How Trump has failed to learn the lessons of the wars that followed 9/11

EDITOR’S NOTE: Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University and the author of the just published, “ All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror ,” from which this piece was, in part, adapted.

Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 . Since 9/11, US presidents have expanded their power, step by step, to wage war anywhere, anytime, as they please.

With Operation Epic Fury in Iran, President Donald Trump reached a new peak in the war-making powers claimed by the US commander in chief. Trump launched his war of choice on Iran — in his words, “the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror” — without any congressional authorization, the support of NATO allies or a UN resolution. There was also scant buy-in from the American public for what was at its outset the least popular war of the modern era, nor was there anything resembling an imminent threat to the United States. Nor had Trump bothered to learn anything from past American wars, and he did not have a real plan for the “day after” hostilities commenced.

The US military has long been adept at breaking things and killing people, but when its tactics were not aligned with a clear strategy, the United States ended up in the quagmire of Vietnam, or the sectarian civil war in Iraq that eventually birthed ISIS, or precipitating a possible global economic recession caused by the Iran war.

Trump’s predecessors also laid the groundwork for the Iran war. The “war on terror” morphed over time in the months after 9/11, beyond the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al Qaeda that was backed by the UN and NATO allies. It then grew to encompass President George W. Bush’s doctrine of “preventive war” that justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That invasion led to a civil war during which an estimated 200,000 Iraqi civilians died.

The war on terror expanded to include President Barack Obama’s prolific use of armed drones in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen that were not at war with the United States; attacks that killed thousands of suspected terrorists and a sizeble number of civilians.

A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images

With UN and NATO support, Obama also ordered the campaign to remove the Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi from power in 2011, but Obama didn’t seek approval from Congress. The overthrow of Gadhafi precipitated a civil war in Libya that lasted a decade, and the country continues to be divided, ruled today by two governments. Obama later said that not planning for the “day after” Gadhafi’s fall was his greatest failure as president.

During the “global war on terror,” the United States cycled through a variety of strategies and tactics, some of which backfired spectacularly. Those include Bush’s Iraq invasion and the bipartisan fiasco of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan more than a decade and a half later, an agreement negotiated under Trump and executed under President Joe Biden.

The US pullout from Afghanistan predictably resulted in the Taliban taking over the country. The debacles of the Iraq War and the Afghanistan withdrawal signaled that the US superpower had little idea what it was doing when it came to foreign policy, which undercut its position around the world.

There were some real American operational successes during the war on terror: The CIA became an effective paramilitary agency hunting and killing terrorists; Joint Special Operations Command transformed from a barely used counterterrorism force to an industrial-level killing machine; US Special Forces partnered adeptly with Afghan and Iraqi ground forces; and the National Security Agency skillfully penetrated enemy communications.

All these developments played important roles in eventually decimating the leadership of al Qaeda and ending the geographical “caliphate” of ISIS. As a result, there were no large-scale lethal attacks by foreign terrorist groups in the United States following 9/11, which was a major national security goal of the four post-9/11 presidents.

Last fall, Trump dramatically expanded the ambit of the war on terror when he claimed that he could kill suspected Latin American drug cartel members at will on the grounds that they were “narcoterrorists.” This resulted in dozens of American strikes on boats transporting drugs in the Caribbean, and when US Joint Special Operations Command captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in early 2026, Trump asserted he was a narcoterrorist.

Encouraged by what he termed the “brilliant” operation to remove Maduro from power, Trump soon issued the order for Operation Epic Fury. This echoed the way the relatively quick war to overthrow the Taliban after 9/11 emboldened Bush to launch the war on Iraq a year and half later.

A lesson that the United States never learned after 9/11: Make real plans for the “day after” the war appears to be won, or you will likely lose the peace. The Bush administration didn’t negotiate a peace agreement with the Taliban until after the group was utterly defeated in December 2001 when many of its leaders were looking to cut a deal, which could have avoided many years of war. The many failures to plan for what followed the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq were well known, and yet only eight years later the Obama administration also made no plan for what happened after the overthrow of Gadhafi.

The confusion about what constituted American strategic success and merely tactical US wins was particularly evident during the Iran war when the many military victories against the theocrats in Tehran did not produce any meaningful change in the regime. As Trump himself admitted during the first days of the conflict: “You go through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who’s no better.”

This grim prediction would come true in only a matter of weeks. The United States’ dismal record of regime changes in the post-9/11 Middle East also did not inspire confidence that America’s regime decapitation project in Iran would have a happy ending. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has wielded its newfound control of the Strait of Hormuz to inject great turmoil into the gas and oil markets that fuel the global economy.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the United States, which once prided itself on being the guarantor of global order, is now its chief disruptor.

编者按：彼得·伯根是美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）国家安全分析师、新美国基金会副总裁、亚利桑那州立大学实践教授，也是刚刚出版的《所有总统的战争：美国反恐战争二十五年》一书的作者，本文部分内容改编自该书。

周五是2001年9月11日恐怖袭击事件25周年纪念日。自9/11事件以来，美国总统逐步扩大了权力，可以随时随地随心所欲地发动战争。

随着对伊朗发动“史诗狂怒行动”，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普的战争权力达到了前所未有的高峰。特朗普发动了这场针对伊朗——用他的话说，是“世界头号恐怖主义国家赞助者”——的战争，而没有获得国会授权、北约盟国的支持，也没有联合国决议。这场战争从一开始就鲜少得到美国民众的支持，堪称现代史上最不受欢迎的战争，而且当时美国自身也并未面临任何迫在眉睫的威胁。特朗普既没有从以往的美国战争中吸取任何教训，也没有为战后重建制定任何切实可行的计划。

美国军队长期以来擅长破坏和杀人，但当其战术与明确的战略不符时，美国最终陷入了越南的泥潭，或者伊拉克教派内战最终催生了ISIS，或者引发了伊朗战争，导致全球经济可能衰退。

特朗普的前任们也为伊朗战争埋下了伏笔。“反恐战争”在9·11事件后的几个月里逐渐演变，不再局限于联合国和北约盟国支持的阿富汗战争——当时的阿富汗战争是打击塔利班和基地组织的战争。随后，它发展成为涵盖乔治·W·布什总统“预防性战争”理论的范畴，该理论为2003年入侵伊拉克提供了正当理由。那次入侵引发了伊拉克内战，据估计造成20万伊拉克平民丧生。

反恐战争扩大到包括巴拉克·奥巴马总统在巴基斯坦和也门等与美国没有交战的国家大量使用武装无人机；这些袭击造成数千名恐怖嫌疑人和相当数量的平民丧生。

A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images

在联合国和北约的支持下，奥巴马于2011年下令推翻利比亚独裁者卡扎菲政权，但他并未寻求国会批准。卡扎菲的倒台引发了利比亚长达十年的内战，该国至今仍处于分裂状态，由两个政府统治。奥巴马后来表示，没有为卡扎菲倒台后的“后疫情时代”做好准备是他担任总统期间最大的失误。

在“全球反恐战争”期间，美国尝试了多种战略和战术，其中一些造成了惨重的失败。这些失败包括布什入侵伊拉克，以及十多年后美国从阿富汗撤军的两党合作闹剧——这项协议由特朗普谈判达成，最终由拜登总统执行。

美国从阿富汗撤军不出所料地导致塔利班接管了该国。伊拉克战争和阿富汗撤军的惨败表明，美国这个超级大国在外交政策方面几乎毫无头绪，这削弱了其在世界上的地位。

在反恐战争期间，美国取得了一些真正的作战成功：中央情报局成为一支高效的准军事机构，负责追捕和击毙恐怖分子；联合特种作战司令部从一支几乎未使用的反恐部队转变为一台工业级的杀戮机器；美国特种部队与阿富汗和伊拉克地面部队巧妙地合作；国家安全局则巧妙地渗透了敌方通信系统。

所有这些事态发展最终都对削弱基地组织领导层和终结伊斯兰国的地理“哈里发国”起到了重要作用。因此，9·11事件后，美国境内没有发生外国恐怖组织的大规模致命袭击，这正是9·11事件后四位总统的主要国家安全目标。

去年秋天，特朗普大幅扩大了反恐战争的范围，他声称可以随意杀害涉嫌拉丁美洲贩毒集团成员，理由是他们是“毒品恐怖分子”。这导致美国在加勒比海对数十艘运毒船只发动袭击。2026年初，当美国联合特种作战司令部抓获委内瑞拉总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗时，特朗普声称他是一名毒品恐怖分子。

特朗普称赞推翻马杜罗政权的行动“精彩绝伦”，并以此为荣，随后很快下令启动“史诗狂怒行动”。这与9·11事件后迅速推翻塔利班政权的做法如出一辙，一年半后，这场战争鼓舞了布什发动伊拉克战争。

美国在9/11事件后始终未能吸取教训：必须为战争看似胜利后的“第二天”制定切实可行的计划，否则很可能失去和平。布什政府直到2001年12月塔利班被彻底击败后才与其进行和平谈判，当时塔利班的许多领导人都希望达成协议，而这本可以避免长达数年的战争。众所周知，美国在萨达姆·侯赛因政权垮台后，未能为后续发展做好充分的规划，然而仅仅八年后，奥巴马政府在卡扎菲政权被推翻后，仍然没有制定任何应对计划。

在伊朗战争期间，美国对战略成功和战术胜利之间的混淆尤为明显。尽管美国在军事上多次战胜德黑兰的神权统治者，但并未给该政权带来任何实质性的改变。正如特朗普在冲突初期所承认的那样：“你经历了这一切，五年后才发现你扶植上台的人也好不到哪里去。”

这一不祥的预言在短短几周内便成为现实。美国在“9·11”事件后中东地区政权更迭的糟糕记录，也使人们对美国在伊朗推翻政权的计划能否取得圆满结局缺乏信心。与此同时，伊朗政权利用其新近控制的霍尔木兹海峡，给支撑全球经济的石油和天然气市场带来了巨大的动荡。

9·11事件25年后，曾经以维护全球秩序为傲的美国，如今却成了全球秩序的主要破坏者。