5 min readSep 13, 2026 03:30 PM IST
First published on: Sep 11, 2026 at 01:09 PM IST
The savagery of the terrorist attacks against the US by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, was juxtaposed against the cloudless skies of a gorgeous late summer day. Against that azure sky and the elegant skyline of Lower Manhattan, facing being burned alive as the flames rose before the towers collapsed, desperate men and women chose instead to take control of the last few moments of their lives by hurling themselves to their deaths. Then the Pentagon was attacked, followed by the plane that disappeared over Pennsylvania. 2,977 innocent souls were murdered that day.
The country palpably changed in an instant. America had a choice of how to respond. It could hunt down the al-Qaeda leadership, killing those it could not capture and destroying their camps in Afghanistan. Or the United States could launch a major invasion of Afghanistan, remove the ruling Taliban from power, occupy the country, and attempt to rebuild the state. When George W Bush stood atop the rubble in the heart of the US financial capital and vowed the perpetrators would soon “hear from all of us,” major military preparations were well underway. That too was palpable. Twenty-five years on, there has not been a single day that the US has not been in conflict. Congress’s 2001 Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (“AUMF”) remains in force today. Every president since, through Donald Trump’s second term, has used force pursuant to this AUMF. America is now rearing its second generation that has never known a moment when the US was not at war somewhere. Since the burden of military service is borne almost exclusively by the working class, it is easy to keep the military machinery functioning.
Bush set the country’s ethos in the aftermath of 9/11 with his famous declaration, “You’re either with us or against us.” That remains a useful prism through which to assess much of US policy even today. This worldview has no room for subtlety. It fails to distinguish between enemies who mean to do the country harm and obnoxious actors who are nevertheless not an actual threat to vital US interests. Rather than just destroying al-Qaeda, the US spent 20 years fighting in Afghanistan. Yet in the end, Donald Trump agreed with the Taliban to withdraw the US from the country, an agreement that Joseph Biden executed. The Taliban have since been back in power. It cost $2.3 trillion, and nearly 2,500 US soldiers died. At least 160,000 Afghans were killed.
The same “us/them” dichotomy led the US to similar blunders in Iraq. Multiple insurgent groups arose, including al-Qaeda. Domestic insurgent groups also arose. Saddamists — supporters of Saddam Hussein — wanted to restore the previous regime. Al-Qaeda wanted to destroy the American project. But there were Iraqi nationalists who resented the American presence and who had a patriotic agenda that could have formed the basis of negotiations. Other groups centred around former army officers who went into insurgency after US forces shot and killed former officers peacefully demanding employment after the US dissolved the Iraqi armed forces and cashiered them without pensions. I witnessed these protests myself.
US policy failed to distinguish between insurgents who had a negotiable political agenda and those who did not. I understood: These insurgents were all “against us.” For instance, some consisted of Sunni tribes that feared marginalisation. At the time, I was legal adviser to a member of the Iraqi Governing Council Presidency. I told the American administrator in Baghdad that Saddam Hussein had kept the loyalty of the Sunni tribes by bribing them with cash and Chevrolet Suburbans. He told me that America did not do such things. Years later, during counter-insurgency operations, Gen David Petraeus began to pay the Sunni tribes in return for their cooperation. It worked — but only after the deaths of countless Iraqis and thousands of Americans. Once I became ambassador representing Iraq at the United Nations, I saw repeated examples of the with us/against us dichotomy.
And so I object to America’s lawless campaign of sinking the boats of alleged drug dealers without due process in Latin American waters, a militarisation of what should be a police action. To object is to be accused of supporting drug dealers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) officers, dressed in paramilitary style, without any identifying symbol of law enforcement, and hiding their faces, target and shoot unarmed US citizens in the head with absolute impunity. Protest and the President of the United States accuse you of favouring “terrorists” who are “invading our country.” Similarly, to object to the unlawful US actions in Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba is to be accused of supporting tyrants.
The September 11 attacks changed America forever. They have normalised the “forever wars” that Trump promised to end, even as he has launched another in Iran. It normalised a constant state of war, albeit under the radar since there is no universal conscription. If the September 11 attacks changed the US into a militarised, lawless state, the question arises: Who really won the war on terror?
The writer is the Michael A and Laurie Burns McRobbie Professor in Global Strategic Studies and Founding Director of the Centre for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University, Bloomington. He was the Iraqi ambassador and deputy permanent representative to the UN from 2004 to 2010
FILE — First responders work at ground zero after the Sept.11 attacks, Sept. 12, 2001, in New York. Americans are looking back on the horror and legacy of 9/11, gathering Monday, Sept. 11, 2023, at memorials, firehouses, city halls and elsewhere to observe the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett, File) 
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