Thirteen years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, this was supposed to be a season of relief, with Iraq managing on its own and most U.S. troops finally ending their combat duty in Afghanistan.
Instead, Americans are bracing for another upsurge of military engagement in a region where one war blurs into another. Across the world, a generation has now grown up amid this continuous conflict, and there’s no end in sight.
“The Cold War took 45 years,” said Elliott Abrams, a diplomat who was top Middle East adviser to President George W. Bush. “It’s certainly plausible that this could be the same. … It’s harder to see how this ends.”
President Barack Obama seemed to have bipartisan support as he prepared Wednesday to outline his plans for expanded operations against the Islamic State militant group. His administration has cautioned that the effort could take several years.
Since the autumn of 2001, the United States and its allies have been at war against factions of Islamic militants and terrorists, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as offshoots in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.
Indeed, some analysts say the conflict dates back farther, citing the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and the 1983 bombing that killed 241 U.S. service members at a barracks in Lebanon. Military historian Max Boot suggests the starting point was the Iranian revolution of 1979, when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized and its staff held hostage for 444 days.
“For the first time, we understood the threat by armed Islamist extremism,” said Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former adviser to Republican presidential campaigns. “We didn’t face up to it — we tried to ignore it as long as possible. But after 9/11, we couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
The Sept. 11 attacks triggered the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. and its allies, starting in October 2001. The Taliban, though quickly ousted from power, has been waging an insurgency ever since.
In 2003, the U.S. spearheaded an invasion of Iraq, categorizing the conflict as part of “the Global War on Terrorism.” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured, tried and executed, yet an insurgency arose against the U.S.-led coalition.
Looking ahead, experts familiar with the Middle East say it’s hard to foresee a total victory for the U.S. and its allies any time soon.
Daniel Byman, research director at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, said he prefers the term “manageable” over “winnable” as a goal in trying to counter threats from the region’s extremists and terrorists. “There’s likely to be some level of terrorism,” Byman said, “but it can’t be to the point where it disrupts our lives in some fundamental way.”
