The Next Twenty-Five Years Cannot Look Like the Last

For a quarter of a century after 9/11, we put enormous resources into fighting the people who threatened peace. We never invested enough in the people trying to build it.

Twenty-five years after al-Qaeda terrorists attacked New York and Washington and killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, I keep coming back to a question that should be easier to answer by now: where are we?

Administrations have come and gone, each overseeing wars across the region and promising a different future. Terrorist leaders have been killed, and governments have fallen. Yet we are still trying to build a more peaceful relationship between the United States and the Middle East, one in which the next war does not always seem to be around the corner.

For those of us now in our thirties, September 11th 2001 changed everything. That day reshaped the world we grew up in and much of what came after. For me personally, I experienced the US invasion of my home country, Iraq, even though there was no evidence connecting Saddam Hussein to the attacks—and the war that followed has come to define my life and my life’s work.

As an Iraqi-American, I find it impossible to separate what Americans experienced in those years from what people across the Middle East did as a result of the wars and foreign policy decisions that followed.

Meaningful progress has been made since then. Al-Qaeda is not the organization it was in 2001, and weakening terrorist organizations is important. But weakening them is not the same as eliminating the threat. Al-Qaeda’s network has become more decentralized, with powerful affiliates operating far beyond the country that once served as its principal sanctuary; they now have a presence in Mali, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. Not strong enough to destroy the United States, but still strong enough to take many innocent lives, including in Europe—not to mention their pesky habit of disrupting global trade.

The War on Terror forced terrorist groups to change their tactics, but it did not eliminate their ambitions. They are now scattered across the region, wreaking havoc not only on their enemies abroad but on the lives of millions of people who simply want to live in peace.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan is once again being governed by the Taliban. After two decades of the American-led war, the movement that was forcibly removed from power following September 11 returned with a vengeance in August 2021. Anyone who hoped a second chance would moderate the Taliban need only look at what it has done to Afghan women and girls. Girls have been excluded from secondary education, women from universities, and restrictions on their rights and freedoms have been brutally enforced at nearly every turn. Afghanistan is once again becoming a breeding ground for extremist groups that share al-Qaeda’s ideology and would carry out another 9/11-style attack if given the opportunity.

But not everything accomplished during those twenty years was meaningless, despite what the pundits might say.

For a while, it seemed possible that a more amicable relationship between the West and the region was developing. The Abraham Accords opened diplomatic channels I didn’t think I would see realized in my lifetime. Whatever their limitations, they offered something worth taking seriously: countries that once considered trading with one another taboo began doing business together.

Before the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, I thought a plausible path existed toward a different and renewed Middle East. Not a democratic paradise or a region suddenly free of authoritarianism, sectarianism, or unresolved conflicts. But one in which investment, technology, trade, and development might gradually become more important than permanent confrontation, or what I liked to refer to as a “post-ideological Middle East,” where trade and business come first, and ideologies and lofty ideals are either irrelevant or become secondary.

October 7 shattered my confidence in that trajectory.

Hamas bears responsibility for its atrocities. Nothing about Palestinian suffering excuses the deliberate murder of civilians or the taking of hostages. But recognizing that responsibility does not require pretending that every Israeli decision afterward was necessary, wise, or compatible with a peaceful regional future.

The devastation in Gaza and the political fallout from Israel’s response have dealt a serious blow to the prospect of reconciliation. People across the region have lost trust in the United States and its allies, and the polling reflects it. Arab Barometer’s recent findings describe a serious erosion of Western credibility across the region, with Gaza being the primary influencing factor.

October 7th reminded us harshly that we cannot build a durable regional peace while treating Palestinian lives and political aspirations as an inconvenience. Peace is also impossible so long as armed movements believe they have the right to sabotage it. Both realities have to be acknowledged, even though recognizing one is still too often treated as dismissing the other.

The consequences now extend well beyond Israel and Palestine. The war with Iran has exposed Gulf countries to attacks and forced uncomfortable questions about their security relationships. Iranian retaliation against regional infrastructure has driven a reassessment of what dependence on American protection actually means.

Iran and its armed proxies are responsible for the attacks they choose to carry out, and criticizing American strategy does not absolve them. But their responsibility does not remove Washington’s obligation to think seriously about the consequences for its partners.

In February, Israel and the United States struck Iran. Iran responded by launching missiles and drones at Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. For people across the region, that hardly inspires confidence in the security the United States is supposed to provide. When America enters another war in the Middle East, people have learned to expect that their own lives may soon get worse.

We shouldn’t abandon our alliances. But rebuilding trust will take a long time.

Neither American party has offered a convincing account of the past twenty-five years, much less a compelling vision for the next twenty-five.

The Obama administration’s nuclear deal, in my view, helped Iran more than it helped the United States or the region at large. It imposed real restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, and international inspectors confirmed that the regime was implementing its commitments. But Iran received nuclear-related sanctions relief without first being required to dismantle its regional proxy networks or abandon its support for armed groups.

My objection is not that diplomacy should never have been attempted. It is that the bargain gave Tehran economic breathing room without securing a corresponding retreat from its regional ambitions. Obama himself acknowledged that the deal was not contingent on Iran changing its regional behavior. Washington could point to limits on centrifuges while Tehran could keep supporting the forces destabilizing its neighbors. That was a narrow arms-control achievement, not the strategic success the United States needed.

And the Republicans have not supplied a viable alternative. Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018; Biden subsequently tried and failed to restore it. The succession of diplomatic initiatives, sanctions, and pressure campaigns did not produce durable results.

Just because the targets are legitimate doesn’t mean military action is always the best choice.

Destroying a missile launcher can be necessary, and killing a dangerous commander can prevent further violence. But we never have an answer to the political questions that inevitably follow. Who governs? What incentives change? What arrangement makes another war less likely? What, exactly, would allow us to say the mission was accomplished? We’re seeing this play out in Iran right now. Ayatollah Khamenei was assassinated along with other notorious IRGC commanders. What has actually changed for the better since then?

My concern about American and Israeli policy is not that force can never be justified. It is that visible military achievements are too easily presented as substitutes for a sustainable political outcome. It’s all posturing without proper planning. Governments compete to declare victory while their citizens suffer the consequences of wars launched without a serious plan for what comes next.

There is also something misleading about describing all of this as a conflict between America and “the Muslim world.” There is no single “Muslim world” with one set of interests. The people seeking an education, building businesses, or resisting religious coercion are not interchangeable with the governments and armed movements claiming to speak for them.

Treating them as one camp concedes far too much to the extremists.

I worry that the era that began when my generation was in school will continue throughout our lives. We may spend our middle age discussing new versions of the same questions, with different leaders assuring us that this negotiation or final round of pressure will settle everything.

I would rather be wrong.

There are reasons to believe the region can move in a better direction, and they deserve far more attention. The economic agreements announced between the United States and Gulf countries involve trillions of dollars in proposed investment and economic exchange. The Trump administration deserves credit where it advances that kind of cooperation. These economic relationships are good and should be encouraged. They do not make the failures elsewhere any less real.

Americans and people in the Middle East have more reasons than we realize to care about one another’s success. A more peaceful Middle East means fewer American lives lost to wars in the region, while people who live there have more freedom to build their lives without the constant threat of another conflict.

Investment agreements alone won’t get the job done.

That is why the people working every day to make their communities more peaceful and prosperous deserve far more of our attention and support.

That means investing in educators who give young people access to knowledge their governments or religious authorities would deny them. It means standing behind independent journalists willing to challenge propaganda, and entrepreneurs creating livelihoods that cross borders. It means giving writers, translators, and local organizations the resources to defend individual freedom and make the case for coexistence in their own communities and their own languages.

Not every scholarship will steer someone away from extremism, and not every job will prevent violence. But when more people have something to lose and can build a future for their families, extremist groups have fewer grievances and fewer desperate circumstances to exploit. Over time, that makes peaceful societies easier to build and harder to tear apart.

For Americans, I’m not suggesting blind charity toward a troubled region. A more peaceful Middle East is good for the people who live there, and it is good for Americans, too.

Twenty-five years ago, I was just a kid in Iraq. I had no idea that the attacks in New York and Washington would help set in motion events that would impact every aspect of my life. I grew up under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and through the invasion that followed. After that came years of violence. Al-Qaeda and other militias moved into neighborhoods like mine. People I loved were killed. I eventually left Iraq and came to the United States as a refugee.

I have spent my entire adult life trying to make sure the next generation does not grow up the same way.

That is why I care so much about education and economic opportunity. It is also why I care about giving people access to ideas that extremists and authoritarian governments would rather keep from them. I learned early that military force can remove a threat, but it cannot build the society that comes afterward.

Twenty-five years after September 11, we owe the victims more than remembrance. We also owe ourselves an honest accounting of what followed, and what our responsibility is moving forward.

Military force was sometimes necessary, and some of it worked. But defeating an enemy and making it harder for the next one to take its place are different jobs. We invested enormously in the first… and never took the second seriously enough.

I have spent most of my life watching what happens when that second part is neglected. I do not want another generation of kids in Iraq or America growing up thinking war is simply the natural order of things. If the next twenty-five years are going to be better, far more attention has to go to the people already building something else, even when the odds are stacked against them.

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