A QUARTER CENTURY OF UNLEARNED LESSONS: A POSTSCRIPT FOR THE TRUMP 2.0 ERA

Gonzalo Santos, 9/11/26.

Two years ago, on September 11, 2024, I wrote an essay on the troubling, unresolved legacy of “9/11” – the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon by a non-state network of Islamic fundamentalists calling itself Al-Qaeda. I wrote it in the dying months of Joe Biden's failed presidency, a month-and-a-half into the suddenly anointed, outwardly cheerful and sunny - but utterly doomed - campaign of Kamala Harrris. 

I tried to analyze, almost a year into the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza and well over two years into the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, the connection of these two catastrophes with the unhealed, symbolic wounds of "9/11 2001," a trauma which so deeply destabilized the psyche of the U.S. power elite, long accustomed to a sense of monopoly control over what French philosopher Guy Debord called the “society of the spectacle,” that it found itself utterly incapable of properly responding to the spectacular attacks and soon found itself rushing into new, self-inflicted quagmires, lost in the rubble of a crumbling geopolitical and symbolic world order it once proudly erected and led, and now did not recognize.

If 9/11 had directly provoked – or served as an excuse – to launch two disastrous U.S. military “endless wars” in Central Asia, twenty years later and with nothing to show, as soon as Joe Biden came to power he closed on August 2021, twenty years after 9/11, the final chapter of those reckless, doomed adventures. Obama had withdrawn all U.S. troops from Iraq ten years earlier, in December of 2011, but pointlessly kept going in Afghanistan; Trump kept that war going, too, in his first term. It fell on Biden to leave Afghanistan in ignominious defeat to the Taliban, following in the trail of previous invaders (the USSR and Great Britain). Studies place the combined direct and long-term price tag for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. It all represented an unmitigated geopolitical and economic disaster of the first order, which set back irretrievably any notion of reasserting U.S. hegemony in Eurasia – the real goal of the wars. The great beneficiary, of course, was China, but also Iran, who would have been “next” in the Bush/Cheney list of countries targeted for “regime change,” as well as other defiant regions in the Global South - especially Latin America, left un-interfered with by the distracted, wounded ex hegemon, coinciding with the continental “Pink Tide” of democratically-elected, antiimperialist regimes.

But by the time Biden pulled out of Central Asia a new beginning in international relations seemed perhaps within reach, if only the U.S. could muster the will to seek and strike a grand bargain for reconstructing the world order along new, post-hegemonic principles of multipolarity and global cooperation to solve the great global problems facing humanity (nuclear proliferation, climate change, pandemics, global inequality, ethnonationalist genocides, lack of a more representative and equitable world governance, the unprecedented challenges posed by A.I.). 

That was the hopeful mood until February 24, 2022, when Russia, after thirty years of NATO provocative expansionism eastward, invaded Ukraine. At first, the entire world repudiated the Russian naked imperialist aggression, voting to condemn it at the U.N. General Assembly (141 votes in favor, 5 against, and 35 abstentions). The moral advantage was on the Western powers.

Very quickly, though, the U.S. lapsed into its old Cold War reflex, rallying all of Europe to not merely pledge support for Ukraine and absorb its millions of refugees, but unwisely, to use the war as a golden opportunity to degrade the Russian military and cut down Russia to a minor power status. This meant pouring enormous military and economic resources, without sending, at much higher expense and risk, any U.S. “boots on the ground.” At first the support for Biden’s response was unanimous in Congress and the public went along. By early 2022, it became clear that the lesson for the U.S. duopoly of those costly endless wars in the first two decades of the 21^st century was to henceforth avoid sending U.S. troops into war but keep playing the same old geopolitical game of big power rivalries, including engaging in “proxy” wars, with allies doing the fighting and dying. Biden was determined to fight and defeat Putin “to the last Ukrainian.” 

Ukraine became the showcase for this new strategic posture. Easygoing Joe turned into a raving imperialist war hawk hellbent on completely defeating Putin, brooking no thought of any negotiated settlement. Early opportunities to negotiate an end to this war were passed over in pursuit of the larger - and unattainable - aim of "dealing with the Russian Bear once and for all." 

That new endless war, of course, opened a political flank of attack for Donald Trump, who quickly exploited the intense isolationism of his base and spreading among the broader, war-weary American electorate, posing as “the only one who could and would end that war quickly” upon returning to power. Biden proved him right that the Democrats would not do it, committed as they were to the longstanding liberal imperialist mindset, while Trump cannily hid his own neoconservative imperialist proclivities well, passing as the “peace candidate” in 2024, promising “no more endless wars.”

The same thing happened with the war in Gaza after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, where the Biden administration proved to be a willing and unconditional accomplice and abettor of Israel's genocidal crimes of war and crimes against humanity, with no end in sight. The ensuing genocide deliberately unleashed onto that strip's dense, trapped population of civilian Palestinians shocked and dismayed the world, making the Russian atrocities in Ukraine pale in comparison. The Arab/Muslim/Jewish base of the Democratic Party was outraged. Biden never reined in the Israelis.

Domestically, it was the same story. The Biden/Harris administration, which never made good on its promise to invest real political capital to legalize the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows in the U.S. - not even the Dreamers -, ended up adopting the same draconian, restrictionist border policies of the Trump 1.0 administration, all of which deeply alienated and infuriated Latino voters, who felt betrayed once again. 

When Harris was asked in which ways she differed from Biden's policies and actions, and she replied she couldn't think of any, she gifted the Trump campaign with another golden opportunity - this time demoralizing and demobilizing Harris's own, multiethnic base. 

With that sort of help by the blundering establishment Democrats, it's no surprise that Trump won the presidency again in 2024, the result of the millions of 2020 Biden voters staying home on election day. I and other analysts had repeatedly sounded the alarm to the tone-deaf Biden Dems, to no avail. Biden’s own stubborn pursuit of a second term only compounded things.

I, of course, was aghast as to what the return of MAGA Trumpism to power meant. I and others had already diagnosed the Trumpist Project 2025 as a fascistic, white supremacist project at home, and a probable return to turbocharged, aggressive imperialism abroad. we knew Trump’s isolationism and pacifism were entirely phony; that his "America First" slogan resembled the Nazi "Germany First" slogan: a revanchist, angry ethnonationalist prelude for an authoritarian, racist mode of home rule and a virulent, aggressive foreign policy abroad.

The Trump 2.0 regime dedicated all of 2025 intensely focused on the domestic front, most intensely on the immigration issue: Unleashing unrestrained and violent hordes of paramilitary and military forces unto the streets of major cities in brutal pursuit of immigrants and infringing on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens; Trump abolished the U.S. refugee program, except for white South Africans; he de-legalized hundreds of thousands of non-citizens of their liminal legal status; he kidnapped and vanished behind the walls of hundreds of for-profit ICE atrocious concentration camps over 70 thousand a day; and he deported about a million immigrants, 77% without any criminal conviction (and among those with convictions half were due to minor infractions) to remote third countries, including Venezuelans, Cubans, and Haitians and others given legal temporary protections under Biden.

But elsewhere in the domestic arena, Musk-chosen minions got busy slashing entire federal departments and agencies; other hatchet men effected hostile takeovers of cultural institutions and approved mass media mergers and acquisitions, cowed universities into abandoning their international and multicultural programs. Trump brazenly and illegally usurped powers reserved to Congress; his buffoonish Secretary of War decimated and purged the armed forces of trans soldiers, female officers and officers of color; and the entire Trump family indulged in a scale of brazen self-dealing and crony capitalism unheard of in the annals of U.S. history. To all this the Supreme Court, stacked with Trump loyalists, turned a blind eye, even if it slapped him down on birthright citizenship and other matters (tariffs). Fatally, the SCOTUS granted him immunity from any crimes he commits while president.

Internationally, the Trump 2.0 regime rampaged all over the economic realm most of its first year, launching an unending, destabilizing, and shifting sequence of tariffs imposed on partners, competitors and rivals alike; it withdrew from 66 international organization and treaties; it terminated USAID and other humanitarian programs. Altogether, it wreaked havoc on both the global and the U.S. economy, producing no visible improvements to Americans’ cost of living. And then there was the so-called "The Twelve-Day War," an air war Israel launched against Iran that lasted from June 13 to June 24 that involved the direct U.S. bombing of nuclear facilities. Its sudden truce was surprising, but it was merely a prelude of what was to come.

Then came the announcement of the new "Donroe Doctrine" in December of 2025. Even prior to that, in September, it began to bomb fishing boats off the coasts of the Caribbean and the Pacific, causing a total death toll to date at 230 fatalities across at least 68 separate drone and missile strikes by the U.S. military, in complete violation of international maritime and U.S. laws. By January 3, 2026, the regime launched a lightening, one-night military assault on Venezuela’s capital, capturing and sequestering its president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife back to the U.S., followed by the announcement that henceforth the U.S. would recognize and deal with the decapitated regime in Venezuela to arrange for its huge oil reserves to flow again and exclusively to the U.S., a process that is ongoing today under extremely predatory and plunderous terms dictated by Washington. The rumblings of an insurrection have already begun to be heard, aggravated by the devastating earthquakes of June 24, the sidelining of all democratic forces, and the continuing deportation of de-legalized Venezuelans from the U.S.

By January 29, the White House announced a total fuel blockade of the island of Cuba, imposing extreme hardships on its 11 million people ever since, with no end in sight. The Trump/Rubio regime has attempted to replicate its Venezuelan template of decapitation/capitulation of the Cuban regime, but with no success. As the "silent genocide" it is imposing on the Cuban people fails to cause a popular insurrection, the threats of U.S. military attacks to achieve regime change have increased. Only the morass in Iran has kept the war hawks like Rubio and Hegseth at bay. The world, from the Pope to the U.N. General Assembly on down, is utterly disgusted by the unprovoked and cruel collective punishment of the Cuban people, but to date no effective international, nor domestic response has been launched in defiance to the U.S. regime’s criminal attack on Cuba. What are the Latino diasporas and the Latin American and other Global South governments waiting for?

Other countries of the Western Hemisphere repeatedly threatened with U.S. military intervention have been Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and Nicaragua. More ominous, and successful, has been the string of open and covert interventions by the Trump 2.0 regime in the electoral processes in Latin America, leading to the establishment of a preponderance of MAGA-aligned regimes in the region (now deemed members of the “Reactionary International”). Only Mexico and Brazil, and of course Cuba, stand unswept by the MAGA tide in the region. 

This stunning aggressive reactivation of the Monroe Doctrine in U.S.-Latin American relations, though spectacular, is fragile and prone to generate resistance by Latin America’s own elites and popular movements, given how association with the U.S. has become unashamedly coerced and yields no tangible results, while intracontinental relations with each other and intercontinental relations with external powerhouses like China and the E.U. can deliver those results.

Regardless, it seemed at the beginning of 2026 that this was the new strategic focus of the U.S. ex hegemon under Trump 2.0: receding from other world arenas and consolidating its sole exclusive domain in its own “backyard.” But on February 28 of this year, flush with a sense of triumph and audacity from the Venezuela flash operation, the Trump administration, egged on by the Netanyahu administration in Israel, attacked Iran again, this time by bombing and killing most of the leadership of the Iranian government - including its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his family. The Israelis convinced Trump and civilian associates that a sustained bombing campaign would provoke in “four or five weeks” an uprising of the Iranian people and the definitive toppling of the regime. The military brass forewarned him it was a fool’s errand.

Not only did that uprising not happened, and the Iranian people rallied in defense of their country against the attackers, but the newly replaced Iranian leadership retaliated effectively, militarily attacking U.S. bases and Gulf states, and cornering the U.S. and all its allies into a new, no-win, endless war via the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the entire world economy, and with that, successfully reshuffled the geopolitics of the entire Persian Gulf region to Iran's advantage.

This war just crossed its six-months mark and the prognosis for when and how the U.S. will end this self-inflicted military, economic, and geopolitical fiasco is bleak. The Iranians know perfectly well that time is on their side and will make sure to punish the Trump cabal politically and extract major concessions never thought possible as the price for ending the conflict. 

Politically, indeed, the war has been an unmitigated disaster for the Trump 2.0 regime. And if in Venezuela things have not yet reached that level of hopeless quagmire, everything points towards that it soon will. What all this means is that the Republicans are bound to be trounced in the upcoming midterm elections in November. Trump is desperately trying to sabotage these elections, as he knows that losing control of Congress will lead to many damning investigations of his criminal actions, if not his downfall.

The deeper problem consists of what will the Democrats do, beyond holding Trump accountable, when they return to controlling Congress, and possibly later in 2029, the White House again. Internationally, what will happen with the U.S.-Israel relation, the U.S.-Cuba relation, the U.S.-Russia relation, the U.S.-China relation, the U.S.-Venezuela relation, and the U.S.-Iran relation? Domestically, what will happen to the appalling state of the immigration issue, the neglected climate change issue, the abysmal housing issue, the unaffordable health care issue, the runaway cost of living issue, the unaffordable education issue? What about restoring women's much eroded rights? Restoring LGBTQ rights? How about checking the unrestrained power of the tech-bros plutocracy running amok with artificial intelligence and mainstream and social media takeovers and consolidation? What about demilitarizing and curtailing the surveillance powers of all current law enforcement in the country, and stopping and reversing the steep erosion of civil liberties of citizens and human rights of immigrants - by far the most poisoned and unaddressed fruits of 9/11 domestically? What about radically revamping the oligarchic political economy that's been ruling over us since the advent of Reaganism, and restoring and even deepening and extending the battered social contract in America?

Does anybody still believe, given the appalling, deeply disappointing records of the past few Democratic administrations and congresses, that this next time around the Democrats will somehow fight for and usher in real change?

My response to this mass delusion is this: wake up! It's the duopoly, stupid!

American democracy is and has been imploding for some time now, under the accumulated dead weight of utter corruption and dysfunctionality. It’s precisely the abysmal failures of the liberal center to effect meaningful change that has turbocharged the rise of the ultra-right forces in the country. We need to overhaul and replace the broken duopoly structures, radically, from its anachronistic and antidemocratic constitutional roots to its present-day high jacking by an insatiable plutocracy.

But who's up for that? Who’s willing to fight the Good Fight? Or shall we just look the other way, as the nation and the world is set on fire by a resurrected fascism of the 21^st century centered on the U.S., a convulsing ex hegemonic power, and pretend we can just go back to business as usual, clinging to our dysfunctional duopoly and paving the way for its final abolition not by us but by an authoritarian Maga fascist state?

Well, I can only reply: have ordinary people had enough already of this recurring downward spiral? What more evidence do they need to act to reclaim their democracy, their country – the goons at their door, their votes cancelled, their basic livelihoods and habitats gone, more endless wars?

I end this postscript to my 2024 essay on the living legacy of 9/11 by asking folks to reflect on these possible retaliation scenarios by people we are now hurting, prompted by recent events:

What would you feel if some Iranian, or Venezuelan, Cuban or Palestinian informal networks of bitterly angry people retaliated violently against the U.S. for the devastating violence their countries, leaders, and peoples have been subjected to by the Trump 2.0 regime? What if that spectacular act of violence involved the loss of innocent American civilian lives here at home, as it did on 9/11? Domestically, what if there was an insurrection of immigrants and/or communities of color?

Would we say, once again, as many did in the aftermath of 9/11/2001 following the deceptive and self-serving but false narrative of the Bush II regime, "they attacked us because they hate our freedom"?

Perhaps the Number One thing the American people at large – which still glorifies militarism and U.S. imperialism – must get rid of, if we are to truly move beyond and heal the trauma of 9/11, is the entrenched notion of exclusive entitlement to do in the world as we wish, without accountability or conceding that any blowback is legitimate and justified. 

It's late in the day, but millions of American folks are still imbued with that sense of American Exceptionalism, that big power chauvinistic ideology that justifies and excuses all our atrocious behaviors in the world, and feeds the unhealthy, messianic notion that we should - and must - run the world, in fulfillment of our Manifest Destiny and exercise of our presumed God-given rights.

For quite some time now, since the end of World War II, the world has rejected a world run by empires and has been trying to move on, without retaliations and through negotiations whenever possible, but with resolute resistance whenever necessary. Some powers have learned the lesson with relative wisdom, though most others have had to learn the lesson the hard way. The United States, elites and people alike, seem to be resistant, despite all their accumulated experience, to learning the deeper lesson of 9/11, the deeper lesson of Vietnam, and today of the dangers of being lured back to unrestrained big power chauvinism and even embrace the fascism it once contributed mightily to defeat.

The imperial afflicted powers among our elites, and our afflicted, bloated national egos running amok at ground level, need a rest. But attaining peace and tranquility can only come about with humility, with a newfound willingness to join – not dominate, not impose on - the rest of the world in the urgent building of a bold new architecture of governance, one based on social harmony and human rights, inclusion, and equity, a nurturing, tolerant global culture containing dynamic contributions from all other cultures, a deeper, more extensive and representative realm of global democracy, a regime of unfettered global human mobility on par with every other freedom – of commerce and investments, of science and technology, of thought – , and a shared, well-regulated, and sustainable economic prosperity.

Ultimately, the deeper lesson of 9/11 and all the endless wars, renewed imperialist rivalries, and resurrected fascist movements it spawn over the past 25 years is this: We live in an era of great systemic chaos, with no consensus for global, or even national, governance, with previous, hard-won social contracts shredded by the voracious accumulation and concentration of capital, with nature depleted and devastated beyond recovery, in a race to the bottom threatening the planet itself.

The epicenter and accelerator of this chaos over the past half-century has been the United States, the last hegemon of the five-hundred-year-old capitalist world-system, itself now in its terminal crisis. With the U.S.’s bipolar world order gone, and its mad quest for empire sinking in the many quicksands it ventured into, it has furiously turned the previously externalized chaos inwardly, an ex-hegemon now politically and socially imploding under its MAGA Fascist Project.

Humanity finds itself in transition to an uncertain future. With so many positive contributions the United States has made to world history and potentially still make, which way the world goes will depend, in no small measure, on whether the U.S. joins the rest of the world in building a better, post-capitalist, more sustainable global social system, or whether it continues to try to prolong it by force and at whatever cost, without even a shred of legitimacy or any lasting chance of success.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. called on the American people, a year before his assassination in 1968, to “join the world revolution of values.” We as a nation did not listen and did not learn the lessons of Vietnam, not even after 9/11 and the disastrous endless wars we launched. Now we are at it again, furiously marching backward. It’s long overdue we turn around and join the world moving forward. Others have done so. What are we waiting for?

All together now.