The Middle East Fantasies of America’s War on Terror

Calling the post-Sept. 11 campaign a “war on terror” was a serious mistake by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, the article argues. The United States insisted that its targets were al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, and its helpers after the attacks on New York and Washington. But the language of a wider war carried consequences beyond those stated aims.

The campaign deepened the divide between the Middle East and the West, according to the article. It presents the U.S. offensive against al-Qaida not as a path to the stable regional order its architects envisioned, but as a force that reshaped the region in unexpected ways.

Among those changes, the article identifies the expansion of Iran’s influence and the rise of Islamic State. These developments form the central contrast in its assessment of the campaign’s legacy: an operation directed at al-Qaida helped produce a regional landscape marked by stronger Iranian influence and a new jihadist threat.

The article appears in a retrospective marking 25 years since the Sept. 11 attacks. It places the discussion against images of Bush with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House in January 2002, soon after the campaign began.