The True Cost of the War on Terror

Every once in a while, I’ll come across an idea or argument that completely changes my mind about something. This has been happening with increasing frequency since I started podcasting. Turns out, if you keep an open mind and ask questions to fascinating, serious people, you actually can learn something new. Who knew, right?

All kidding aside, I had one of these conversations the other day and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. 

“Do you think America won the war on terror?”

This is the question I posed to Julius Krein, the founder and editor of the American Affairs Journal midway through our discussion about the decline of the neoliberal order. I wasn’t prepared or expecting him to say “no” but he did and he did so emphatically. 

Going into this conversation, I was of the opinion that we did win. Of course, I wasn’t blind to all the mistakes made along the way—e.g. the invasion of Iraq on false pretense or the network of extra-constitutional prisons we set up around the world—and have been concerned about all the ways we have compromised our moral values in the pursuit of security. But there’s no denying that the Islamic terrorist networks either lost the will or the ability—or maybe both—to effectively carry out terrorist attacks against the Global West. 

Krein challenged this narrative by asking the important question: “Yeah, but at what cost?”

We may have “won” the war on terror in the sense that terrorists cannot really inject violence into our daily lives. However, when you start thinking about what’s happened to us and our country in the process, the narrative feels a little different. For what did we become as we sought victory in this war? Look, I know this is not some statistically significant sample set, but I’ve interviewed two veterans for the podcast—Kent Keirsey, a former Army officer who served in Iraq, and Matt Murphy, a former Green Beret who served in almost every theatre of the war—and they both said the same thing: that we seriously morally compromised ourselves in the process of trying to win this war.

In my discussion with Krein, he made the argument in even more concrete terms. Just think, for a minute, about what’s happened in our country since the onset of the war:

While there was a brief honeymoon period where the world rallied behind America in response to the 9/11 attacks, a series of moral mistakes, missteps, and overreach, set our global reputation on a downward spiral we have yet to recover from. 

We created the legal and technological infrastructure for the entire apparatus of the deep state, which has become such a political hot-button and a source of widespread civic distrust and acrimony. This happened fast too, by the way. We passed the Patriot Act just over a month after 9/11, setting the whole thing in motion.

We absolutely wrecked our national balance sheet, spending over $8T on the war. It’s important to remember too that when George W Bush took office, we were on pace for record surpluses and there was even talk of being able to shore up Social Security and completely pay down the National Debt. How nice does that sound about now? The war looks like it was the opening act of the death spiral in American financial integrity. 

At the same time, on almost every conceivable measure—e.g. deaths of despair, distrust in government, societal division, family values, drug addiction, income and wealth inequality—we are worse off today than we were before 9/11.

We cannot forget, too, about all the annoying, time-consuming, new features of airport security that came into our lives as part of this war. For those who remember what travel was like before the TSA, the memory probably hurts.

Finally, our politics have evolved in the direction of theatre and just another source of entertainment for an increasingly isolated, insular, and self-oriented generation of Americans. 

Really makes you think, right?

To be sure, there are other contributing factors at play here. The decline of America is a very complex problem with many overlapping and interconnected causes. However, there’s no question that the war and the stress it put on our society, culture, and government resources have played a huge role. And, as we’ve seen from recent events in the Middle East, it’s not like terrorism is really “gone” from the world. The peace we’ve enjoyed in the Global West in recent years did not signify the end of conflict but rather just an interregnum in what is, perhaps, truly a Forever War.

War is hell and the human suffering involved impossible to quantify. In this very real human sense, the global war on terror has been like all wars—terrible, full of immeasurable pain and loss, and hard to understand. Krein’s well-articulated argument opened my mind to the notion that, in this case, the story is actually worse. There’s another tragedy here. On top of all this, the war has left us a divided nation. Isn’t the exact opposite supposed to happen?

As a great American statesman once warned “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” What worries me now is that we’ve gotten ourselves in such a bad domestic political position that we might not be able to find the unity and consensus we need to survive our increasingly mad world. If we cannot get through an election cycle without devolving further, how are we going to work together to solve our rather serious existential problems? If we are so blind with irrationality and rage every time our favored political party doesn’t win that we start calling fraud and denying the election results, how are we going to unite around a compelling, shared vision for the future?  

It’s primary season and this week we had Super Tuesday. In many places voter turnout was abysmally low. Here in Los Angeles County, the last estimate I saw was that voter turnout was somewhere between 15%-20%. What does that say about us? Are we not concerned about what’s happening in this country?

We should be. 

Whether you agree with Krein or not about the war on terror, there’s no denying that the moment of truth for America is fast approaching. Will we rise to the occasion? Will we put aside our imagined differences and petty grievances and come together to do what is right? Or will we continue along in this crazy charade, content to fatten our own pockets and get the most of life for ourselves, until it’s too late and a new dark age descends upon the land?

Civic apathy is just part of the problem too. There are people on both the left and the right as well as in other countries, who are actively working to undermine America and our democratic institutions. For them, my message is this:

What kind of people do you think we are? Do you really think we are just going to roll over and let the greatest nation in history devolve into a shadow?

No way. 

The time has come for a new American Dream. If you are reading Profit+ and listening to the Nick Halaris Show, I know already where you stand. You would’ve hit the unsubscribe button a long time ago if you didn’t agree with me on this. Let’s make a point to take this message into our communities and start working on a vision for a future that all Americans can believe in. Let’s rise above the politics of division and focus our attention on creating an America that stands for the simple, world-changing ideal of the American experiment: freedom, justice, and prosperity for all.  

Ps. How can you have a functioning democracy, which demands active citizen participation, when so many people are living paycheck to paycheck?