“Remember Pearl Harbor” was the mantra used to enlist the US population in the imperial war in the Pacific. The US triumphantly succeeded in bringing out the Japanese imperial force in the military conflict by squeezing Japan with trade embargo, war propaganda and military provocations when it became obvious that the interests of the Japanese empire collided with its own.

There were many common threads between the Japanese empire and the US empire. Both were vehemently anti-communist, colonial and militaristic. There just couldn’t be two capitalist empires in the Pacific. The immediate US actions after the war—the war which was supposed to fight off the imperial Japanese—clearly indicate that the US was there to dominate the Pacific: the devastating Korean War aimed to kill off communist forces from the peninsula resulted in the deaths of 1/4 of the Korean population, US colonial policies against Pacific nations and beyond, and commencement of the Cold War with USSR and its allies.

The US nuked Japan to state who was the top dog in the Pacific and beyond. After the war the two empires became one. The US establishment utilized willing Japanese war criminals in shaping the trajectory of post WW2 Japan within the US imperial framework. Today, the phrase “remember Pearl Harbor” is used to keep the US Pacific ally under control, while justifying its imperial trajectory across the globe.

Now, such an angle also helps us see 9/11 from a fresh perspective. All the unanswered questions surrounding the event, the use of the event to start a string of colonial wars against the Middle East, the use of the event to introduce draconian laws against the US population and so on delineate the nature of the imperial trajectory.

Most of us avoid talking about 9/11 without following the narratives provided by the establishment because the topic has been stigmatized as “conspiracy” and it has become an industry independent from the historical context of colonial wars, capitalist expansion and loss of civil liberties. However, it is clear that the world is suffering as a result of actions that followed the event—as 1 out of 100 people become refugees, while millions are killed by the US backed colonial wars, which have destroyed many countries in the name of “democracy”, “freedom” and “justice”.

I mentioned “remember Pearl Harbor” because recently I was told to remember it when I mentioned the dropping of nuclear bombs on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One would like to hope that nuclear incineration of a few hundred thousand innocent civilians would be condemned without any attempt for a justification. However, the US school system still teaches the children that the decision to massacre so many people was necessary to end the war. Of course, such a position represents racism, American exceptionalism and colonial mentality, and it is successfully refuted by many reputable scholars and journalists as well as testimonies by US military officials at the time of the events. By the time nuclear bombs were dropped, the Japanese government was seeking ways to end the war. It was totally unnecessary for the stated purpose, however, it functioned as an unimaginably gruesome live human experiment, a threat against communist powers and collective punishment against any imperial competitor which gets in the way of the US empire building. If you or your family members are not familiar with the accurate version of the event, I highly recommend reading works by Gar Alperovitz and others (1).

But to say the least, I was not alive in 1941. By the time I was born (1968) Japan was firmly in the hands of the US empire, violently repressing the segment of the Japanese population which stood against Japan’s complicity in the US militarism. So can you see where those people stand when they tell you to “remember Pearl Harbor”? It is the voice of the US empire chastising any element that goes outside of the imperial framework of colonialism, corporatism and militarism.

In the same way, I see people saying “remember 9/11”, “never forget 9/11” and so on. But 9/11 regularly happens in Yemen today at the hands of the US led coalition (2). Countless 9/11s have happened in Syria, which have killed 1/2 million Syrians, inflicted by the US backed terrorists (3). Incidentally, those terror groups include associates of Al Qaeda, the original 9/11 attackers. The US establishment is breaking its law in giving material support to terror groups, turning its own military forces into an auxiliary of Al Qaeda forces (4)(5). And speaking of the origin, Osama Bin Ladin was a US backed “freedom fighter” in Afghanistan. The US embarked on a deadly proxy war against socialist Afghanistan, and in the process, they created a justification for the the highly lucrative war on terror as well. In that sense, no matter where the truth lies, there is something to the claim that 9/11 was an inside job. One can observe that the US capitalist hegemony is actively shaping the imperial hierarchy by any means necessary.

But there is much more. There have been over 10,000 victims of many 9/11s inflicted by the US backed Ukrainian coup government in the Russian-speaking eastern region of Ukraine. Those who are still parroting the US propaganda lies about Ukraine, or Crimea (6), please do watch Oliver Stone’s excellent documentary Ukraine On Fire (7). It meticulously describes how the CIA fomented Nazi forces in the region, which had become vital in the US backed coup against the democratically elected deposed government. Furthermore, in 2017, details of protester killings—which were quickly blamed on the elected Ukraine government by the media—were revealed by Georgian snipers (8). In the testimonies, they claimed that they were ordered to shoot anyone to cause chaos at the scene (8). Shockingly, they also stated that they were under command of an American military officer (8). The US has been arming and training Ukraine military, continuing to add numbers of victims in Ukraine. Those people who have contracted the Putin panic, an epidemic spewing hatred against anything Russian, need to recognize the gravity of the matter. Our species has suffered deaths and destruction of imperial violence for some time.