In a newly-released video, the Taliban, which was associated with al Qaeda at the time al Qaeda murdered roughly 3,000 Americans in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, blames America for the events of that day.
The video, titled, “Victorious Force 3,” as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal reports, is one of a number of short films celebrating Taliban units that launched suicide attacks and was broadcast on Afghanistan’s national RTA television station. The narrator for the film states that the United States is the true “terrorist” party while adding that the 9/11 “attacks were the result of the United States’ policy of aggression against the Muslim world.” He also claims that the U.S. and its allies “launched a military invasion without considering the reasonable stance of the Islamic Emirate on the issue.”
“The Taliban has never accepted responsibility for harboring and working with al Qaeda prior to 9/11. The two remain intertwined to this day,” the Long War Journal points out.
Only weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Taliban founder Mullah Omar, who would not hand over Osama Bin Laden to America, said in an interview, “America has created the evil that is attacking it,” adding that this “evil will not disappear even if I die and Osama [bin Laden] dies and others die.”
The Long War Journal adds:
In mid-2019, for instance, the Taliban claimed that 9/11 was a “heavy slap on their dark faces,” adding it “was the consequence of their interventionist policies and not our doing.” … In more recent weeks, the Taliban’s spokesman has claimed that there is “no proof” Osama bin Laden was even responsible for 9/11. This is an obvious lie, as al Qaeda itself has repeatedly boasted of its responsibility for the hijackings.
The narrator celebrates the Unites States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan: “Praise be to Allah, the sincere struggle of the Afghans has paid off, the invaders are flowing from Afghanistan and their puppet regime is collapsed.”
The 9/11 Memorial noted:
“9/11” is shorthand for four coordinated terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, that occurred on the morning of September 11, 2001. Nineteen terrorists from al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes, deliberately crashing two of the planes into the upper floors of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center complex and a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The Twin Towers ultimately collapsed because of the damage sustained from the impacts and the resulting fires.
After learning about the other attacks, passengers on the fourth hijacked plane, Flight 93, fought back, and the plane was crashed into an empty field in western Pennsylvania about 20 minutes by air from Washington, D.C. The attacks killed 2,977 people from 93 nations: 2,753 people were killed in New York; 184 people were killed at the Pentagon; and 40 people were killed on Flight 93. …Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan. They operated training camps there, and openly lived in the country with the support of the Taliban, an Islamist group that ruled the country.
The U.S. State Department reported that Bin Laden said after the attacks, “… we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all … due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.”
The State Department also stated:
The world has responded with an unprecedented coalition against international terrorism. In the first 100 days of the war, President George W. Bush increased America’s homeland security and built a worldwide coalition that: Began to destroy al-Qaeda’s grip on Afghanistan by driving the Taliban from power. Disrupted al-Qaeda’s global operations and terrorist financing networks. Destroyed al-Qaeda terrorist training camps. Helped the innocent people of Afghanistan recover from the Taliban’s reign of terror. … In Afghanistan, we have seen al-Qaeda’s vision for the world. The leadership of al-Qaeda had great influence in Afghanistan and was supported by the Taliban regime.