9/11: twenty years on, liberal interventionism has failed

Twenty years on, we can see that 9/11 was a transformative day in world affairs. At the time, disoriented political leaders wondered just how significant it was going to be. Now we know. The irony is that the countermeasures put in place by those who best understood the moment have resulted in the direct opposite of what they intended to achieve.

“The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again,” Tony Blair told a curtailed Labour Party Conference a month later. “Before they do, let us reorder this world around us and use modern science to provide prosperity for all,” he promised. The tragic chaos of the latest Western retreat from Afghanistan is only another confirmation that things have not turned out as the Prime Minister intended. 

This vitriol spat from across the political spectrum at President Joe Biden for honouring his election promise to end a losing “longest war in American history” is unfair. Western societies share the guilt, or the blame, for what happened after September 2001 collectively.

Those who opposed the invasions – and there were not many who were against the 2001 Afghanistan campaign – should be pleased that the doctrine of liberal interventionism has been discredited and explicitly discarded by Biden in his address to the American people this week: “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other nations.”

Those, including the reliably unrepentant Tony Blair, who regard Biden’s argument as “an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’,” should accept that their dreams of nation-building have failed not just in Afghanistan but in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Palestine. Across the Islamic/Arab world, peace, security and democracy are still in short supply. 

The Arab Spring went wrong for the West and, by our standards, for the people of the “Muslim Lands”. The Taliban is back ruling in Kabul. Al-Quaeda and IS are scotched, but their remnants are regrouping. Even Blair’s commentary admits that after two decades in Afghanistan, advances in living standards, girls education and freedom are “not nearly what we hoped or wanted”.

A whole generation has come to maturity since 9/11 who cannot remember the shock and panic of that day. America’s trauma is searingly reconstructed from fly-on-the-wall images in the currently available BBC documentary 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room. 

Just before 9 am EST, a plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan. Hopes that it might be a horrible accident were smashed seventeen minutes later when the live TV cameras now trained on the building witnessed a second jet sharking (in Martin Amis’ memorable expression) into the South Tower. “Then I knew we were under attack”, President George Bush recollects. Half an hour later when a third plane crashed into the Pentagon”, it was war”. 

The burning South Tower collapsed at 9.59 am, followed by the North Tower at 10.28 am. In the words of the then highly-respected Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, casualties were “more than we can bear”. At 10.03 am, a fourth hijacked plane, United 93, heading for Washington DC, crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing all on board when passengers fought their Al Quaeda attackers. In total, around 3,000 people were killed by the attacks. 

Bush was away from the White House, overnighting in Florida, before launching a reading scheme at a Sarasota Junior School. His travelling media pool recorded the news being whispered to him as he sat in a classroom and his brief statement followed. But Secret Service concerns for his security kept the President out of sight and away from the actual war room in the capital for the rest of the day.

Tony Blair was out and about in Brighton, five hours ahead of the East Coast, and about to give his speech to the Trade Union Congress. One of the few things the Prime Minister and the brothers and sisters agreed on was the European Union, and he was going to raise consideration of Britain joining the Euro. That speech was never delivered. Instead, standing shoulder to shoulder with the US, from then on, Blair came into confrontation with his EU partners. An indirect consequence of 9/11 may well have been the opening-up of the road to Brexit. 

After Alastair Campbell had consulted the media in Brighton, including me, Blair spoke for a few minutes on the platform before returning to Downing Street. His close protection team feared his motorcade might come under attack. It drove off as a decoy, and the Prime Minister found himself sharing a railway carriage with the returning pack of hacks, who were able to pass on developments to him from their newsdesks.

Blair’s immediate on-the-record reaction was perceptive and set the UK’s direction of travel in global politics for the next two decades. It contained three elements; unconditional support for the United States, the attempt to build as broad an international coalition against terror as possible and recognition, if not acceptance, that Islamist fundamentalist grievances, including over Palestine, were the driver of the terrorism. 

Few international voices were raised against the invasion of Afghanistan after its Taliban rulers refused to surrender the Al-Qaeda leadership it was hosting. A multilateral force quickly thrust both Taliban and terrorists out – mainly to Pakistan. But Osama bin Laden, who had been identified as the terrorist leader, escaped with them. He would be killed by US forces a decade later in a compound close to Pakistan’s military HQ. 

This partial success would never satisfy the American public’s sense of hurt and desire for vengeance. Few had heard of Afghanistan or Bin Laden before the attacks. The Bush Administration quickly identified “an axis of evil”, allegedly threatening international security, comprising of Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein, who had been subject to sanctions since the Clinton administration was “Most Wanted” on that list even though Bush replied, “No I cannot say that Sir,” when I asked him in the White House during the build-up for the Iraq invasion whether Saddam Hussein was linked to the attacks on 9/11.

The Iraq invasion in 2003, spearheaded by American and British forces, took interest and resources away from Afghanistan. As it was to discover in Syria and Libya, the West found that the removal or destabilisation of a strong man dictator did not result in the end of history and the formation of Western-style democracies. Instead, lawlessness and ethnic tensions resurfaced, especially between religious sects. After the authoritarian apparat was removed, Islamists often had the best-established networks to which the dispossessed turned.

Well-meaning but half-hearted, expensive but under-resourced, and ultimately ineffective occupations followed in both countries. The UK, in particular, bit off more than it was ready or able to deliver militarily and administratively in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 

The ambition and the aspiration of the response to 9/11 is easy to understand. A similar approach had been credited with the re-establishment of democracies in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Military intervention, urged on the US by Blair, eventually brought an acceptable conclusion even to the vicious internecine conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. 

The deadly calculated attacks of 9/11 demanded a response from the nation, which was regarded as the world’s only superpower. Since Reagan, Thatcher and the Falklands, the US and UK had been the closest of allies, pulling off military interventions around the globe at relatively low cost. 

The invasions of this century have turned out to be interventions too far. The British and American militaries have been humbled and found that those back at home are unwilling to support them properly. The special relationship is strained and a low priority for President Biden. China and Russia are the outside powers whose influence is courted in the Middle East. 

At least two of the three spokes of the Axis of Evil are fully functional. There are still plenty of rogue states. The Taliban is celebrating “liberation” and “independence”. The former international cricketer and playboy Imran Khan, now the Prime Minister of Pakistan, supposedly a Western ally, has congratulated his neighbour for throwing off “the shackles of slavery”. 

The world did change on 9/11, but the pieces have not settled as Tony Blair wished. That day of infamy was the beginning of the end of the era of liberal interventionism, which finally expired this summer on 31/8.