On October 7, 2001, America launched a military campaign in Afghanistan. Now Oct. 7 is synonymous with a new wave of war in the Middle East where the U.S. is once again embroiled. What now?
Twenty-five years ago, I was in northern Afghanistan for The Boston Globe, arriving just over a week after the September 11th attacks, and it seemed almost surreal to be riding a packhorse as it tapped its way through the rushing waters of the Kokcha River. We were making our way up to a barren hillside and a trenchline that looked out across a valley where Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters were gathered on an opposing hillside.
It was October 7th, 2001, and the United States was about to launch the first airstrikes in what would become the longest war in American history. For Afghans, October 7th would be seen as the day of liberation from the Taliban. I was in that trenchline for the Globe and also compiling a long magazine piece for Esquire, which would publish my field notes and a chronicle of the eight years of reporting I had been doing on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda prior to the attacks. It was a long road that led to that moment in time, and the story of the post 9-11 era has continued to unfold through the quarter century that would follow as the U.S. expanded its Global War on Terror into Iraq. I last returned to Kabul in 2020 when the U.S. troops pulled out, and the Taliban returned to power.
These days, it seems fair to say the U.S.-led wars of the post 9-11 era are officially over in both Afghanistan and Iraq. That was made clear this year on September 30th when the U.S. executed its final withdrawal of the last 2,500 troops that had stayed on to carry out the war against ISIS to prevent a resurgence of the terrorist group, which in 2012 had taken wide swaths of neighboring Syria and made incursions into Northern Iraq.
So who won those wars? By many estimates it is Iran, in its backing of Hamas and Hezbollah, that has emerged victorious and a stronger force than it was before 9-11. The failed American strategy in the Middle East has handed Iran an unusual amount of leverage.
Where were you on October 7th?
A friend asked me that this week, and at first I presumed he meant where was I on October 7th, 2023 when Hamas fighters broke through a security fence that separates Gaza and Israel and carried out the mass slaughter of Israeli civilians in their homes and systematically attacked young people attending a concert in the desert. Hamas killed 1,195 people and took 251 hostage.
October 7th, like Pearl Harbor Day or September 11th, is a day that will live in infamy. Three years on, it is now a powerful day of remembrance in Israel, and it marks the beginning of an Israeli military response in Gaza that was swift and brutal and which has devolved into something that feels more like vengeance, or collective punishment, with more than 70,000 Palestinians reportedly killed and Gaza reduced to rubble. There are many, including Israeli experts on the history of the Holocaust, who see the war on Gaza as an act of genocide.
But actually, this friend, a photojournalist who covered the war in Afghanistan with me, meant: where was I on October 7th, twenty-five years ago, when America was reeling from a terror attack and the U.S. military was about to launch an offensive in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda forces, which carried out the 9-11 attacks, and the Taliban, which had offered a safe operating base to Al Qaeda.
The congruence of these dates struck me as noteworthy. The first war of the 21st century began on October 7th, 2001, and for America it would become the war of a generation, defining life in America for most of the last 25 years. And the first war of a new generation of global conflict also began on October 7th, 2023.
There is no apparent connection between the two different October 7th anniversaries, just the coincidence of the same date on the calendar. But they do serve as bookends for the beginning of an era of global war on terrorism that started on October 7, 2001 and now the dawn of a very different era of conflict that started on October 7, 2023 in Gaza and which some Middle East observers believe may lead to an American retreat from the Middle East.
This new era of conflict in the Middle East may be remembered as the point at which the United States withdrew from its role as the leading superpower in the region, and walked away from the hegemony it once sought in the Middle East. The war now unfolding in the Middle East, which was triggered by the Hamas attack and Israeli response to it, has become a wider regional war, involving Iran through its proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Now that proxy war has morphed into a genuine U.S.-led war with Iran over the Straits of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
The United States suddenly finds itself in a kind of checkmate with the ideology of militant Islam as the Iranian forces and their proxies have shut down the Straits, blocking oil shipments coming out of the region. It is a completely different war now with a completely different set of stakes. It is in many ways an interconnected set of conflicts that make the network of 19 U.S. bases in the region, with a typical force of about 40,000 troops, uniquely vulnerable in the age of cheap drones and low-cost missiles. And it has left America examining a profound question: Is the U.S. presence in the Middle East really worth the risk?
The Economist last week offered a compelling assessment of the moment titled “When America Walks Away,” and the magazine cover features a U.S. service member dragging his bags through the sand with smoldering smoke from shelling and perhaps burning oil fields in the background.
In the September 26th issue, The Economist’s lead editorial stated:
“The signs of America’s looming retrenchment are unmistakable — even as President Donald Trump uses the annual meeting of the UN to threaten Iran with “annihilation” for the umpteenth time. Two stand out. Earlier this month America declined to join its ally Saudi Arabia in striking the Houthis in Yemen, who are endangering shipping in the Red Seas. Instead it held talks behind the Saudi’s backs to spare American vessels from attack. That may seem like a detail, but when a superpower does deals with an insurgent militia, everyone understands it wants to cut its commitments. The other sign is the expectation that America will limit its presence in the Middle East.”
The Trump administration may feel confident in taking a step back because of America’s shift from a net oil importer to a net oil exporter. Until 2020, America was importing more oil than it produced, but that balance has shifted since then as America stepped up its production and has added to its overall energy mix through natural gas and renewable energy such as solar and wind. Still, the U.S. is clearly tied in with the global price of oil which is why the price for gasoline and particularly diesel is spiking upward. It is a time of great complexity, and it presents America and the world with a need for trust, insight and analysis on where this is all headed.
Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department has cut way back on its funding for diplomatic postings and for political analysis in ways that deeply impact the foreign policy makers’ understanding of the region in real time, according to reporting by PBS and AP. The State Department cut more than 3,800 employees, including over 80 positions within the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and more than 150 in Consular Affairs, disproportionately losing senior ranks and veteran diplomats. As a result, the department lost critical language-trained personnel, including dozens of Arabic and Farsi speakers, impairing direct intelligence gathering and nuanced diplomatic communication.
Sadly, the American press corps has also been largely gutted, through the collapsing models of traditional journalism and the struggle to find a business model in the digital age and the dawn of AI models that can sustain quality reporting on the ground. We live in a complex and deeply integrated world that will require us to understand the global forces at play. There is no AI platform that will save us, and there simply is no substitute for insights and understanding that come from being there on the ground.
Consider the fact that the Washington Post early this year fired one-third of its staff, shut down its entire Middle East desk, and eviscerated many other aspects of its international coverage.
Just 25 years ago, there was a robust State Department and a strong international press corps that offered a way for us to see trends and to assess where the Middle East was headed. But now, as the Middle East seems more opaque and volatile than ever, we are flying blind into a fateful moment in history.
Note: This post is part of a continuing series for GroundTruth on Substack titled “The Road From 9-11,” documenting Charles M. Sennott’s coverage of the 25th anniversary of 9-11 and the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan following the attacks.
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What we’re reading this week
- What does it take to make an independent local newsroom work? More than good journalism. | Kristen Hare, Poynter
- Remembrance | Aseel Mousa and Azmat Khan, Columbia Journalism Review
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This article originally appeared on GroundTruth and was syndicated by MediaFeed.co.
