Just shy of twenty years after hijackers with Saudi government links carried out the September 11 attacks, the senseless Afghanistan war finally ended this August. As Americans watched tens of thousands of US and allied personnel flee the country in the wake of a rapid takeover by the very same group US forces had deposed at the start of the century, many were aghast at the aggressive media campaign to restart a war that had achieved nothing except take lives and stuff corporate pockets.

How, having just witnessed the Washington foreign policy establishment’s monumental failure in the country, and having covered firsthand the war’s aimless carnage for years, could the press be eager for more of it?

The answer lies twenty years ago in the weeks after the attack that started it all, where this same media — the same institutions, nationalist worldview, and even the same high-profile figures — were instrumental in sending the US military into Afghanistan to begin with.