25 years after the 9/11 attacks, the “war on terror” continues. The U.S. has spent the last two and a half decades dealing out death and destruction across two continents with remarkably little to show for the effort. The “war on terror” succeeded mainly in wrecking other countries and destabilizing entire regions, and of course it was very successful at creating the conditions for new terrorist groups to flourish. The U.S. responded to an extremely rare and unrepeatable attack with decades of senseless violence.
The greatest failure of the “war on terror” was the framing of the problem as a war to be waged by military means. Relying so heavily on military tools guaranteed failure and the metastasization of the cancer. Militarized counterterrorism is good mainly for creating more enemies that then provide the excuse for more militarism.