9/11 twenty years on

It’s been twenty years since Al Qaida launched the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. Twenty years in which the response has been for the US, with most of the West behind it, to fight war after war at huge cost in lives (a particularly heavy cost among the civilians of the nations invaded) and wealth (especially for the US).

And what did all that expenditure, all that destruction achieve?

In Iraq, we brought down the government of Saddam Hussein because he possessed weapons of mass destruction, which it turns out he didn’t. After several years of war, what has emerged is a puppet government whose strings are being pulled by Iran, ostensibly our major enemy in the region.

Iraq: soldiers and civilians, who bore the brunt of the destruction

Out of Sunni resistance to the Western forces in Iraq emerged ISIS. It carried out further terrorist attacks around the world, including the Bataclan concert hall atrocity in Paris. It murdered Western hostages, including people bringing aid. It destroyed people it found distasteful, such as the Yazidi community, adding rape of the women and slavery to its arsenal of weapons for the purpose. The West had to engage in huge further military effort to break the movement.

Civil war in Syria: won by the dictator and his allies

In the meantime, the fighting had spilled into Syria, where it merged with the existing civil war. The West got involved for a while but later withdrew, granting victory to the bloodthirsty dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and his Russian allies. Iran further strengthened its hand there.

France and Britain, with US backing, then went to war in Libya, which has been overrun by civil war and banditry ever since.

Libya: the cheering over Gaddafi's fall didn't last long
(photo by Associated Press)

Finally, and spanning all the other wars, the US fought for the whole twenty-year period in Afghanistan. That effort ended recently in the humiliating and damaging withdrawal of Western forces from the country. That meant that the Taliban, initially driven from government, have now returned to power and are once more imposing the vicious, authoritarian regime which we spent twenty years fighting.

Destruction in Afghanistan:
in this instance, the aftermath of a car bomb

That regime will be taking reprisals against its fellow Afghans, especially any who worked with the Western nations and were left behind to face their fate. Plenty have been left behind, despite a major evacuation effort. For instance, out of 125 embassy guards the British employed there, just one was evacuated. 

Chaotic, bungled, incomplete:
the evacuation of refugees from Afghanistan

Even those Afghans who have been evacuated are, in many cases, finding their welcome in the West cold if not positively hostile.

As for Afghan women, the gains in terms of education and career opportunities have been seriously set back and are likely to be wiped out altogether.

The saddest aspect of the Western collapse in Afghanistan is that US President Joe Biden, who is under severe criticism for it, in reality deserves considerable admiration. The ‘one more push’ school would have had the US continuing the ‘forever war’, already the longest it has ever fought, still further into the future. It takes guts to look reality in the face, recognise failure for what it is, and cut one’s losses despite the certainty of being reviled for doing so.

When we look at this long list of failed efforts, the word that first springs to mind might well be ‘futile’. But that’s probably too weak. It would have been futile if all this military effort had merely failed. But it’s far worse than that. The cause of the West, and certainly the cause of democracy, have been seriously set back. We emerge from this long string of wars looking weak, cowardly and disloyal.

Al Qaida could hardly have wished for a better outcome to its murderous action than to discredit the West in this way.

Back in 2001, many warned our governments that simply to plunge into unthinking action simply because some response was necessary, would only lead to disaster. People like Dubya Bush, slavishly supported by allies such as Tony Blair, plunged anyway. They rushed into war without even pausing to clarify their objectives.

• If we were acting against governments that supported terrorism, why didn’t we attack the nation that spawned Al Qaida, Saudi Arabia? 
• If we were acting against the terrorists themselves, why didn’t we pull out of Afghanistan as soon as we’d disrupted the Al Qaida network there?
• If we were trying to impose democracy on people who’d shown little stomach for it, weren’t we overreaching ourselves, and making an open-ended commitment without an exit strategy (as has proved the case)?

On the twentieth anniversary, my greatest fear is that we are only going to treat is as a moment for remembrance, and not ask the questions that matter.

How did we get into this mess?

How do we make sure we never get into it again?

Without some answers, we're just going to keep playing straight into the terrorists’ hands. As we have through ill-considered action throughout the last twenty years. 

Repeatedly.