The Age of Jihad

Afghanistan (2001)

After the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the US had a narrow focus: to strike back at its Arab enemies in Northeast Afghanistan – a country that already had been at war for a generation. In the four-year civil war leading up to Taliban rule in 1996, 100,000 people died in Kabul alone. In the fall of 2001, US air power enabled the Northern Alliance, a collection of anti-Taliban warlords, to unseat the weak Taliban government. The Alliance was militarily weak but politically skillful. Afghanistan finally appeared to offer its people what they most wanted: security.

Iraq (1990-2003)

The American decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was a foolish choice. It stemmed partly from a misreading of Baathists, who were not diehard Saddam Hussein loyalists, as US policy makers assumed. Many Baathists were trained bureaucrats who needed jobs, and who filled necessary functions. Baath party members held more religious affinities than political ones. Even after Saddam, the Iraqi people saw Baghdad’s Shia government as allied with the US, and lacking legitimacy. The people of the Levant remembered Britain’s colonial history ...