A Generation Of Firepower: How Should We Commemorate 9/11? Free

Twenty years is a long time in one’s life, potentially a third or a fourth of it, depending on life-span. This represents a generation, 2 decades in which one can grow from childhood to being a parent, or from being a parent to a grandparent. This is a period of 7,300 days, 1,040 weeks or 240 months. Suffice to say, this is a large chunk of time in which all of us live through numerous peaks and valleys, transformational moments, changing relationships, and, often, an evolution in our thinking and experience. Who can maintain that they have not changed their perspective(s), attitude(s), comportment(s) and mindset(s) from age 20 to 40, or from age 40 to 60? Thus, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 assault on U.S. soil provides us with time and space to reflect on, to reconsider and rethink what this means to us, as individuals and societies, and how this has (re)shaped and influenced sociopolitical relations and lived experiences.

It goes without saying that my analysis, based on my perspective(s) and experience(s) as well as my ideological orientations and predispositions, will be unique to me. I am also borrowing from, and am influenced by, diverse theoretical traditions, such as postcolonialism, critical pedagogy, antiracism and critical race theory, neo-Marxist interpretations of political economy and critical studies in/on democracy. However, as this special issue of the SoJo Journal aims to illustrate, diverse and detailed reflections of what 9/11 means to us can be helpful for us to not just learn from the past but, ultimately, to learn how to build a more socially just society and world. A tall order but the reality is that 9/11 significantly affected the world, and it is necessary to reexamine what it means today.

While there have been myriad and significant changes in technology, geopolitical relations, environmental shifts and political upheaval, we are still plagued with social inequalities, injustice, warfare and xenophobia, all of which frames our context and contextual analysis (Carr, 2020, 2021). September 11 was a global event or moment because it happened in the United States, and this is not inconsequential to how global hegemony and international relations are configured and unpacked. Had 9/11 taken place elsewhere, would we have taken as much notice? Sadly, there have been myriad 9/11s around the world without, comparatively speaking, much attention, and I will refer to some of this background in this conceptual paper. This is not an empirical study but, rather, an analysis and interpretation of the significance of 9/11 while seeking to connect diverse concepts, realities and experiences that run counter to the normative narrative.

I locate myself within these past 2 decades as a White, Canadian male, a sociologist of education who taught for 5 years in the United States (2005-2010), then at a university near Toronto, and now, for the past several years, at a French-language university in Québec; before the academic career I was a senior policy advisor in a Canadian Ministry of Education in Toronto. Interested and active in solidarity with Cuba and Latin America for a number of years, I also write poetry, which has paralleled to some degree the 9/11 narrative (with several books related to hegemony and power), and there are, like for everyone else, a million other elements—socially constructed and otherwise—that come together to form, reform, deform and inform an/my evolving identity. My collaboration with my colleague/partner for the past roughly 20 years has also been a particularly significant influence on my thinking and experience (see Carr & Thésée, 2019), especially in relation to work on racism, global citizenship and transformative education.

This background helps, I hope, contextualize the following thoughts, reflections and experiences, more so in the first person than an empirical or strictly theoretical examination of how 9/11 impinges on what and how we are. If possible, I wish to lower the volume on the purely academic, scholarly and conceptual framework of what I saw/experienced and am seeing/experiencing. I accept that one cannot easily detach oneself from the multiple layers that undergird how we come to see/experience the world, our ideological and epistemological understanding of our existence, the phenomenological interpretation of what matters and why. Thus, I present below some thoughts on 9/11, and conclude with what this might mean for democracy and education, two of the subjects that have animated my research program for the past 2 decades. I am particularly concerned with developing, supporting and cultivating peace as an organizing principle for society and education.

And I want to add here, to avoid any confusion or misinterpretation, that a critical analysis of 9/11 in no way is intended to mitigate or negate the barbarism of killing more than 2,700 individuals in the Twin Towers on that day. The tragic loss of life is not in dispute here, nor is the massive outpouring of support and love for the innocent who were victimized that day. I also want to underscore that this paper is not arguing that the United States is the only country imbued in neoliberal social injustice, nefarious military tactics and global hegemonic practices; there are many significant debilitating problems everywhere, including in Canada. In sum, my focus is on the meaning and interpretation of 9/11, especially the consequences and (re)actions that are intricately intertwined in the aftermath some 2 decades later.

It is early August, 2021,¹ about 20 months into the pandemic (not the focus here but the U.S. response, in particular, is noteworthy), it is a wonderful sunny and warm day in Montreal, and there’s lots of reason to believe that our world can and should move forward in sync (the glass is at least half full), especially watching some of the wonderful interactions at the Olympics (and I am also troubled by the neoliberal commercialism but, like everyone, I’m living through a lot of paradoxes and contradictions), including the numerous diverse cultural events and interactions that have emerged as a result. I’ve just woken up from a siesta, something I cherish, whenever possible, it’s 3:30 in the afternoon, and my mind is at peace but my brain is being assaulted by background chatter, a staccato of “facts” and arguments. I was watching some YouTube videos before nodding off, something from another century or far under the radar (although certainly connected to White power and resurgence today), Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe, and how the White community maintained an iron-clad grip on the political and economic structure of a country that was African, not only in terms of numbers but in every other way as well. You might be asking if my head wasn’t spinning from that but, somehow, I was able to compartmentalize it as a historical, completely misguided and outrageously emblematic remnant of the colonial era, the supposed glory days of the British Empire.

So, when I slowly awoke—this may have me being labeled as a “woke,” which won’t easily endear me/you to many folks these days (a portion of the media/society has made it a euphemism for something akin to antisocialjustice warrior or political correctness on steroids; Romano, 2020)—another most transfixing and equally disturbing video was in full swing (Oxford Student Union, 2017). The owner of Blackwater, Eric Prince, presenting at the Oxford Student Union, making extremely eloquent (some might say blunt and misguided), patriotic and forcefully compelling (for some) arguments about the need for, of all things, mercenaries. Sorry, make that support for personnel privately engaged to carry out cost-effective and efficient maneuvers to buttress U.S. foreign policy, recruited, trained, supported and inculcated into military operations intended to be shielded by covert operations and often nebulous and nefarious government agencies (Hettena, 2020). How did I make it through an hour of this? I was in awe that such arguments would be made, that the United States would/could glorify and fund such enterprises. I don’t care to debate the military prowess, the counterintelligence abilities and the torturing practices of these mercenaries here. My question is quite simply, why? Why should they exist, why should they do what they do, why should “freedom” be predicated on this most heinous and odious of activities? Of course, the video outlined the supposedly “essential” nature of these forays into Afghanistan, Iraq and in many other places. Why? Is there any room for peace once you’ve launched yourself into engaging mercenaries, trained and motivated to kill? Are you still on the moral, constitutional and social justice high ground, if one ever existed?

Where is this heading, and what is the connection to this paper? September 11 is a central feature to this war-mongering strategizing, gluing everyone to the killing industry through government policy, funding and actions, and there is, sadly, little room for peace. What really struck me is how comfortably, confidently and skillfully this well-polished billionaire of solid U.S. political stock did what he did and said what he said during his talk (Walsh, 2021). It would be disingenuous to discard this man as a joker, a complete outsider, a marginal figure without a dedicated following; coincidentally, his sister, Betsy DeVos, was the secretary of education in the Trump regime for 4 years, and he has garnered a wide and powerful following in military circles. Ultimately, the military is central to the ethos of U.S. identity and Empire, and this has been further enhanced and fueled by the tragic events of 9/11, culminating in a frittering away of democracy at home (Hedges, 2021).

I was at work in the Ministry of Education. News traveled quickly. Everyone was following the unbelievable (because the United States was believed to be impenetrable, especially key institutions, such as the Pentagon) events, listening to the radio, checking updates online. There were endless rumors, some suggesting that there were hundreds of planes that could attack multiple sites, even in Canada. There was lots of apprehension, fear, confusion and mystery. We were let go early from work, with many of us thinking and/or believing that the subway could be attacked or that random incidents could be effectuated at any moment.

As time passed after the terrorist acts, a number of perplexing and debilitating propositions and phenomena were presented. Why was a relatively unblemished passport of one of the architects of the hijacked planes found in the rubble around the Twin Towers (Karpf, 2002)? Why did Building 7 mysteriously launch into free-fall collapse several hours after the Twin Towers were attacked (Harvey, 2020)? Why was the steel scaffolding smoldering at the base of two structures so quickly removed from the crime scene without being fully analyzed? Why was a plane transporting some of Bin Laden’s family members allowed to fly out of the United States after the attack? Why were North American Air Defense Command war games scheduled on the exact same day of the event, and how did this impede military action (Four Arrows, 2006)? Why was the 9/11 Commission so widely criticized for its excessively reserved examination of what happened? How should we understand xenophobia and Islamophobia flowing out of 9/11? Why was patriotism so evidently and comprehensively baked into the formal, national narrative of 9/11? Can we neatly place all of these concerns into the conspiracy theory basket or should they be considered with seriousness and a vigorous quest for the truth? (Bell, 2018)

The central question within this context, at least for me, that has altered history (for everyone, I believe) concerns why the United States decided to invade Iraq in 2003, somehow linking it to 9/11 as a result (Hanley, 2003; Khalidi, 2004). Like many people around the world, I marched in a massive protest at the time in Ottawa against another senseless, hopeless military intervention (Blumenthal, 2018). Why should the legacy of 9/11 be so debilitatingly linked to aimlessly assaulting people who then would become victimized in a host of nefarious ways? To what degree was the foray into the Middle East a part of a grand plan to destabilize the region, regain hegemonic power, and ensure a flow of natural resources, notably oil (Ahmed, 2014; Dekhakhena, 2016)? Suffice to say that invading Iraq has left a permanent disfigurement on U.S. stature, reach, influence and positioning within the world community.

The result of this invasion is, in my view, catastrophic (Hamasaeed & Nada, 2020): sectarian warfare in Iraq, increasing influence of Iran in Iraq, the creation of enhanced Kurdish autonomy (in Iraq but refusal to support the same thing in Turkey), the creation of a mass surplus of Iraqi military personnel who found themselves out of work, the fomenting of an Islamic State next door, a massive refugee crisis, hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, cultural centers and museums pillaged and destroyed, enhanced instability in the region, and, notably, a massive economic drain for the United States with China becoming a world power, in part, because of the United States shattering its economy on war games. Just about everything that happened was the antithesis of what was planned by the United States, and has made the world a more dangerous place; similarly, it has diverted our attention, resources and efforts away from addressing urgent matters, such as environmental catastrophe, genocide, world poverty and democratization in nations and institutions. I have emphasized that this is not what was intended but perhaps there are those who might qualify the U.S. intervention as a success, those who might argue that more militarization, not less, is the answer? After all, the architects of the last 20 years of instability have not been held to account, and, on the contrary, many of them have been celebrated within the U.S. political establishment. Another significant offshoot of the Iraq invasion is the advent of radicalization and terrorism at previously unprecedented levels (International Crisis Group, 2016). Cultivating warfare where it should not take place over the past 2 decades has pushed the U.S. Empire to the tipping point, thus realigning geopolitical relations as a direct result.

World support for the United States slowly decreased with each passing week of military intervention in Iraq, a country that almost everyone on the planet knew had nothing to do with 9/11. If the criterion for invading a country is based on some hazy notion of supposedly free elections or human rights or a capitalist economy, then the United States would naturally be involved in an endless foray of assaulting regimes, friend and foe, forever but the selection of attackable countries is not drawn up with such care. Add to this the U.S. posture of removing itself from funding international organizations that aim to cultivate peace, such as UNESCO, and environmental, human rights and international conflict agreements and programs (Pascal, 2019; TRT WORLD, 2018). The mantra of being the world’s “greatest” country, supposedly the most democratic, is not believed outside of the United States, yet this oft-repeated slogan is an integral part of the American body politic (Carr & Thésée, 2021). The annual vote in the United Nations against the U.S. blockade/embargo of Cuba, for example, typically ends up around 185 nations against the United States and two nations in favor of the United States (generally speaking, the United States, Israel and sometimes a small island that has been paid to take sides) (France 24, 2021). This is part of the sad and perpetuating legacy of 9/11, and is underscored by the roughly 700 U.S. military bases in some 75+ countries, costing hundreds of billions annually (TRT World, 2021). Militarism, I believe, will never defeat human compassion and human rights and human dignity; it will ignite, incite and forever motivate (many) people to maintain an equally militaristic posture, thus ensuring an unstoppable cycle of confrontation, conflict and killing.

Many people believed that the Iraq War, if that is what it should be labeled, would be a complete catastrophe for the United States as well as the world because the Vietnam War, if that is what it should be labeled, a few decades earlier, was a complete catastrophe for the United States and the world. I traveled to Vietnam for a short period in 2013, one week in Hanoi and another in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). I visited about a dozen museums, some of the historical trails and encampments of the war period, and other areas of significance in addition to some of the dynamic cultural sites that now characterize contemporary Vietnam. I learned a great deal, and also met some wonderful people. The Vietnamese, for example, refer to the Vietnam War as the American War, and the war had much less to do with communism than it did with independence and sovereignty, the legacy of an almost endless struggle against the Chinese, then a century of colonial rule by the French, followed by the United States inserting itself into a geography, culture and political context that it did not understand. I do not say this with arrogance or penultimate authority; rather, my understanding of how Vietnamese society and the Vietnamese have sought to move forward after having lost over 3 million citizens and having massive numbers of people being maimed and terrorized by U.S. chemical weapons (we often hear that any regime using such weapons must be immobilized immediately) is almost beyond belief (Stellman & Stellman, 2018; Von Meding & Thai, 2017). What was the point of invading Vietnam? How did it inform U.S. policy, politics, education and Empire? The scar tissue has been felt around the world, and the death and destruction that took place on Vietnamese soil—including the 58,000 U.S. soldiers who lost their lives as well as many others who were permanently injured—has reshaped, or should reshape, our sense of humanity (Rosen, 2015). Too much war distorts our connection to one another: sadly, the United States has been at war or in a war almost every year of its existence (The International News, 2020). At this time, as the Taliban have rapidly overtaken Afghanistan with the pullout of U.S. troops, Shultz (2021) eloquently reminds us that, once again, staging endless warfare is a hopeless enterprise:

September 11 has an entirely different orientation and interpretation in Latin America. September 11 in 1973 saw the brutal and bloody coup d’etat against the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, culminating in scores of people being killed, tortured and exiled (Basu, 2018; Friedman, 2014). The U.S.-backed coup, which is spectacularly captured on the ground floor of the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory/History and Human Rights) in Santiago, involved extensive propaganda, intelligence maneuvers and support from the American government. While visiting the Museum in 2018, I was struck by the widespread, extensive and sustained engagement deployed by the United States in support of a military dictatorship (1973-1990) that fully ruptured (and, sadly, largely privatized) Chile, leading to endless hardship for the majority of the population. The quest to rewrite a constitution tainted by the dictatorship (Posner, 2019) has been a long-term project, and there is great hope now to realign and include those who were greatly disadvantaged and marginalized for the past few decades, notably the Indigenous Peoples (Montes, 2021; Piscopo & Siavelis, 2020).

Thus, it is difficult to think of 9/11 as uniquely a U.S. phenomenon. United States intervention in Latin America has been constant, extensive and earth-shattering for the masses. These interventions, starting with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, have often been aligned with dictatorship, the suppression of human rights, neoliberal regimes that have little regard for social welfare, and rampant militarization (Knox, 2019). Howard Zinn’s seminal work on documenting an alternative narrative of U.S. history that underpins the notion of Empire, colonialism and imperialism (see https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/peoples-history-of-the-united-states) provides an arsenal of insight, facts, concepts and understanding of how U.S. power works. This fundamental connection to cultivating peace or not is at the nexus of 9/11, an epicenter of potential actions that could bring people together or continuously exploit, generate and fester cleavages and marginalization. The downside of continuous and “permanent war,” as Peter McLaren so aptly put it, is that the conditions of instability, ultimately, lead to massive migration, poverty, extremism, and political chaos (see https://sites.chapman.edu/mclaren/). This has been borne out in recent times, and we can see, for example, how Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have been hemorrhaging people flowing north because of violence, corruption and instability based, to varying degrees, on U.S. intervention in the region. As an illustration, the ousting of the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009 by the newly elected Obama regime has led to an unprecedented period of rampant bloodshed in the Central American nation (Johnston, 2017).

All of the above commentary provides, I believe, an opportunity and a challenge. To fully understand 9/11, to create the conditions for lasting peace, to confront xenophobia, to address social injustice, to cultivate meaningfully engaged and critical citizenship, we must consider how education plays out. What type of education, how, for whom, to what end, based on which orientations, with what resources, and supported by whom? It would be easy to surmise that formal education has been co-opted by the neoliberal, business model, distant from bringing people together to solve social problems. The trend toward privatized education in which social reproduction is further entrenched, meaning that where you live and the cultural capital of your parents is a relatively reliable predictor of academic success, does not seem to be slowing. The frenzy for standardized testing, relatively poor conditions for educators, the unrelenting mantra to skill up young people for the workforce and the milquetoast emphasis on social justice make formal education a problem, rather than a solution, for many people.

When teaching in the United States from 2005 to 2010, I had, generally speaking, a wonderful experience, meeting and befriending a number of people from diverse origins, leading an international affairs committee, and interacting frequently with the international student population. This was a period of substantial intellectual growth for me, and I was extremely happy to engage with many wonderful colleagues on both sides of the border during this time. As a Canadian, we are led to believe that we have an almost unparalleled comprehension of the United States, especially those in English Canada, because of the language, the culture, the exposure to media, the cross-border relations, the entertainment field, the Snowbirds, the sports and many other areas. I was, nonetheless, struck by five significant differences that I will not fully elaborate on here because of space limitations but which, I feel, inform, to a certain degree, U.S. national identity (I’m no expert on the subject but am happy to engage in this analysis): the disproportionate place of religion (especially the predominance of Christianity); the paradoxical attachment to the right to be armed (the propensity to insist that this is key to interpreting the constitution); the oft-repeated centrality of individual rights, especially in relation to healthcare, the emphasis on military service and national mite (it seems to be a genuine prerequisite for attaining elected office, with having “served” or being highly favorable to the military almost guaranteeing widespread acceptance); a highly visible patriotism; and a deemphasis on, even a suspicion of, internationalism/international solidarity. Of course, a massive population of more than 300 million means there are many cleavages, differences, movements, identities and perspectives in the United States but I do believe that the above do speak to some of the normative, political and public perception of reality. These observations underscore a predisposition for the State to infer national interest abroad when it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, exist, to support Empire when it adversely affects a large portion of its own domestic population, and to consider militarization as a natural and normal state of affairs (Petras, 2018; Vine, 2018).

I was surprised when discussing 9/11 with graduate students to learn of a normative discourse emphasizing how united everyone was. A few students countered this by saying that they witnessed some people being violently attacked because of ethnocultural and racial traits, with the perpetrators desperate to seek retribution because of 9/11. Similarly, racism, sexism, classism and violence continued, despite the heartfelt sentiment by many that something is/was terribly wrong. The mantra to “support the troops” was belted out everywhere, during sporting, political, social and media events. One of my students confided some people of Lebanese origin—even if they were born and raised in the United States— were assaulted for no reason following the attack on the Twin Towers, supposedly because they looked “Arab.” When I presented some data and information from a peace coalition on the war in Iraq, providing insight into the political, economic and social cost to taxpayers, citizens, activists and institutions, many students felt extreme discomfort; I came to learn that a large percentage of students had direct contact with the military, and were not at ease critiquing it. A couple of students even commented that I shouldn’t be criticizing the was because I was a foreigner. I became increasingly sensitive to the reality that the military was everywhere, on and off campus, and the mantra of President Bush—“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (Chalmers, 2011)—seemed to be widely taken up. At the same time, I did meet many colleagues and activists who vigorously opposed the Iraq War but the broad mainstream political and media control of the message made one feel, at times, out of place in not giving a nod to the official narrative.

My first thought is the need to clarify, nuance and enhance the affirmation that the “United States” is a state like others, that it has done some terrible things, like others, that it is locked into a militarized political culture, like others. The “United States” is a broad, cumbersome and, most likely, unsatisfactory label because there is enormous diversity within the United States, despite the two-party hammerlock, and there is a long history of oppression and marginalization, notably in relation to Aboriginal peoples and African Americans. So the referencing to the United States comes with caveats, provisos and paradoxes: the United States is a large country with a lot of diversity, contradictions, cultural innovation and political influence. Rather than present a dichotomous representation of the complexity of the United States, I hope that we can also see the numerous projects, associations, organizations and people who are working for the collective good, including in and through education. That much is clear. I do stand by my declaration earlier that it is, I believe, counterproductive and destructive to believe that this country is superior to all others. Clearly, it is not, if we are to carefully and humbly consider all of the social movements and initiatives that have taken place throughout U.S. history seeking to right the wrongs that have plagued the country. This is nothing to be ashamed of: on the contrary, this simply proves that the United States is a nation-state, a nation, with challenges, problems and opportunities. My point is that the mantra of superiority is most likely unhelpful in seeking peace with and in the world. The military angle as the chief negotiator for (regime) change is certain to antagonize, agitate and guarantee years and decades of instability. The 20 years since 9/11 have sadly witnessed massive killing, droning, torturing (in Guantanamo, for example), renditioning and radicalization.

Geopolitics is a messy business, as disfigured and dismantled as normative democracy. A lot of complexity and high-stakes positing is part and parcel of this meat grinder. No one wants (or should want) aimless killing and terrorism. At least, few of us really believe that this is or could be the solution. Yet, there is a game of picking winners and losers, arming them, supporting them in other ways, and using brute force and armaments to seal the deal, often siding with some really unsightly folks and regimes. What is the solution? Is my discourse too weak, too utopian, too conciliatory, too academic? I don’t think so but I’m also not making the decisions, and the normative political/democratic system is balanced on supposed support from the public, which really isn’t there when we consider nebulous normative elections (Carr & Thésée, 2019, 2021).

Besides the obvious of reconsidering the military—perhaps removing it, and turning it into a Department of Peace—and lowering the volume on capitalism and neoliberalism, seeking more than reformed and reworked policies and programs to seriously address social injustice, racism, sexism, classism and reconciliation, I think education may be our best bet to moving forward. What might be some of the proposals to reshape and reimagine education?

1. Reimagine the mission and purpose of education, away from employment and training to citizenship and critical engagement.

2. Eliminate private and charter schools, and develop a public system that aims for inclusion and social justice.

3. Teach peace in every course and every activity, and consider it as a large, fluid and dynamic project.

4. Complexify learning opportunities to ensure that how the United States interacts and has interacted with the world is problematized, including military bases, espionage, support for nefarious regimes, warfare, et cetera.

5. Rethink service education and social justice together, encouraging integrated and engaging projects throughout the educational experience.

6. Ameliorate working, professional and labor condition for educators, provide them with release time to cultivate critical engagement projects.

7. Emphasize civil society linkages with schools, enhancing diversity, culture and social justice.

8. Work toward critically engaged and (robust) democratic education, cultivatingthe linkages between pedagogy, curriculum, leadership, epistemology, institutional culture, informal and nonformal education, and diverse and inclusive representation.

9. Consider new ways of evaluating education based on the quality and quantity of democratic engagement, inclusion, representation and accountability for social justice.

10. Develop dialog and deliberative democracy circles within and outside of schools to counter banking education and, importantly, to discuss and develop proposals and solutions to serious problems that are often not presented to the people concerned in order to find a way out.

11. Make schools more humane, more inviting, more connected to society. Build community parks, gardens and spaces that allow for engagement and solidarity, and make collaboration a more important value than competition.

I have more fully elaborated on these proposals for transformative education and others elsewhere (Carr, 2021; Carr & Thésée, 2019; Carr & Thésée 2021), often with my colleague Gina Thésée. Our starting point is that we need to be much more open and inclusive in how we think about education, and our contribution is but one among many others. However, we do not believe that a critical and transformative education can be adequately advanced without addressing how peace is fully incorporated into how we (re)build our societies.

September 11 directly impacted the United States, and it also impacted the world. What is the best response to fighting terrorism? And extremism and radicalization and hatred and xenophobia? Intensifying warfare, sadly, I believe, will create an endless, circular death spiral. Investing in peace in and through education, and laying down the arms, as ridiculed as it may be by those insisting that the “others” will only listen to extreme force, must be considered as a way out of this nightmare. Invading Iraq as a response to 9/11, twenty years later, has not made the United States or the world safer. Perhaps after 20 years, we are now tired, weary and old, like we were after Vietnam? There are no winners in this story but we can, collectively, aim to build a more humane world, starting with reconciliation with the First Nations, who have been totally swept aside in this debate. If the problem was Saddam Hussein, and it was President George W. Bush who had a problem with him, then it should have never flowed over to millions of refugees, deaths and destruction. Let’s hope that the next 20 years will be more emblematic of the peace, solidarity and meaningful inter cultural relations that we need between all people everywhere, without a single shot being fired. From my humble vantage point, we have no other choice but to move in that direction, and education will need to be at the center.

As I write this text, the global pandemic has taken more than 6 million lives officially (the number is surely much greater), many of which could have been saved through a plethora of different actions than those taken (I do not want to trivialize, in the least, the extreme hardship and suffering due to COVID, nor the injustice against already vulnerable populations, and I am especially concerned that the Global South has not yet been fully vaccinated at adequate levels; I am heartened by the solidarity shown by so many during the pandemic, and also appreciate the difficult circumstances that confronted decision-makers). The legacy of 9/11 has not been one of harmony, yet I believe that there is fatigue from continuing along the same route, and there is equally a thirst to bring people together. The pandemic has shown us that we are not alone, and that only together will there be peace. Education is the glue for the next 20 years, I hope.