The War on Terror, Not Bad for Government Work
12th September 2021
Paul Mirengoff at Power Line.
Based on what I’ve read and seen, the prevailing narrative on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is that the war on terror went pear-shaped. 9/11 presented a test, and we failed it.
On September 12, 2001, America was unified as it hadn’t been for decades. Our allies were fully behind us. But we blew it, or rather the Bush administration did by plunging us into war in Iraq. So I keep reading and hearing.
I disagree. My view is that we won the first 20 years of the long war on terror. Sure, we made many mistakes, as always happens in difficult wars. But there hasn’t been an attack on our homeland of anything remotely like 9/11’s scale in 20 years.
Few predicted this on 9/12, and the fact that the grim predictions of that time didn’t come true isn’t down to luck. It’s due largely to the war on terror.
This alone represents victory to me.