![]() Capitol as well, should have unified the country-and at the beginning it did. The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which but for the actions of brave Americans would have included the U.S. ![]() 10, 2001, but our divisions are far worse today. It is not often-indeed it may be unprecedented-that the United States is castigated by both the government and the opposition in the House of Commons. The misguided invasion of Iraq created deep divisions between the United States and Europe, our surrender of Syria to Russian influence made the world doubt the strength of our purpose, and our pell-mell departure from Afghanistan has infuriated and saddened even our closest supporters. There were constant tensions within these structures, of course, but in the main, our friends and allies believed that they could count on us for stability and sound judgment. “Our excessive focus on the Middle East diverted us from the geopolitical forces that that were reshaping the world to our disadvantage.”Īmerica led the world, not alone, but at the head of friendships and alliances forged in the crucible of World War II. Now we must face the consequences with a weakened hand. While America looked elsewhere, Russia recovered and China rose, with consequences stretching from Crimea to the Taiwan Strait to the factories and small towns of America’s heartland. Our excessive focus on the Middle East diverted us from the geopolitical forces that that were reshaping the world to our disadvantage. We had no military or economic peers, and our ideological victory over the antagonists of liberal democracy seemed total. We did not have to respond to the 9/11 attack in this way, but the attack on our homeland gave our leaders the opportunity and the predicate to commit this enormous series of blunders.Īt the end of the 20th century, the United States bestrode the world like a colossus. And Iran is a far greater threat to our interests and our friends than Iraq ever was. ![]() The invasion of Iraq did depose a murderous thug but at the cost of removing the key barrier to the spread of Iranian influence in the Middle East. If we had simply deposed the Taliban and accepted their surrender, which they offered and we spurned, captured Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, and stopped there, we would have been much better off than we are today. But counterfactual history helps us understand how badly our reaction went astray. We had to react forcefully to al-Qaeda’s murderous assault, and we did. Whom the gods would destroy, goes the proverb, they first make mad. Misjudgments by four successive presidents led us to lose focus on the purpose of our presence in Afghanistan, invade Iraq under mistaken premises, violate our own red line in Syria, sign what amounted to a surrender agreement with the Taliban, and leave Kabul under the worst imaginable circumstances.
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