Debate Over 9/11 Victims and Legacy on Anniversary
Left 50%
Center 0%
Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people in attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, and a hijacked flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. On the 20th anniversary, September 11, 2021, Michigan physician Abdul El-Sayed posted that he mourned those roughly 3,000 deaths, 6,000 injuries, and New York's destruction, which he said were "perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith," and that the next day he would mourn roughly 1 million lives, millions of injuries, and destruction in three countries "perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country." In September 2026, during the 25th anniversary of the attacks and El-Sayed's Democratic campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from Michigan, that 2021 post was recirculated. The recirculation triggered a public argument over whether 9/11 remembrance should stay centered on those killed that day or also include deaths from the subsequent U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and related conflicts.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage makes the anniversary about whether Americans should accept a Senate candidate's pairing of New York's dead with later war dead. Right-leaning coverage never mentions that candidate or that pairing. El-Sayed's 2021 post, carried by Slate, mourns 3K lives in New York. Right-leaning coverage does not discuss the tweet, the wars, or any death toll. The left piece is simply more complete on the political fight. The right piece does not enter it.
Left-leaning coverage leads with a call to accept El-Sayed's characterization of the day. Right-leaning coverage leads with the original dead and a line that Americans can choose anew. One side opens on a politician's wording. The other opens on the victims and never reaches the tweet.
None of the coverage asks how 9/11 families want the anniversary talked about when a candidate pairs their dead with war dead abroad.
Bottom line
A National Review reader never learns the anniversary fight is about Abdul El-Sayed's 2021 tweet; a Slate reader never sees a memorial frame that ignores him.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Abdul El-Sayed's Sept. 11, 2021 tweet mourning 3K NYC lives then ~1M lives in 3 countries
- An estimated 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed
- Post-9/11 wars came at a cost of $1.6 trillion
- An additional 3.5 million died from disease, malnutrition, or destroyed infrastructure
- Anniversary framed as a moment Americans can choose anew
The Left View
Slate argued that by now Americans "should all be able to accept" El-Sayed's 2021 characterization, and treated the recirculation as a campaign ritual in which old tweets, "some badly out of context," were used to define a Muslim progressive candidate. The article held that recognizing "the bloody result of America's post-9/11 conflicts, and especially its shambolic war of choice in Iraq, does not take away from the grief and respect owed to those who were killed," and that the Iraq War was "a stain on the legacies of innocent people murdered by terrorists" whose lives and Americans' grief were "cynically manipulated" to attack a country unconnected to 9/11. It cited estimates of more than 2,000 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan and nearly 4,500 in Iraq, about 200,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, nearly half a million civilian deaths from direct violence across several countries, and 3.5 million additional deaths from war-related disease and infrastructure collapse. It said the anniversary "should be a day for grief and memory," but that on adjacent days "much of the blame" should be laid on the George W. Bush administration, which it said had "almost totally escaped any consequence for their lies, their recklessness, and what that all wrought."
The Right View
National Review titled its anniversary piece "The Victims of 9/11 Deserved Better" and opened, "On this anniversary, we can choose anew." That framing presented remembrance of those killed on September 11 as an unmet obligation to the dead, and treated the anniversary as a choice about whether to honor them on their own terms rather than recast the day around later wars and political critique.
Our Take (balanced)
The left's strongest argument is that mourning later war dead does not diminish 9/11's victims: Slate's evidence is the scale of post-9/11 civilian and military casualties and the Iraq invasion's reliance on weapons-of-mass-destruction claims that were not borne out, which it calls cynical use of 9/11 grief. The right's strongest argument is that those killed that day were owed a form of remembrance that centers them; National Review's title treats anything less as a failure to give the victims their due. The unresolved tension is whether the anniversary's meaning is exhausted by honoring the people murdered on September 11, or whether it also requires public accounting for the wars launched in their name.
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