Possibly the most consequential fallout from 9/11, though, were so-called forever wars—open-ended conflicts that continue to haunt the US, sometimes as part of an overall “war on terror.” In October 2001, allied forces began combat operations in Afghanistan to expel al-Qaeda and the Taliban rulers who harbored them. In 2003, a second invasion commenced, in Iraq. While the American-led coalition that marched into Baghdad later managed to capture dictator Saddam Hussein, two other priorities were illusory. A less-fractious Iraq, aligned with US interests, was unsustainable, a chimera. And Iraq’s arsenal of mass destruction could not be found: The country had no stockpiles or active weapons programs.
Before long, much of the world’s empathy for America, which had been widespread in the wake of the attacks, dissipated, facilitated by the emergence of photos showing US soldiers abusing and torturing Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib facility. Overall, the Bush administration’s misguided foray reinforced in the minds of many in the Middle East a distrust of America’s allegiances, commitments, and adherence to the protocols of the Geneva Conventions, a distrust that persists to this day.
There is one ray of hope in the headlines, however. Says Moyheldin, “The last US forces are due out of Iraq by September 30, a deadline Iraqi prime minister Ali al-Zaidi has called ‘fixed and final’—23 years later.”
Let’s return, though, to the initial terrorist act.
Unspeakable savagery masquerading as theater didn’t start with Bin Laden. Even so, al-Qaeda’s insidious use of the media to terrorize (mass murder as televised spectacle, passenger planes as missiles, footage of leaders in hiding) clearly foreshadowed the tactics of ISIS (beheadings via video). What wasn’t new was the continuation of the kind of barbarity that dominated conflicts of recent memory, from Cambodia to Rwanda.
In addition, emboldened autocrats, given the dwindling sway of major powers over nations in their supposed sphere of influence, began to see few drawbacks in seeking the submission or annihilation of their political opponents—or of other nations. There’s a trickle-down effect. In recent years, the heads of three of the world’s most formidable armies—Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump (“bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,” Trump said in April of this year)—appear to be using a similar playbook, one built around airstrikes or threats to bomb infrastructure and noncombants. Which sends an unmistakable signal. “Violence against civilians has gotten more brutal since 9/11,” says veteran conflict reporter and Vanity Fair contributor Janine di Giovanni, CEO of the Reckoning Project and senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, “because leaders have learned they can get away with it. We are living in a world where the rules simply aren’t enforced. And it moves top-down: When the most powerful states act with impunity, every minor strongman takes note and assumes he’ll never see the inside of a courtroom in The Hague.”
