an appropriate moment to examine how the US deploys terrorists as instruments of statecraft.

Before we get to 9/11 there’s some important contextual history. Modern American stagecraft emerged in the aftermath of WWII as the US assumed the role of a global superpower. But there was a problem. The war against fascism has been an interlude in the war against communism that began immediately after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Because of this the US faced a dilemma after WWII when the most effective fighters against the Nazi’s and fascists had been the communists, who were poised to take power in the liberated countries of Europe. The financiers and industrialists who manage US foreign policy, who also often shared convenient overlap with leadership in the CIA, needed the pre-war fascist industrialist back in power and were not about to let the communists rule. So the dirty little secret that you didn’t learn about in history class is that the US immediately put the fascists back in control of Western Europe and repurposed the Nazi’s as terrorists or a counter-terror force in the parts of Eastern Europe controlled by the Soviet Union, and nowhere more than Ukraine. Let’s recall that Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded Russia via Ukraine in 1941, with fascist Ukrainians forming their own SS Division.

The employment of counter-terror as the evil twin to counter-insurgency has colored US foreign policies ever since. In Vietnam the US created the Phoenix Program to kidnap, torture and murder the civilian members of the Vietcong as a way of disrupting the insurgency. In Central and South America the US provided intelligence, training and material support so that right-wing governments could create death-squads to intimidate and murder teachers, doctors, labor leaders and clergy who supported the reforms entailed in Catholic “liberation theology”. In Iraq, this morphed into the “Salvador Option”, where the US armed and trained Shia death-squads to battle the Sunni insurgents who fought against the Coalition Authority in the aftermath of the US invasion. The terror is bipartisan, where President Reagan armed and trained the mujahideen and President Obama oversaw Operation Sycamore, while the terrorists are disposable. In a neat trick the US pivoted from supporting Shia terror to Sunni with the “Redirection” and, once again, began utilizing Sunni jihadists, culminating in the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar Assad.

All of it is profoundly evil and enough to make your head spin. Lest you think I’ve forgotten there’s the blowback from Operation Cyclone, where the US created a Vietnam for the USSR in Afghanistan by arming and training Osama bin Laden and Sunni jihadists, resulting in the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, the military interventions since have led to the deaths of over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than $8 trillion. Afghanistan and Iraq ended in failure. A majority of Americans believe that the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East were a mistake. Indeed, this was a major part of Donald Trump’s initial appeal in 2016: “They lied,” he said of the neocons who initiated the invasion of Iraq.

Using 9/11 as a pretext, the US waged a “war on terror” that was really a continuation of a decades long war of terror. Historically it’s clear that the US willingly works with Latin-American death-squads, Sunni jihadists, Shia terrorists and Ukrainian fascists as a means of maintaining the American empire. Furthermore, the employment of terrorists is sure to increase as the US military falters and weapons are diminished.

The latest peek behind the curtain of terror was provided by Trump, whose secret weapon is his candor. The Tump Administration is busy lifting sanctions and diplomatically recognizing the Sunni head-choppers who overthrew the government of President Bashar Al-Assad in December 2024 as part of their attempt to isolate Iran. When Trump hosted Al-Sharaa in the Oval Office in November 2025, playfully misting him with Trump Cologne and asking how many wives he had, it was clear the US was ready to lift the sanctions that had devastated Syria’s economy. Formerly known as Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, Al-Sharaa is the co-founder of ISIS and founder of Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Two months later, Trump pitched a half-baked plan for the Syrian military to attack Iran.

Al Qaeda might have once been designated the terrorists credited with bringing down the Twin Towers but now, they’re officially our terrorists.

Similarly, Those aren’t just Ukraine’s Nazis, they’re ours. 

Update: Terrorists are useful as patsies as well as proxies and I have come to believe that bin Laden and his Sunni jihadist pals played that role in wake of 9/11. I’ve also come to believe, like other heterodox analysts, that Israel’s Mossad, with assistance from traitorous Jewish-Americans, carried out the attacks.

Ron Unz’s American Pravda series provides the best resource for validating my outrageous claim. Here’s a taste–“I find it difficult to think of any country in the world that clearly gained as a result of the 9/11 attacks and America’s military reaction, with one single, solitary exception. The 9/11 attacks changed everything. Suddenly the world’s sole superpower was fully mobilized against Arab and Muslim terrorist movements, especially those connected with the Middle East. Sharon’s close Neocon political allies in America used the unexpected crisis as an opportunity to seize control of America’s foreign policy and national security apparatus, with an NSA staffer later reporting that Israeli generals freely roamed the halls of the Pentagon without any security controls. Meanwhile, the excuse of preventing domestic terrorism was used to implement newly centralized American police controls that were soon employed to harass or even shut down various anti-Zionist political organizations. One of the Israeli Mossad agents arrested by the police in New York City as he and his fellows were celebrating the 9/11 attacks and producing a souvenir film of the burning World Trade Center towers told the officers that “We are Israelis…Your problems are our problems.” And so they immediately became.”