Did America Win the War on Terror?

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0:54Hello, and welcome to The David Fromm Show. our first Saturday edition. I'm David Fromm, a staff writer at The Atlantic. On Wednesday's David Fromm Show, I talked to my former White House speechwriting colleague, John McConnell, John wrote speeches for Vice President Dick Cheney, about our direct personal experiences on 9-11 of 2001. I promised at the end of that show to offer some reflections on the quarter century of warfare that followed the original 9-11. did the United States win its war on terror? A problem with that question is that by framing it the way I just did, and the way many people do, I put the war into the past.

1:34But the war on terror is actually not over. Although candidate and then former President Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on a promise to fight no more forever wars, in fact, in this second Trump presidency, he's fighting the war on terror at least as fiercely as any of his predecessors. He has approved strikes in Iraq, in Nigeria, in Syria, in Yemen. And of course, he launched a major air and naval operation in Iran that has lasted now more than six months. Yet even though the war continues to rage all over the planet, enough time has passed that we can offer some assessments of what has happened over the past 25 years.

2:16And let me start by offering a positive side of the ledger, then a negative side of the ledger. On the positive side, there has not been another mass casualty international terror attack on American soil since that original 9-11 in 2001. Anti-American leaders like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Osama bin Laden, and the Ayatollah Khamenei have been killed. By many measures, radical Islamic ideology is receding from Muslim-majority countries. And the attempt on the ground by ISIS to create a terror caliphate in Syria and Iraq was defeated with the Iraqi army as an important ally of the United States and its Western partners.

2:55Here's another from the positive side of the ledger. Before 2001, many so-called U.S. allies in the Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia, played a double game on support for terrorism. They said what the United States were against it, but in fact they allowed their wealthy citizens to fund it. Since that 9-11, Saudi Arabia has cleaned up its act and cracked down on terror donors among its economic elite. Finally, on the positive side of the ledger, the abuses of power and excesses of surveillance after 9-11 that did occur have, to some great extent, been rolled back while the United States retained its ability to find and eliminate and stop terror threats all over the planet.

3:34The ban on torture has been reaffirmed, as it should have been, as it should never have been deviated from, and the excessive elements, the temporary elements of the 2002 Patriot Act have been allowed to expire. So that's the positive side. But there's a negative side, and you hear a lot about that, and it's true too. While the United States has suppressed terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS, individuals inspired by al-Qaeda and ISIS ideology have carried out terrible attacks all over the world since 9-11. 130 people killed in the Paris nightclub attacks of 2015. 52 in the July 7th London bombings of 2005 15 in the Bondi Beach shooting in Australia at Hanukkah December 2025 And these are just a few items on the list And I didn't tally the hundreds of maimed and wounded in these attacks While the United States did break ISIS and did break Al-Qaeda Mass casualty terrorism attacks against civilian targets Remain an accepted way of war in the greater Middle East as demonstrated by the broad regional support for Hamas's brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

4:41On the negative side, the United States nation-building effort in Afghanistan utterly failed, and the Taliban have returned to power there. The war in Iraq did not fail as utterly as the war in Afghanistan. It has produced a rickety government that is halfway aligned between the West and Iran, but still, that government is corrupt, ineffective, and at what a terrible cost in life to both Americans, their partners, and to the Iraqi people themselves. The human and economic costs of the war since 2001 have been horrific to the United States, its coalition partners, and even more to people across the greater Middle East.

5:16And the very fact that I cited at the beginning, that the Trump administration has upped the tempo of its counterterrorism operations, underscores how much a fact of life international terrorism remains in 2026, a quarter century later. If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait, and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Impress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity.

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6:33Finally, as a society, America is more divided than it was even before 9-11 and certainly in the immediate aftermath after 9-11, less able to project power overseas for any protracted length of time, as President Trump is proving in his stumbling war with Iran, and no longer obviously superior to China and other international allies. The United States public has arrived at its own verdict on the wars on terror. By a margin of 2 to 1, Americans tell pollsters that the war in Afghanistan wasn't worth it, and by an even greater margin, they reject the war in Iraq as not worth it. So as I assess this ledger, which looks a lot more substantial on the negative side than it does on the positive side, what would I, as someone who played a small role in the history of those days, if I could go back in time with the knowledge I now have, and I could gain a hearing in the halls of power in the shock after 9-11, what advice would I bring back from our present to then, to that moment of decision?

7:29Well, I've written down a number of things here, and I'll go through the list and see if you agree. My first advice to the people gathered around the table in that shocking day after 9-11 would be to tell them that al-Qaeda succeeded in carrying out those heinous, terrible, murderous attacks on Americans, not because al-Qaeda was so superhumanly capable, but because of vulnerabilities that al-Qaeda discovered in America's own defenses, and especially in the way that the American intelligence agencies didn't talk to each other, and in some laxness and complacency in American airline security. I would advise that the highest, or at least the immediate priority after 9-11, was to correct the vulnerabilities here at home.

8:11Get the agencies to talk to one another, and where needed, expand their intelligence-gathering powers, especially over this then new technology called the internet. That's the first thing, hardened at home. I would tell them, remember, the only way terrorism can do existential harm to an advanced society is if the terrorists can get hold of nuclear or biological weapons. It is states that have such weapons or are on the verge of acquiring them and have shown a propensity to engage in terrorist activity. That's the first and foremost threat. So that's a list that in 2001 would begin with Pakistan and Iran and include, incidentally, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, but only in a secondary position.

8:53Full-scale war and regime change to alter politics in Iran and Pakistan would obviously be way beyond the capacities and interests of the United States. So this threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists focused on Pakistan and Iran, the two countries then closest to a nuclear weapon, the method that should be used against those countries should not be war and regime change, but sanctions, clandestine operations, and if absolutely necessary, as a final measure, air and naval strikes that could get enough of the job done, even if they didn't get all of the job done. I would advise them, stay the hell out of Afghanistan.

9:32As you'll learn, I would say to them, if you're not prudent, Iraq cannot be turned around at any acceptable cost, and Afghanistan cannot be turned around at any cost at all. Do not get mired in the Afghanistan war. I would advise them, too, don't get sucked into counterinsurgencies in Mali, Nigeria, Somalia. There are a lot of fights all over the world where people profess an al-Qaeda brand that the United States can safely ignore. I would tell them, I've got some bad news for you. Your most persistent and protracted terrorist threats after 9-11 will not come from the Middle East. They will be bred right inside your own countries, in the United States and inside Europe.

10:11The Paris terrorist attacks that killed so many, the San Bernardino shooting, London 7-7, the majority of the people operating in these cases, and in some cases all of the people, were born inside the country they attacked, raised inside the country, radicalized on the Internet, not by travel to the Middle East. I would tell them if I were back in September 2001, a lot of people will advise you now and for the next quarter century that the key to all the problems of the Middle East, The master key is to address somehow the Palestinian problem. And I would tell them, disregard that advice. Even if the advice is true, and I don't believe it is true, but even if the advice is true, you're not going to be able to find a solution that Palestinian political elite opinion can agree to accept.

10:56So if that is the answer, it's not going to work. And by the way, it's not the answer. I would tell them if I were back there in September 2001, accept that the ultimate cure for 9-11-style terrorism must come from within the culture that produced that 9-11-style terrorism in the first place, and that outsiders probably cannot do much to direct or accelerate the necessary changes to that culture. When President Bush said nine days after 9-11 that jihadism should follow Nazism into what he called history's unmarked graveyard of discarded lies, well, he was absolutely right. That's what should happen.

11:32But in this case, in the case of jihadism, unlike Nazism, The death will have to be by internal decay and cannot be hastened much by external action. Finally, I'd say be courageous. Democratic societies have met and overcome worse dangers, even than the one that struck the United States on 9-11-2001. Grieve with the grieving. Reassure the frightened. Find and punish the guilty to the extent that you realistically can. But keep perspective. This is not your only danger, and you should not act as if it were. Thanks so much for joining me on this first Saturday edition of The David Frum Show. As ever, if you are minded to support the work of this program and those of us at The Atlantic, the best way to do that is by subscribing to The Atlantic.

12:17If you enjoyed this program, please share it on whatever social media platform you use to bring it to more people's attention. We'll return midweek next week with the long-form edition of The David Frum Show with our next interview and book review. Thanks so much for watching. Bye-bye.

12:40If you're trying to get news today, you'll find a lot of biased algorithms, rage bait, and AI noise. Thanks, social media. That's where Impress comes in. It's a social platform on top of factual journalism, not the other way around. Track your reading and earn points. It's like Strava for your brain. Plus, you can connect with other users in your city who share your genuine curiosity. Ditch the echo chamber for reality with Impress. Download it today for iOS or Android at Impress.app. That's I, N as in news nerd, press.

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