Former top US diplomat reveals mistakes made after 9/11 attacks

What the report says

Former US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad has said the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks were shaped by fear, anger and rushed decision-making that led Washington into major strategic mistakes. In an interview with Al Jazeera’s This is America, he reflected on the US response to the attacks while speaking from the perspective of someone who served on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush and later as ambassador in Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations.

Khalilzad said the US invasion of Afghanistan, launched less than a month after 9/11, was driven by the need to strike al-Qaeda and prevent another attack. He also said he now believes Washington should have considered negotiating with the Taliban or bringing them into Afghanistan’s political process, even if that view ran against the mood at the time. Al Jazeera reported that he acknowledged the post-9/11 climate made compromise difficult.

He also revisited the 2003 Iraq war, saying the problem was the intelligence and analysis behind the invasion. The Bush administration had argued that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction, but those claims later proved false. Khalilzad said that without 9/11, the US probably would not have attacked Iraq.

His comments came as the US marks decades since 9/11 and reflects on the long wars that followed, including the 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power. The interview adds to ongoing debate over how the attacks reshaped American foreign policy and global security policy.