7 min Click here to listen to this article

Share via Close extra sharing options Email Facebook X LinkedIn Threads Reddit WhatsApp Copy Link URL Copied! Print

Copy Link URL Copied!

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred

For those of us alive on Sept. 11, 2001 — fully one-third of people in the United States today were not, and millions more were too young for memories — it’s hard to believe that it has been 25 years since that horrific day. And yet it isn’t difficult at all, given the transformational changes dating from that time that remain a fact of everyday life, not least the airport security lines and the ever-advancing technology in use there.

Those and the constant of Americans at war in the Middle East.

For all the sadness Sept. 11 annually evokes, there’s a new source on this 25th anniversary in that the United States again — still — is mired in a Mideast war of choice costing American blood, treasure, weaponry and standing in the world. Just when we Americans thought we were out, “they” pulled us back in, to paraphrase Michael Corleone — “they” being President Trump, the very person who repeatedly ran for election lambasting predecessor George W. Bush and vowing he’d end forever wars.

Yet Trump’s ill-conceived war, which he sprung in February without consulting Congress or allies, is the poison flower of Bush’s calamity: Now the target is the terroristic theocracy of Iran, the very Mideast power that the United States inadvertently but predictably elevated and emboldened by its post-9/11 war in Iraq, Iran’s longtime rival and a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks. The Army’s own official history of the needless U.S.-Iraq war concluded........

© Los Angeles Times