25 years after the September 11 attacks, Richard Haass assesses their impact — Taipei Times
In the United States, September 11 marks 25 years since the terrorist attacks of 2001, when 19 hijackers seized four civilian aircraft. Two of them were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a third attacked the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers prevented the attackers from reaching their target.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks, while more than 6,000 others were injured. The victims included citizens of more than 100 countries. The operation was planned and carried out by the terrorist group al-Qaeda, founded by Osama bin Laden. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia; all of them trained in Afghanistan, and four also attended US flight schools.
Consequences for Afghanistan and Iraq
Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in a column for the Taipei Times that the attacks did not usher in an era of terrorism, although they directly led to US military intervention in Afghanistan. American forces, together with Afghan tribes, removed the Taliban from power; the group had provided shelter to bin Laden and the terrorists who carried out the attacks.
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According to Haass, the subsequent attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan demonstrated how difficult it is to replace an overthrown regime with a stable and effective system of governance. After the deployment of more than 800,000 US military personnel, spending of more than $2 trillion, and the deaths of more than 2,400 US service members, Afghanistan is once again under Taliban rule. Another 1,100 troops from NATO countries and other states were also killed in the war.
Events that changed the world
The author also links the atmosphere after September 11 to the US decision to launch the war in Iraq in March 2003. He notes that part of the George Bush administration believed Saddam Hussein was developing or already possessed nuclear weapons and feared they could fall into the hands of terrorists. Haass, who worked in the Bush administration, opposed the war in Iraq and resigned soon afterward.
In Haass's view, the rise of China, Russia's aggression against Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, collective inaction on climate change, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the US abandonment of the postwar order in whose creation it played an important role have had a far greater impact on the world over the past quarter-century. At the same time, he warned that artificial intelligence, cheap precision drones, and advances in bioengineering could expand terrorists' ability to inflict large-scale harm at minimal cost.
