Ten Years After 9/11, Sadness, Triumphs, And A War Without End
U.S. forces have killed Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein and his regime are history. The Arab Spring has delivered an eloquent rejection of the forces of jihadist violence. The appeal of holy war against the West has faded.
And yet, a full decade after the fateful day of September 11, 2001, all-out victory in the so-called "war on terror" remains as elusive as ever. The United States and its allies have scored some important wins. But the chain of events set in train that fateful day has yet to find a satisfying end.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban movement, stripped of power by a combined U.S.-Afghan onslaught in November 2001, is once again resurgent. The government of President Hamid Karzai, installed with U.S. help in early 2002, is pursuing power-sharing talks with Mullah Mohammad Omar's guerillas.
In Iraq, where the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein from power, the civil war that threatened to tear the country apart has ebbed. But stable government and security for all of the country's citizens remain distant goals.
And in the United States itself, a sense of relief that the country has lived through 10 years without another mass-casualty terrorist attack mingles with chagrin about the costs -- economic, political, and individual -- of a global war against a shadowy enemy.
Michael Mandelbaum, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University and one of America's leading foreign-policy thinkers, says that one of the most serious consequences of the 9/11 attacks was that they diverted the attention of U.S. leaders from urgent domestic priorities.
The United States could have responded to the attacks in ways that would have allowed it to devote its resources to reforming health care and education, modernizing infrastructure, and otherwise preparing itself to respond to the rise of global economic competition.
"One of the major challenges is the deficits that the federal government is running, and they have been aggravated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for which the country has not paid," Mandelbaum says. "We have borrowed to finance these wars, and this is really the first time in American history that the country has not raised taxes in order to pay for wars, and that is extremely unfortunate."
A War Without End?
Many Americans, fatigued by a decade of grim headlines, have since tuned out coverage of events in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the growing apathy has not stanched the casualties. More than 6,000 members of the U.S. military have died in the two wars, while some 43,000 others have suffered often incapacitating wounds.
But no one can say when the fighting will end -- particularly in Afghanistan, where the United States is still in the process of handing over responsibility for the country's security to the increasingly beleaguered Karzai government.
Meanwhile, say analysts, Al-Qaeda -- or what's left of it -- is already relocating to new havens in Yemen or Somalia.
So has it all been worth it? We are probably still too close to events to know for sure. Some analysts argue that the United States has not served its own interests by devoting such a large share of resources to the pursuit of Al-Qaeda. Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins says that the rise of China and other Asian economies over the past decade poses far greater challenges to the United States' place in the world than anything happening in the Middle East.
"After September 11 we devoted ourselves to chasing the losers from globalization when the real challenge internationally in the future will come from the winners," Mandelbaum says. "The Middle East is important for a variety of reasons but not because it's a center of economic growth and potential military power. That, however, is true of East Asia."
A lot has happened over the past 10 years. But the story of the post-9/11 era is still far from over.
U.S. forces have killed Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein and his regime are history. The Arab Spring has delivered an eloquent rejection of the forces of jihadist violence. The appeal of holy war against the West has faded.
And yet, a full decade after the fateful day of September 11, 2001, all-out victory in the so-called "war on terror" remains as elusive as ever. The United States and its allies have scored some important wins. But the chain of events set in train that fateful day has yet to find a satisfying end.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban movement, stripped of power by a combined U.S.-Afghan onslaught in November 2001, is once again resurgent. The government of President Hamid Karzai, installed with U.S. help in early 2002, is pursuing power-sharing talks with Mullah Mohammad Omar's guerillas.
In Iraq, where the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein from power, the civil war that threatened to tear the country apart has ebbed. But stable government and security for all of the country's citizens remain distant goals.
And in the United States itself, a sense of relief that the country has lived through 10 years without another mass-casualty terrorist attack mingles with chagrin about the costs -- economic, political, and individual -- of a global war against a shadowy enemy.
Michael Mandelbaum, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University and one of America's leading foreign-policy thinkers, says that one of the most serious consequences of the 9/11 attacks was that they diverted the attention of U.S. leaders from urgent domestic priorities.
The United States could have responded to the attacks in ways that would have allowed it to devote its resources to reforming health care and education, modernizing infrastructure, and otherwise preparing itself to respond to the rise of global economic competition.
"One of the major challenges is the deficits that the federal government is running, and they have been aggravated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for which the country has not paid," Mandelbaum says. "We have borrowed to finance these wars, and this is really the first time in American history that the country has not raised taxes in order to pay for wars, and that is extremely unfortunate."
A War Without End?
Many Americans, fatigued by a decade of grim headlines, have since tuned out coverage of events in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the growing apathy has not stanched the casualties. More than 6,000 members of the U.S. military have died in the two wars, while some 43,000 others have suffered often incapacitating wounds.
But no one can say when the fighting will end -- particularly in Afghanistan, where the United States is still in the process of handing over responsibility for the country's security to the increasingly beleaguered Karzai government.
Meanwhile, say analysts, Al-Qaeda -- or what's left of it -- is already relocating to new havens in Yemen or Somalia.
So has it all been worth it? We are probably still too close to events to know for sure. Some analysts argue that the United States has not served its own interests by devoting such a large share of resources to the pursuit of Al-Qaeda. Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins says that the rise of China and other Asian economies over the past decade poses far greater challenges to the United States' place in the world than anything happening in the Middle East.
"After September 11 we devoted ourselves to chasing the losers from globalization when the real challenge internationally in the future will come from the winners," Mandelbaum says. "The Middle East is important for a variety of reasons but not because it's a center of economic growth and potential military power. That, however, is true of East Asia."
A lot has happened over the past 10 years. But the story of the post-9/11 era is still far from over.
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