25 years ago, on 11 September 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners. Two were flown into the World Trade Center in New York, one struck the Pentagon, and one crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. 2,977 people from more than 90 nations were killed, including 343 New York City firefighters.
This was a deliberate act of mass murder against civilians. It should be condemned.
BUT we should not stop there. In response, the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 100,000 civilians were killed in Iraq. More than 40,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan. Millions were and are still displaced or made refugees in the wars that followed.
Those deaths of civilians should be condemned as well.
To this day, the widespread Islamophobia treats millions as guilty for the crimes of a few, falls under the same logic of collective punishment. Blaming an entire group of people for the acts of a few is never justified, and it is never in good faith.
What happened on 9/11 was an atrocity. Nothing excuses it. Nothing ever will. The wars that followed, which killed and uprooted civilians far from New York and Washington, cannot be treated as an afterthought. Condemning the murder of innocents on one day and looking away from the killing and displacement of innocents elsewhere is not remembrance. Both should be condemned.