Trump used the 9/11 memorial to shield an unpopular war on Iran
By Adele Rutherford · Reporting from Atlanta ·
There is a specific kind of desperation that manifests as a sudden, aggressive piety.
# The High Cost of Borrowed Legitimacy
On September 11, 2026, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood at the Pentagon for the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. They didn't just observe the tragedy; they tried to weaponize it. The Guardian reported the administration used the ceremony to defend a war against Iran—a conflict that began in February and remains unpopular with most Americans.
Trump told the crowd, “Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago,” then pivoted to the campaign to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Hegseth was more aggressive, claiming the US had “laid waste” to Iran and was “sending tankers to the bottom of the ocean where they belong.” He said the US military now controls the Strait of Hormuz, though Al Jazeera notes Iran has frozen all commercial shipping in the waterway since the war started.
The administration is spending trust it hasn't earned. By welding a "sacred oath" to a war of attrition, Trump aims to make the conflict unassailable. He wants any criticism of the war to feel like a betrayal of the dead.
The Vietnam Blueprint
The Vietnam War provides the map for using patriotism to sustain a war the public hates. Once the tide turned in the jungles of Southeast Asia, the government stopped arguing tactical wins or the viability of the South Vietnamese state. Instead, they claimed that withdrawing meant abandoning the free world to communism. They stopped debating the effectiveness of the draft and started questioning the loyalty of the protesters, framing dissent as a betrayal of the soldiers in the field.
Trump uses the same logic. When he declares, “We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory,” he offers an ultimatum rather than a legal or strategic reason. This mirrors the 2020 presidential election, when the administration invoked the survival of the republic to justify challenging certified vote counts, pressuring election officials, and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.
Hegseth said the struggle continues “until judgment day.” This isn't a military goal; it's a religious one. When the target is "judgment day," the body count, the bill, and the closed shipping lanes in Hormuz no longer matter. This is the danger of the Vietnam model: moving the goalposts from a political objective to a cosmic battle between good and evil removes the war from accountability. The administration showed this appetite for escalation in 2018, using a high-profile address to push the US toward missile strikes in Syria.
Why ignore the Saudis?
The ceremony's most telling moment happened in the pews. Terry Strada, whose husband died on 9/11, reminded the President that the "war on terror" ignores certain facts. She urged Trump to “tell the Saudis to stop lying,” arguing that Saudi Arabia cannot be a US ally while denying its role in the 2001 attacks.
This is the contradiction. The administration invokes 9/11 to fight Iran but stays silent on the Saudi involvement Strada highlighted. They apply the "terrorist" label to the enemy of the moment while shielding the ally that provides the world's oil and buys billions in US-made fighter jets. This selective justice mirrors the 2003 Iraq War, where 9/11 trauma justified a preemptive invasion based on the lie of weapons of mass destruction.
The administration wants a state of constant crisis. From the 2019 missile strikes on Iran to the current blockade of the Strait, the pattern holds: use a flashpoint to expand executive power.
The administration will likely keep escalating in the Strait of Hormuz, believing the memory of 9/11 shields them from the political cost of an unpopular war. But trust is a finite resource. Using a cemetery as a campaign stop for a war of attrition does not honor the dead; it recruits them into a conflict they never chose. This does not produce victory, but erodes the public's faith in the state.