What has 20 years of the ‘war on terror’ accomplished?

On Sept. 16, 2001, then-President George W. Bush responded to a reporter’s question about his administration’s response to the attacks on the World Trade Center, saying, “This is a new kind of — a new kind of evil. … This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.”

That apparently unscripted statement, shortened by Bush to “war on terror” in a speech a few days later, would quickly be codified into a formal policy that has dramatically changed the United States’ role in the world over the past 20 years. The U.S. military’s counterterrorism mission began in Afghanistan with an invasion aimed at eliminating those behind the 9/11 attacks and the Taliban government that harbored them, but it quickly became motivation for a sprawling global campaign. Specious claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida were part of the Bush administration’s rationale for the Iraq War. War powers granted to the executive branch by Congress shortly after Sept. 11 have also been used to carry out counterterrorism operations in at least a dozen countries in the intervening years.