Almost instantly after the 9/11 attacks, the US launched a bloody war in Afghanistan. There was a bloodier one on the horizon. Less than two years later, a second war would be launched in Iraq—a nation said, despite lack of evidence, to be hiding “weapons of mass destruction” and “harboring Al-Qaeda terrorists.” A nation that, in the days that followed, would be sunk into a bloody sectarian war spurred by an illegal American crusade that left millions dead, and by subsequent proxy “conflicts within Islam” that continue to claim the lives of innocents.

XREF: Connects to broader literature on pre-9/11 US foreign policy, Iraq War justifications, and the post-9/11 'war on terror' narrative.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 262