The global war on terror beat back organized terrorism significantly in the 25 years since American forces invaded Afghanistan, but by most measures, that 20-year war and subsequent U.S. war in Iraq were costly failures in ways that left the region and its people worse off.
Clearly, the United States is safer from attack than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, when members of al-Qaida who trained in Afghanistan carried out the horrific suicide terrorist attacks that slaughtered 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Credit goes to successive Republican and Democratic administrations.
But the conduct of America’s longest war and the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2021 let the Taliban return to power and revive its repressive Islamic regime, bringing an uneasy peace but also a heavily armed extremist government, economic hardship, a loss of freedom and a deplorable ban on girls over 12 getting an education. The recent U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, another endless war, left the region more perilous and empowered Iran to claim success there.
“I think the threat to the U.S. from Afghanistan is much lower than it was in 2001,” said Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, D.C. “Is it zero? No, but we can’t be everywhere at once.”
“We didn’t have another 9/11, and there was a lot of work that was done quietly to prevent more terrorist attacks,” Weinstein, a former Marine who served in Afghanistan, said in an interview. “But I don’t think it’s necessary for Americans to be deployed all over the world to prevent terrorism.”
Former President George W. Bush launched the war on Oct. 7, 2001 that ousted the Taliban from power. Almost 10 years later, then-President Barack Obama dispatched Navy SEALs to storm a compound in northern Pakistan on May 2, 2011, and they killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Joe Biden as president authorized a CIA drone strike in Kabul a year after the U.S. pullout that killed bin Laden’s successor, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri, co-conspirator in conceiving the 9/11 attacks and global terrorist plans.
Al-Qaida has “declining relevance as a global movement,” according to one United Nations monitoring group, but U.S. and Western intelligence officials assess it still has training camps and safe houses in Afghanistan under Taliban protection. Thankfully, for now, it is said to be focused more on regional activities than planning grand, far-away attacks on the U.S. and its allies.
At the end of last month, American troops withdrew from Iraq following the deadliest war of the 21st century for U.S. forces. That war, launched in 2003 as part of the war on terror, is widely considered a disastrous strategic mistake, because Iraq had no significant links to al-Qaida and no terrorist weapons of mass destruction. Most experts agree the U.S. mishandled post-invasion planning.
The courageous work of U.S. and allied ground troops from 37 countries toppled Sunni Muslim Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and installed a Shiite-led government to help fight an insurgency until the first phase ended in 2009. American forces later returned to Iraq from 2014 to 2017 to put down Sunni Islamic State militants, but the Iraq war severely damaged America’s reputation and emboldened U.S. enemies in the region.
While the terrorist threat to the U.S. is much lower now and over-the-horizon anti-terrorism strategies have been effective, the overall lessons of the war on terror are that military force alone cannot guarantee the success of U.S. policies or the safety of Americans. It must be combined with engagement, economic power and diplomatic leverage. President Donald Trump has learned that the hard way with his ill-conceived war of choice in Iran.
Sadly, bin Laden got some of what he wanted when his monstrous terrorist plot forced the U.S. to dispatch American forces to the region, and thousands were lost in battles. According to one study by Brown University in 2021, the cost of the U.S.-led global war on terror was an estimated $8 trillion and some 900,000 deaths of military and civilian casualties on all sides. Of that total, estimated cost of operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan was $2.3 trillion, and another $2.1 trillion was committed for Iraq and Syria.
More than 7,000 U.S. service members lost their lives in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, and more than 53,000 were wounded. And $2.2 trillion of the total cost is designated for future medical care and disability payments over the coming decades. The war on terror and counterterror operations continue in more than 80 countries today, the Brown study said.
Terrorism remains a significant global threat, according to the Global Terrorism Index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace, headquartered in Sydney, but there are some positive trends. This year, the GTI reported that the largest declines in terrorist activity by percentage since 2007 have been in Iraq (99%) and Afghanistan (95%). In fact, deaths from terrorism have fluctuated significantly since 2007, when records started for the GTI, peaking at 10,882 in 2015 and reaching a low of 5,582 last year. Most global terrorism incidents have shifted from the Middle East and South Asia to Africa, according to the U.N. committee charged with monitoring the sanctions regime for terrorism.
Yes, things are calm from Kabul to Kandahar, but al-Qaida and other terrorist groups still operate in Afghanistan. The U.S. needs to shift its strategy to reengage there in more meaningful ways than hostage negotiations. The real policy disaster was less the chaotic pullout of American forces in August 2021 but rather the polices that led to it with the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, when the U.S. started pursuing a war without end that America could not win.
The Trump administration and its successors should focus now on cleaning up the mess America left behind and making small gains where possible through targeted diplomacy, not nation building, for now, as the Quincy Institute’s Weinstein advocates.
That means engaging with the Taliban’s de facto government and using humanitarian aid and economic leverage to make progress — picking up where military victory proved impossible. America still needs a regional, over-the-horizon counterterrorism strategy to protect the homeland. That might be difficult, sure, but it’s a must.
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Storer H. Rowley is a former national editor and foreign correspondent for the baiduhai. He teaches journalism and communication at Northwestern University.
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