For my generation, the ‘War on Terror’ has been as much an unquestioned part of the international order as rivalry with the Soviet Union was for our parents’. I was barely out of nappies when the Twin Towers were hit. My childhood and teenage years were punctuated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, terror attacks at home and abroad, and the ever-present unease encouraged by our tepid ‘clash of civilisations’. But youth did not prevent me from understanding the serious emotions involved.
Clearly, Sunday’s CIA killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda, is justice. He is a man who has “carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens”, in the words of President Biden. I may now get my news from The Daily Telegraph rather than Newsround, but even as a child I could perceive the anger Americans felt at the 2,977 killed, and the elation at assassinating Bin Laden a decade later. An eye for an eye, and all that.
Yet the two decades of the United States’ global quest for justice against the perpetrators of that horror have brought far more than the assassination of its two architects. It has seen $8 trillion and 900,000 lives spent in the hills and deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq, and curbs on the freedoms of citizens and subjects across the Western world. It has seen further terrorist attacks in Madrid, London, Paris and elsewhere. It has fundamentally changed the reputation of the last, best hope for freedom.
We can babble about oil, nation-building, and counterterrorism. But the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States, a war by a superpower against medieval fanatics, goat-herders, and AK-47 enthusiasts, was primarily because they wanted someone to get a bloody nose for 9/11. In Iraq, that urge was twinned with the regret by some in D.C for not finishing the job against Saddam when they had the chance. The interminable civil wars, the rise of ISIS, and the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan last year has meant any greater meaning to the invasions has long since been lost.
It is very easy for me to be cynical, or appeal to the edgier elements of Twitter by claiming Bin Laden won. But you cannot say the ‘War on Terror’ has been wholly pointless. Since 2001, domestic security agencies in the United States and abroad have prevented a further catastrophic terror attack of the scale of 9/11. Lives have certainly been lost, and far too many ‘lessons learnt’ that haven’t been acted upon. But, for now, the horrors of that awful day did not presage a new era of terror on hitherto unprecedented scales.
Of course, that does not stop me resenting the curbs on my freedom that requires. I resent armed policemen, ever-present CCTV, and the persistent calls for longer periods of detention without charge or ID cards following every terrorist incident just as fulsomely as any Boris Johnson Spectator editorial. But such restrictions have been part and parcel of my generation growing up in one of the most comfortable, tolerant, and liberal societies the world has ever seen. I’ll put up with a rubber rummage at JFK for that.
It is easy for those with a perpetual hatred for the West and its actions to blame every terror incident on our foreign policy. But debating where the hatred for our way of life found in terrorists home and foreign grown comes from is rather chicken and egg. We can spend our time tracing it from Tony Blair, via Lawrence of Arabia, back to Saladin and the Crusaders. Or we can fight against it in the here and now.
We did not beat the Soviet Union by blaming the Germans for letting Lenin take the train to the Finland Station; we will not beat Islamism by fulminating about Donald Rumsfeld. Yet that should not stop us from being honest that America’s prosecution of the fight these last twenty years has severely dented its reputation in the eyes of my generation.
Noah Carl highlighted some interesting polling in an article for UnHerd yesterday. Over 65 percent of Britons aged 50 and above supported further sanctions on Russia in April. Only 22 percent of 18–24-year-olds did. Similarly, 96 percent of older Americans described Russia as an ‘enemy’, whereas only 71 percent of under 30s did. Carl attributes this to a ‘Cold War mentality’ amongst older people. The Soviet Union was the greatest threat for our grandparents’ and parents’ generations – but not for mine.
Yet growing up in the shadow of 9/11 has hardly made my generation ardent supporters of the ‘War on Terror’. You do not see left-wing think-tanks churning out identikit though-pieces condemning the neoconservative leanings of today’s graduates. A decade ago, a poll suggested 48 percent of those over 60 thought intervention in Afghanistan had made the country more stable. Only 24 percent of those in my age bracket agreed. After last year, it would struggle to make double figures.
The difference is not, I think, that my parents and grandparents are all Cold War hawks, deprived by Gorbachev of a chance to bash the Ruskies. Similarly, my contemporaries and I are not all over-grown Corbynista peaceniks. What separates us is that my parents came of age seeing the Berlin Wall come down, whereas my generation saw the scuttle from Kabul. They saw Hussein smashed in 100 hours in the First Gulf War. My generation saw the flag of ISIS spreading across Iraq – and that was before the Bad Orange Man sent every teenage liberal into hysterics.
The simple truth is that the costs and consequences of the last two decades have robbed my generation of our faith in America’s benevolent global mission. We will reach maturity in a world where the healing scars of 9/11, energy independence, and the threat of China see America turn away from the Middle East and Europe. As Europe’s economies stagnate and close their borders to the coming surge in migration from Africa, we will become a continent of isolationists, compelled by German impotence, French arrogance, and our faltering independence to become spectators in world affairs.
Then again, similar things were said after the retreat from Saigon. As she rips herself apart over race and culture wars, it would be easy to bet against America. But she does remain the last, best hope for human freedom – an imperfect but necessary experiment in self-government that has been, despite her many faults, an ultimate force for good in the world. We may always be her critical older brother. But my generation cannot give up on the United States. Otherwise, we may as well surrender to the Chinese now, and turn the whole country into one big Bicester Village.