Summary and Key Points: For its first eight months in office, the Bush administration was organized around great power competition. On 9/11, that changed, and Robert Farley’s argument is that the change — not the wars that followed from it — was the error. Washington concluded that the central threat to the United States was a nexus of rogue states and terrorist organizations armed with weapons of mass destruction, and rebuilt its grand strategy around that proposition. Afghanistan followed for good reason and Iraq for none. Two decades went into getting out of both. And the reorganization reached much further than the two theatres: the Navy, struggling to explain its role in a war on terror, committed to the Littoral Combat Ship; the Air Force, struggling to justify high-end air superiority against insurgents, canceled the bulk of its F-22 purchase.
How 9/11 Changed the US Military’s Mission and the Consequences
Twenty-five years ago today, two aircraft slammed into the towers of the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to seize control of the aircraft from terrorist hijackers.
The chief and immediate effect of the September 11 attacks was to shift the focus of US diplomacy and grand strategy from great power competition (the priority of the Bush administration for its first eight months) to a fight against the sources of terrorism. The administration, for better and mostly for worse, determined that the critical threat to the United States was a nexus of “rogue states” and terrorist organizations, using Weapons of Mass Destruction to attack the American homeland and US installations abroad.
That fateful decision represented a catastrophic error of statecraft, binding the United States to a pair of wars that would take the greater part of two decades to escape. Costly and destructive, these wars would distort US politics and defense policy in ways that endure and remain hard to understand.
Iraq and Afghanistan
As many expected on the morning of September 11, the United States chose violence in response to the attacks. For good reason, the United States invaded Afghanistan and attempted to impose a new government. It succeeded for a while, until that government collapsed in humiliating fashion.
For no good reason, the United States invaded Iraq and attempted to impose a new government. That effort has succeeded in fits and starts over the past twenty-two years.
While the latter effort was in the fullness of time somewhat more successful, it was also vastly more expensive and completely disconnected with US grand strategic objectives.
The shortcomings of the invasion of Iraq discredited a generation of foreign policy thinkers. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction (the putative goal of the conflict) helped break many of the strands of trust between the government and the public.
The wars had an impact on both equipment and doctrine. The Navy, struggling to explain its role in the Wars on Terror, committed itself to the ill-fated Littoral Combat Ship.
Littoral Combat Ship from Fleet Week 2025. Image Credit: Stephen Silver/19FortyFive.com
USS Billings Littoral Combat Ship 2025 Fleet Week. Image by Stephen Silver for 19FortyFive.com
The Air Force similarly struggled to explain why it needed high-end capabilities to fight terrorists, and eventually canceled the bulk of its acquisition of F-22 Raptors.
Army and Marine procurement plans were disrupted entirely by the need to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with specialized counter-insurgency equipment. In terms of doctrine, the services had to rebuild expertise in low-intensity warfare at the expense of sharpening their skills for high-intensity conflicts.
F-22 at Lakeland, Florida Air Show in April. Image Credit: Harry J. Kazianis.
The Anti-Terror Umbrella
The response to 9/11 quickly spread beyond the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan. American drones and other aircraft operated above Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere, just as American special operations forces hunted terrorists in the Levant and beyond.
Thousands of suspects were tortured and sent to prisons around the world. Domestically, anti-terror legislation gave the government new tools for tightening surveillance of both foreigners and American citizens.
In 2008, President Barack Obama won the election in part on a platform of renouncing the worst excesses of the War on Terror.
But as President Obama noted at the time, he felt compelled to continue the anti-terror campaigns out of concern for domestic criticism in the wake of a successful terrorist attack. George W. Bush earned immense (if temporary) popularity in the weeks after 9/11; his successors were unlikely to be as fortunate if they allowed another failure. Moreover, Obama could not end either foreign conflict, although he did manage to draw down troops in both theaters.
The US Military Is Still Dealing with the Consequences
To say that the military reaction to the War on Terror was a waste is to perhaps understate the case. It is also a conclusion that nearly everyone associated with American foreign policy arrived at a decade ago.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is not the only reason for the popular collapse in trust in authority that has characterized 21st century American politics.
The 2008 Financial Crisis may indeed have driven a more precipitous drop in public confidence. But there is no question that the failure of the Wars on Terror is part of the story of the death of expertise.
Nevertheless, as we commemorate 9/11, it is worth also remembering the tremendous waste and destruction of the political decisions that flowed from those attacks. It is difficult to understand how what now seems like such a terrible idea was incredibly divisive at the time, with both strong critics and adamant supporters. As we have determined to engage in more disastrous wars of choice in the Middle East, reflecting on the failure of our collective response to the worst attacks in American history must form part of the story.
About the Author: Robert Farley
Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph. D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020), and most recently Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages (Lynne Rienner, 2023). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.
