A quarter-century after September 11, one of America's most senior architects of its post-attack foreign policy has offered a rare and measured reckoning with what went wrong. Zalmay Khalilzad, who served at the highest levels of US diplomacy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations, now argues that grief and fear — not strategic clarity — drove decisions that cost hundreds of thousands of lives across two prolonged wars. His reflections raise an enduring question that haunts democratic societies: how much damage can a nation inflict upon itself and others when its most consequential choic
Former US Diplomat Khalilzad: Post-9/11 Fear Drove Strategic Mistakes in Afghanistan, Iraq
Nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks; the subsequent Afghanistan and Iraq wars resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, injuries, and displacement across both countries.