Thread: London Describes War Gone Badly Wrong 9/11 Review

London Think Tank Describes ‘War Gone Badly Wrong’ In 9/11 Response Review

September 8, 2011
by Sam Rolley


Afghan National Police officers give a tour to U.S. soldiers assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers during a mission to the Shorabak district of Kandahar province, Afghanistan.

A report created by the U.K.-based Oxford Research Group (ORG) sums up the consequences of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade as “a war gone badly wrong.â€

A War Gone Badly Wrong - The War on Terror Ten Years On

Paul Rogers
September 2011

Introduction

The atrocities in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 led to protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ten years after the attacks, this briefing assesses the consequences of the response from the United States and its coalition partners. It questions whether the response was either appropriate or wise and whether the results so far have been counterproductive and may indicate the need for a changed security paradigm.

Such a fundamental rethink of the way western governments respond to insecurity must go beyond the current approach in which intelligence, counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism are all beginning to merge into a seamless web of a single security posture. Such a posture is likely to be no more successful than the policies adopted in 2001.

The Context of 9/11

Prior to the Bush administration being formed in January 2001, the Republican Party had become strongly influenced by neoconservative thinking, much of it embodied in the Project for the New American Century. This saw the United States playing a role of sustained world economic and political leadership in the unipolar world of the 21st Century. With the fall of the Soviet Union and with China embracing many elements of a mixed economy, the view from Washington was that free market democracy was the only way forward and that the United States had a duty to lead.

After the election, the administration made a series of decisions that demonstrated that in foreign and defence matters there would be a strongly unilateral approach when this was considered in US interests. In the early months of 2001, it became clear that there would be no ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the United States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and there would be reduced support for strengthening the Biological Weapons Treaty. Caution over negotiations on preventing the weaponisation of space and establishing an International Criminal Court were evident, and, in a move that surprised many European governments, the US withdrew from the Kyoto Climate Change Protocols. By September of that year, the determination of the Bush administration to pursue the idea of a New American Century was clearly established, and there seemed little to hinder what was honestly seen as a noble aim that would benefit the world community.

In such a context, the 9/11 attacks were particularly visceral in their impact and there was little doubt that the administration would respond with great vigour, including large-scale military action against the defined enemy of the al-Qaida movement and its Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. Those few analysts and organisations that counselled caution, including Oxford Research Group, received scant attention. Their view was that the 9/11 attacks should be seen as appalling examples of transnational criminality, the response being rooted in policing and international legal processes aimed at bringing to justice those behind the attacks. Furthermore, to see the attacks as requiring a major military response – a “war on terrorâ€