Once again, Washington focused on ousting secular dictators while remaining oblivious to the reality that the principal beneficiaries would be Islamist elements. Ironically, the principal result was to strengthen radical Islamist factions, a development that ultimately produced ISIS and the sizable caliphate that it was able to establish temporarily over major portions of Iraq and Syria.Ĭonfirming that it had learned nothing from the Iraq War and its aftermath, Barack Obama’s administration waged its own forcible regime-change campaigns in Libya and Syria. forces easily ousted Saddam Hussein from power, but the regime-change war badly destabilized Iraq and the surrounding region.
Washington attacked a secular regime that had nothing whatever to do with 9-11, despite cynical propaganda to the contrary by the administration and its media allies. The decision to invade and occupy Iraq accelerated America’s descent into the Muslim world’s geopolitical quicksand. Two decades later, Joe Biden’s administration finally accepted a humiliating end to that quixotic venture-after more than 2,400 American deaths and some $2 trillion in wasted taxpayer dollars.Īfghanistan, though, was merely the beginning of America’s self-destructive obsession with the war on terror. However, it was not long before that limited, punitive mission morphed into an utterly impractical counter-insurgency, nation-building crusade. Washington’s action was justified and achievable. troops invaded Afghanistan to root out Al Qaeda and punish the Taliban regime for harboring the terrorist group.
The perils became apparent not long after U.S. Launching an ill-defined, open-ended “ war on terror” hopelessly entangled the United States in the complex, murky, and violent politics of the Muslim world. Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policy blunders have become legendary.
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