After 9/11, We Went to War Against the Terrorists. The Terrorists Won.

We retreated. They survived. And we’re deluding ourselves otherwise.

A convoy of Taliban security personnel is seen moving along the streets as they celebrate the third anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, in Herat on August 14, 2024. Taliban authorities kicked off celebrations of the third anniversary of their rule over Afghanistan on August 14 at the former US Bagram air base. (Photo by Mustafa Noori / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP) (Photo by MUSTAFA NOORI/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO TODAY, al Qaeda, supported by their Taliban allies, murdered nearly 3,000 Americans. In response, the United States not only invaded Iraq and Afghanistan but also sent combat troops and advisors to Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Niger, the Philippines, Yemen, and a host of other countries. The Global War on Terrorism lived up to its name.

The United States paid a heavy toll to wage the GWOT. Terrorists killed 7,000 U.S. service members and 8,000 U.S. contractors in post-9/11 operations. (This tally doesn’t include the nearly 31,000 suicides by members of the military in the same period.) The GWOT will likely cost at least $8 trillion when future health care bills and disability ratings are tabulated, though that number could skyrocket as more GWOT veterans retire.

While the GWOT’s price in blood wasn’t as costly as previous conflicts, nor was it as bloody as fighting today in Ukraine or Gaza, a tiny minority of the American population paid a disproportionate share of it. For the first time in American history, an all-volunteer force bore twenty years’ worth of deployments while simultaneously supporting combat operations from home. Never in American history has an all-volunteer force shouldered such a heavy burden for such an extended period.

After all the expense and sacrifice, there isn’t much to show for it. We went to war with the terrorists, and the terrorists won.

In Iraq, President Biden is trying to head for the exits so he can finish another “forever war” (this one for the second time) even as the Islamic State resurges. In Africa, Biden’s exit from Niger, by order of the junta that took power there in a coup last year, empowers Putin’s Russia and also the Islamic State and al Qaeda, whom American forces were there to suppress in the first place. While the Islamic State grabs the majority of the headlines (such as there are), Al Qaeda is still active and conducting attacks. Hamas, which al Qaeda and the Taliban lionize, raped, butchered, and kidnapped innocent civilians in broad daylight. Despite Hamas’s execution of six more hostages, President Biden is pressuring Israel to sign a “temporary” cease-fire agreement with a genocidal terrorist organization.

Nowhere have the terrorists succeeded more resoundingly than in Afghanistan. The Taliban and their al Qaeda allies are enacting a gender apartheid regime, murdering, raping, and torturing Afghan women for sport. After a twenty-year reprieve, they have resumed floggings and public executions. Women are forbidden from speaking in public. Last week, an Afghan colleague’s sister was gang raped by the Taliban because he used to serve alongside American forces.

Despite such monstrous actions, in late August, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen defended Biden’s decision to execute Trump’s surrender agreement with the Taliban. He stated the prediction that Afghanistan would become a terrorist launching pad “did not come to pass.” Cohen, who never served in Afghanistan, also admitted the CIA was “engaging with the Taliban” to combat al Qaeda and the Islamic State. There are differences and tensions among the various terrorist groups in Afghanistan—variations of tactics, strategy, ideology, and history—but to imagine that any of them would rather work with us than each other is foolish. Despite Cohen’s insistence to the contrary, the Islamic State Khorasan Province and al Qaeda have conducted attacks in Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and have plotted attacks in the United States, and throughout Europe.

Deputy Director Cohen and the entire Biden administration simply cannot comprehend that al Qaeda’s pledge (bay’ah) to the Taliban remains ironclad. While the Biden administration might not care about its Afghan allies, the Taliban will never turn their back on al Qaeda. They didn’t after 9/11, when they preferred invasion to turning over Osama Bin Laden. They didn’t after twenty years of war. And they don’t now, regardless of what they tell the CIA. This also holds for the Islamic State, especially its Khorasan Province, which is riddled with veterans of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Haqqani network.

“The Taliban has conducted a successful information operation on the CIA,” said former Afghan National Army Special Operations Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat, who trained and fought alongside the CIA. “The CIA now believes the Taliban is more trustworthy than the Afghans they trained for 20 years. It’s truly astonishing”

Deputy Director Cohen, like the rest of the Biden administration, seems not to understand what a gut punch it is to Afghan combat veterans to learn that the CIA is working with the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and al Qaeda. However, it explains how Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of the Haqqani network and interior minister of the Taliban government, could travel to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia this summer. Haqqani, for whom the FBI is offering a bounty of $10 million dollars for killing Americans, is now a Biden ally in its fight against al Qaeda and the Islamic State, despite his strong ties to both organizations.

Under the Trump and Biden administrations, the United States abandoned the very allies we trained for twenty years in favor of a genocidal terrorist organization still allied with a group that killed thousands of Americans.

It’s not just that we lost to the terrorists. We lost part of ourselves along the way.