Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, served as undersecretary of defense for policy from 2001 to 2005 and is the author of “War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism.”
9/11 is misery. It is horror, with people jumping from twin towers windows. And it is grateful amazement at the self-sacrifice of first responders. On that day 25 years ago this week, fright, rage and disorienting shock made it hard to think straight.
But those of us on President George W. Bush’s national security team had to think as straight as we could about what to do. In the days after the attack, the team reached general agreement on certain points.
First, the Sept. 11 attacks were more than a crime. A global jihadist network was at war with America. Its leaders boasted of their role in destroying the Soviet Union and intended to destroy the United States, too. 9/11 was not when the war began. But it was the day that most Americans discovered they were in it.
Second, we had entered a new era of terrorism. Terrorism had long been understood as political theater: shock people, gain attention, win support. Palestinian groups provided the model: Hijack planes, shoot up airport terminals, attack Israeli school buses — killing a few hundred people over several years — and by 1974 the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization is addressing the U.N. General Assembly. The goal was large — to destroy Israel — but the violence was relatively small-scale. The idea was to influence spectators, and perhaps win their sympathy.
The 9/11 attackers had a different idea. They wanted mass destruction. The attacks — four hijacked planes crashing within 77 minutes — resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths. Had the attackers possessed more destructive means, they would have killed more people. U.S. officials therefore focused on the danger that jihadists might acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Third, the enemy was not one organization but a network of terrorist groups and state sponsors. States provided safe haven, funds, training and weapons. Fearing that states could give terrorists a shortcut to weapons of mass destruction, U.S. officials noted that North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria — principal WMD proliferation risks — were also on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Fourth, repeated 9/11-scale attacks would endanger the freedom and openness of U.S. society. Liberty and security are always in tension. If Americans felt increasingly unsafe, they would demand stronger government action, even at some expense to their rights.
Critics accused officials of being too willing to curtail civil liberties in the name of security. What I saw was the opposite: concern that repeated catastrophic attacks would create irresistible public pressure for measures adverse to freedom.
As some of us put it, we had to change the way we lived or change the way the terrorists lived. To preserve an open society at home, we had to act strongly abroad to prevent follow-on attacks.
That was the heart of the global war on terrorism.
The war’s results are judged largely with reference to the regime-change campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. A small U.S. force helped Afghan rebels overthrow the Taliban. An interim government, a new constitution and national elections were then promptly organized. But the multinational reconstruction effort fell short in nearly every sector, and Afghanistan failed to achieve political stability.
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq ousted Saddam Hussein, an important and good result, but the United States made major mistakes: erroneous intelligence assessments that Iraq possessed WMD stockpiles, a prolonged occupation government, slow development of Iraqi armed forces and ineffective counterinsurgency strategies retained too long. The fighting lasted longer than was generally expected, and it had higher costs, especially in U.S. military dead and wounded. Many Americans came to see the entire effort there as a failure.
That view strengthened isolationism. As pressure to retrench intensified, the United States committed itself to withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2020 and completed the exit in 2021, helping trigger the Kabul government’s collapse and the Taliban’s return to power. Many Americans came to regard the Afghanistan campaign as a failure, too.
There is much to criticize in the war on terrorism. On its main objective, however, the success has been remarkable: For 25 years, our enemies have failed to carry out another 9/11-scale attack on the United States. Terrorists have not exploded skyscrapers, stadiums and power plants across the country. They have not transformed America into a police state. The post-9/11 response initiated by the Bush team deserves a great deal of credit for that.
The years since 9/11 have reinforced the eternal verity that failure breeds failure — and quitting in a way that looks like defeat can be as damaging as defeat itself.
Osama bin Laden depicted the United States as weak by invoking Vietnam and the 1984 withdrawal from Lebanon. Saddam calculated similarly. Captured Iraqi records and postwar interviews showed that he saw the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo as evidence that America was unwilling to take casualties. He therefore discounted U.S. threats to overthrow him. Such perceptions matter. Deterrence works only if the people to be deterred take the threats seriously.
Historians will continue to reassess all of this. Meanwhile, the past quarter-century poses basic questions about threats and war.
When should U.S. presidents act against national security threats? How should they account for intelligence that is inevitably incomplete and often wrong?
How should presidents counter well-resourced ideological enemies? Are there good options short of regime change? When, if ever, is regime change warranted?
If America overthrows a government, should it try to put a better one in its place? Does it necessarily — or ever — have an interest in democracy spreading abroad? In Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush was committed to helping establish non-tyrannical, perhaps democratic, governments that would not again threaten the United States or oppress their own people.
Was that a strategic mistake?
The cases of Germany and Japan suggested that successful reconstruction could enormously benefit the defeated countries, their regions and the United States. But World War II ended with enemy surrenders and organized resistance crushed. Afghanistan and Iraq were different. The Taliban survived and regrouped in Pakistan. Saddam’s regime disappeared, but former members of it helped create a Sunni insurgency. Also, Iran funded, trained and supplied Shiite militias that fought U.S. forces and the new Iraqi authorities.
Afghanistan and Iraq both improved to the point where a relatively small U.S. force could help secure the new governments at comparatively low cost in U.S. casualties. But neither conflict ended once and for all. Impatience with “endless wars” fed pressure to disengage. Afghanistan’s government was routed as the U.S. withdrawal proceeded. Regarding Iraq, advocates of a U.S. pullout accentuated the negative, but, despite its many ills, the country is no longer under Saddam’s tyranny. Its government holds competitive elections, is not a U.S. enemy and does not threaten its neighbors.
Is criticism of “endless wars” well grounded? It reflects understandable frustration, but can distort reality by implying that peace is the normal condition and wars short-lived anomalies. Ending U.S. participation in a war does not necessarily end the conflict or danger. The Cold War lasted roughly half a century and ended only as the Soviet empire and then the Soviet Union collapsed. America cannot always control whether it is at war.
Does anyone object to domestic crime-fighting as an “endless war”? People do not expect theft, rape and murder to disappear and allow police to turn in their badges and go home. So long as dangerous criminals exist, societies must defend themselves. The logic is similar in world affairs. A self-defense effort is not unnecessary just because it lacks a foreseeable end date. Dropping a necessary effort will not produce peace, only an enemy with a freer hand.
Even appreciating the war on terrorism’s benefits, it is fair to ask whether the United States overinvested in Afghanistan and Iraq at the expense of defenses against other state threats, especially from China, Russia and Iran. Strategists must keep sight of problems down the road. History never ends — at least it hasn’t so far.
An essential lesson of Sept. 11 is that perils grow when enemies conclude that America lacks the will, capability or staying power to defend itself. The war on terrorism helped prevent the follow-on attacks widely expected after 9/11, but terrorist threats persist — from Sunni jihadist groups and from Iran and the groups it supports. The United States also faces security challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. Others will arise.
Staying power is essential to America’s safety, and three of its key ingredients are:
Love of country. Military strength depends heavily on morale, and morale on a sense that one’s cause is just. Americans should understand why their country is worth defending.
Weapons — in ample quantities. Recent missile and drone wars have revived the old truth that quantity can have a quality all its own. America needs deep stocks of munitions, missile-defense interceptors and counter-drone systems before a crisis makes it urgent to have them.
Resolve. The United States needs leaders willing to do the right thing for the right reason and keep doing it, if necessary, when costs mount and popular applause tapers off.
Ronald Reagan put the grander purpose this way: “Freedom is not the property of one generation; it’s the obligation of this and every generation. It’s our duty to protect it and expand it and pass it undiminished to those still unborn.” Americans who lived through 9/11 learned that lesson the hard way. The question on this anniversary is whether we will do our duty — or require the next generation to learn it the hard way, too.
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