Trump uses 9/11 grief to fuel a new appetite for war

By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin · September 11, 2026

The image of 2,977 lights rising over New York Harbor—one for every soul lost on that Tuesday morning a quarter-century ago—was a rare moment of grace.

The image of 2,977 lights rising over New York Harbor—one for every soul lost on that Tuesday morning a quarter-century ago—was a rare moment of grace. But as the lights faded, the political machinery of the United States returned to its favorite habit: harvesting national trauma to fuel a new appetite for war.

The 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks was not a day of collective healing, but a study in strategic division. While the former presidents and Vice-President JD Vance gathered at Ground Zero, President Donald Trump chose the Pentagon, effectively partitioning the day’s grief. This was no mere scheduling quirk. By skipping New York, Trump signaled his disdain for a city currently led by Zohran Mamdani, its first Muslim mayor. As reported by Dawn and Free Malaysia Today, Mamdani’s very presence at the memorial was treated as a provocation, with a campaign spearheaded by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post gathering over 100,000 signatures demanding he stay away.

To target a democratically elected mayor because of his faith on a day meant to honor victims of terrorism is more than just a political skirmish; it is an attempt to redefine American citizenship as something contingent on religious purity. It is the same logic of exclusion that has haunted the periphery of the American project for decades, now weaponized at the altar of remembrance.

The Machinery of Eternal Vigilance

At the Pentagon, the rhetoric shifted from the sorrow of the past to the targets of the future. President Donald Trump did not just promise that "we will never, ever forget"; he insisted that "that’s why we fight today." This is the pivot. The grief of the families is being used as a moral shield for a foreign policy of aggression.

The most alarming voice of the day belonged to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. According to The Guardian and the Times of India, Hegseth spoke of a struggle against "evil" that continues "until judgment day," boasting that the US is still "sending terrorists... to hell, and tankers to the bottom of the ocean." He ended with a chilling, biblical invitation to a new generation of warriors: "send me."

The most capable advocate for this posture would argue that the world remains a predatory place and that "eternal vigilance" is the only insurance against another catastrophe. They would point to the Islamic Republic of Iran—which Trump labeled the "world's number one sponsor of terror"—and argue that the threat of a nuclear-armed theocracy justifies any level of preemptive pressure. They would say that strength is the only language the "enemies of freedom" understand.

But this argument ignores the long record. We have seen this cycle before. The September 11 attacks in 2001 established a baseline of trauma that was used to justify two decades of interventionism, a period that only concluded with the chaotic Withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The "strength" promised during the 2024 United States presidential election is not a new strategy; it is the old "War on Terror" rebranded for a new decade. When the state defines "vigilance" as the permanent possibility of war, it doesn't create security—it creates a conveyor belt of conflict.

The Architecture of a Permanent Shock

This is the exact mechanism of the Attack on Washington. In 1941, a sudden, catastrophic strike on a symbolic center of power didn't just trigger a military response; it fundamentally shifted the American national security psyche, moving the country from a posture of neutrality to one of global hegemony. The 9/11 attacks functioned identically, creating a state of permanent emergency that allowed the executive branch to bypass norms and rewrite the rules of engagement.

The tragedy of the 25th anniversary is that the "emergency" is being kept on life support. By framing the Islamic Republic of Iran as the inevitable successor to Al-Qaeda, the Trump administration is attempting to trigger a second Attack on Washington-style shift—one where the US doesn't wait for an attack but uses the memory of one to justify a preemptive strike.

While the politicians played this game of geopolitical chess, the actual cost of the day remained grounded in the dirt and the lungs of New Yorkers. The Mamdani administration recently released over 170,000 documents suggesting that the city's residents were misled about air quality safety after the towers fell. This is the real record: while the state was busy projecting power abroad, it was lying to its own people about the poison in their air.

The numbers are staggering. Beyond the 2,977 killed in the initial attacks, more than 9,400 others have since died from 9/11-related illnesses. The New York City Fire Department lost 343 members that day, and 600 more have died since. These are the people to whom we owe a debt—not the "warriors" Hegseth is calling for, but the first responders who were betrayed by the very institutions that now use their sacrifice as a campaign slogan.

The Betrayal of the Sacred Oath

When Caroline Ogonowski spoke of her father and the grandson who will never know him, she was speaking of a void that no amount of military posture can fill. The 20th anniversary in 2011 had attempted to frame the tragedy as a unifying national experience. But in 2026, the unity is a facade. The divide between the federal government’s rhetoric of "victory" and the local reality of a Muslim mayor facing a hate campaign shows a nation that has forgotten how to grieve without looking for a target.

The trajectory is clear. The Trump administration will continue to use the ghost of 9/11 to intensify pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran, framing any diplomatic nuance as a betrayal of the fallen. They will continue to use the identity of leaders like Zohran Mamdani to signal to their base that the "enemy" is not just abroad, but within.

We are witnessing the transformation of a memorial into a mobilization center. By fusing the memory of the victims with the desire for new wars, the current administration is not honoring the dead; it is conscripting them. To claim that we "fight today" because of what happened twenty-five years ago is to admit that the US has learned nothing from the ruins of Iraq or the collapse of Kabul. It is a confession that the state prefers the adrenaline of the hunt to the hard, patient work of maintaining a peace that doesn't require a body count.

The 25th anniversary proves that for the American power structure, the tragedy of 9/11 is too useful to ever truly be over. They do not want the wounds to heal because a scar is a poor excuse for a war, but an open sore is a mandate for a missile.

Trump uses 9/11 grief to fuel a new appetite for war

The Machinery of Eternal Vigilance

The Architecture of a Permanent Shock

The Betrayal of the Sacred Oath

Sources