NY Historical, All the Presidents’ Wars: 25 Years of America’s War on Terror Featuring: Peter Bergen, David M. Rubenstein (moderator), NYC

All the Presidents’ Wars: 25 Years of America’s War on Terror
Featuring: Peter Bergen, David M. Rubenstein (moderator)
The Ravenel Curry III Lecture in Foreign Policy
Tuesday, January 12, 6:30 – 7:30 pm
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Event Details:
In the 25 years since 9/11, the War on Terror has waged on, costing trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, and, for many, a faltering perception of American hegemony. Four presidents have adapted the strategy of their administrations and ideas of their times to make critical decisions that have shaped the role America plays on the world stage. CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen joins David M. Rubenstein to discuss how the Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump strategies have differed, how counterterrorism efforts have developed, and the disasters that might have been avoided in the Middle East had different decisions been made.
Peter Bergen is vice president of New America, CNN’s national security analyst, and the author of several books, including All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror.
David M. Rubenstein (moderator), co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, is the host of History with David Rubenstein on PBS and the author of the upcoming Inside the Owner’s Box: Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports, among other books.
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All The Presidents’ Wars, Cosmos Club, DC

September 11 attacks, Encycopedia Britannica

Peter L. Bergen
Britannica Editors July 22, 2026 •History

The September 11 attacks were precipitated in large part because Osama bin Laden, the leader of the militant Islamic organization al-Qaeda, held naive beliefs about the United States in the run-up to the attacks. Abu Walid al-Masri, an Egyptian who was a bin Laden associate in Afghanistan in the 1980s and ’90s, explained that, in the years prior to the attacks, bin Laden became increasingly convinced that America was weak. “He believed that the United States was much weaker than some of those around him thought,” Masri remembered, and “as evidence he referred to what happened to the United States in Beirut when the bombing of the Marines base led them to flee from Lebanon,” referring to the destruction of the marine barracks there in 1983 (see 1983 Beirut barracks bombings), which killed 241 American servicemen. Bin Laden believed that the United States was a “paper tiger,” a belief shaped not just by America’s departure from Lebanon following the marine barracks bombing but also by the withdrawal of American forces from Somalia in 1993, following the deaths of 18 U.S. servicemen in Mogadishu, and the American pullout from Vietnam in the 1970s.

The key operational planner of the September 11 attacks was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (often referred to simply as “KSM” in the later 9/11 Commission Report and in the media), who had spent his youth in Kuwait. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed became active in the Muslim Brotherhood, which he joined at age 16, and then went to the United States to attend college, receiving a degree from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1986. Afterward he traveled to Pakistan and then Afghanistan to wage jihad against the Soviet Union, which had launched an invasion against Afghanistan in 1979.

According to Yosri Fouda, a journalist at the Arabic-language cable television channel Al Jazeera who interviewed him in 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned to blow up some dozen American planes in Asia during the mid-1990s, a plot (known as “Bojinka”) that failed, “but the dream of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed never faded. And I think by putting his hand in the hands of bin Laden, he realized that now he stood a chance of bringing about his long awaited dream.”

In 1996 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed met bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan. The 9-11 Commission (formally the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States), set up in 2002 by U.S. Pres. George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress to investigate the attacks of 2001, explained that it was then that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “presented a proposal for an operation that would involve training pilots who would crash planes into buildings in the United States.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed dreamed up the tactical innovation of using hijacked planes to attack the United States, al-Qaeda provided the personnel, money, and logistical support to execute the operation, and bin Laden wove the attacks on New York and Washington into a larger strategic framework of attacking the “far enemy”—the United States—in order to bring about regime change across the Middle East.

The September 11 plot demonstrated that al-Qaeda was an organization of global reach. The plot played out across the globe with planning meetings in Malaysia, operatives taking flight lessons in the United States, coordination by plot leaders based in Hamburg, Germany, money transfers from Dubai, and recruitment of suicide operatives from countries around the Middle East—all activities that were ultimately overseen by al-Qaeda’s leaders in Afghanistan.

Key parts of the September 11 plot took shape in Hamburg. Four of the key pilots and planners in the “Hamburg cell” who would take operational control of the September 11 attacks, including the lead hijacker Mohammed Atta, had a chance meeting on a train in Germany in 1999 with an Islamist militant who struck up a conversation with them about fighting jihad in the Russian republic of Chechnya. The militant put the Hamburg cell in touch with an al-Qaeda operative living in Germany who explained that it was difficult to get to Chechnya at that time, because many travelers were being detained in Georgia. He recommended they go to Afghanistan instead.

Although Afghanistan was critical to the rise of al-Qaeda, it was the experience that some of the plotters acquired in the West that made them simultaneously more zealous and better equipped to carry out the attacks. Three of the four plotters who would pilot the hijacked planes on September 11 and one of the key planners, Ramzi Binalshibh, became more radical while living in Hamburg. Some combination of perceived or real discrimination, alienation, and homesickness seems to have turned them all in a more militant direction. Increasingly cutting themselves off from the outside world, they gradually radicalized each other, and eventually the friends decided to wage battle in bin Laden’s global jihad, setting off for Afghanistan in 1999 in search of al-Qaeda.

Atta and the other members of the Hamburg group arrived in Afghanistan in 1999 right at the moment that the September 11 plot was beginning to take shape. Bin Laden and his military commander Muhammad Atef realized that Atta and his fellow Western-educated jihadists were far better suited to lead the attacks on Washington and New York than the men they had already recruited, leading bin Laden to appoint Atta to head the operation.

The hijackers, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, established themselves in the United States, many well in advance of the attacks. They traveled in small groups, and some of them received commercial flight training.

Throughout his stay in the United States, Atta kept Binalshibh updated on the plot’s progress via e-mail. To cloak his activities, Atta wrote the messages as if he were writing to his girlfriend “Jenny,” using innocuous code to inform Binalshibh that they were almost complete in their training and readiness for the attacks. Atta wrote in one message, “The first semester commences in three weeks…Nineteen certificates for private education and four exams.” The referenced 19 “certificates” were code that identified the 19 al-Qaeda hijackers, while the four “exams” identified the targets of the attacks.

In the early morning of August 29, 2001, Atta called Binalshibh and said he had a riddle that he was trying to solve: “Two sticks, a dash and a cake with a stick down—what is it?” After considering the question, Binalshibh realized that Atta was telling him that the attacks would occur in two weeks—the two sticks being the number 11 and the cake with a stick down a 9. Putting it together, it meant that the attacks would occur on 11-9, or 11 September (in most countries the day precedes the month in numeric dates, but in the United States the month precedes the day; hence, it was 9-11 in the United States). On September 5 Binalshibh left Germany for Pakistan. Once there he sent a messenger to Afghanistan to inform bin Laden about both the day of the attack and its scope.

On September 11, 2001, groups of attackers boarded four domestic aircraft at three East Coast airports, and soon after takeoff they disabled the crews, some of whom may have been stabbed with box cutters the hijackers were secreting. The hijackers then took control of the aircraft, all large and bound for the West Coast with full loads of fuel. At 8:46 AM the first plane, American Airlines flight 11, which had originated from Boston, was piloted into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Most observers construed this initially to be an accident involving a small commuter plane. The second plane, United Airlines flight 175, also from Boston, struck the south tower 17 minutes later. At this point there was no doubt that the United States was under attack. Each structure was badly damaged by the impact and erupted into flames. Office workers who were trapped above the points of impact in some cases leapt to their deaths rather than face the infernos now raging inside the towers. The third plane, American Airlines flight 77, taking off from Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., struck the southwest side of the Pentagon (just outside the city) at 9:37 AM, touching off a fire in that section of the structure. Minutes later the Federal Aviation Authority ordered a nationwide ground stop, and within the next hour (at 10:03 AM) the fourth aircraft, United Airlines flight 93 from Newark, New Jersey, crashed near Shanksville in the Pennsylvania countryside after its passengers—informed of events via cellular phone—attempted to overpower their assailants.

On the morning of September 11, President Bush had been visiting a second-grade classroom in Sarasota, Florida, when he was informed that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. A little later Andrew Card, his chief of staff, whispered in the president’s right ear: “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.” To keep the president out of harm’s way, Bush subsequently hopscotched across the country on Air Force One, landing in Washington, D.C., the evening of the attacks. At 8:30 PM Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office in a speech that laid out a key doctrine of his administration’s future foreign policy: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

On September 14 Bush visited “Ground Zero,” the smoking pile of debris of what remained of the World Trade Center and the thousands who had perished there. Standing on top of a wrecked fire truck, Bush grabbed a bullhorn to address the rescue workers working feverishly to find any survivors. When one of the workers said that he could not hear what the president was saying, Bush made one of the most memorable remarks of his presidency:

I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon.
Bush’s robust response to the attacks drove his poll ratings from 55 percent favourable before September 11 to 90 percent in the days after, the highest ever recorded for a president.

The aftermath

The emotional distress caused by the attacks—particularly the collapse of the twin towers, New York City’s most visible landmark—was overwhelming. Unlike the relatively isolated site of the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941, to which the September 11 events were soon compared, the World Trade Center lay at the heart of one of the world’s largest cities. Hundreds of thousands of people witnessed the attacks firsthand (many onlookers photographed events or recorded them with video cameras), and millions watched the tragedy unfold live on television. In the days that followed September 11, the footage of the attacks was replayed in the media countless times, as were the scenes of throngs of people, stricken with grief, gathering at “Ground Zero”—as the site where the towers once stood came to be commonly known—some with photos of missing loved ones, seeking some hint of their fate.

Moreover, world markets were badly shaken. The towers were at the heart of New York’s financial district, and damage to Lower Manhattan’s infrastructure, combined with fears of stock market panic, kept New York markets closed for four trading days. Markets afterward suffered record losses. The attacks also stranded tens of thousands of people throughout the United States, as U.S. airspace remained closed for commercial aviation until September 13, and normal service, with more rigid security measures, did not resume for several days.

The September 11 attacks were an enormous tactical success for al-Qaeda. The strikes were well coordinated and hit multiple targets in the heart of the enemy, and the attacks were magnified by being broadcast around the world to an audience of untold millions. The September 11 “propaganda of the deed” took place in the media capital of the world, which ensured the widest possible coverage of the event. Not since television viewers had watched the abduction and murder of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics in 1972 had a massive global audience witnessed a terrorist attack unfold in real time. If al-Qaeda had been a largely unknown organization before September 11, in the days after it became a household name.

After the attacks of September 11, countries allied with the United States rallied to its support, perhaps best symbolized by the French newspaper Le Monde’s headline, “We are all Americans now.” Even in Iran thousands gathered in the capital, Tehrān, for a candlelight vigil.

Evidence gathered by the United States soon convinced most governments that the Islamic militant group al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. The group had been implicated in previous terrorist strikes against Americans, and bin Laden had made numerous anti-American statements. Al-Qaeda was headquartered in Afghanistan and had forged a close relationship with that country’s ruling Taliban militia, which subsequently refused U.S. demands to extradite bin Laden and to terminate al-Qaeda activity there.

For the first time in its history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) invoked Article 5, allowing its members to respond collectively in self-defense, and on October 7 the U.S. and allied military forces launched an attack against Afghanistan (see Afghanistan War). Within months thousands of militants were killed or captured, and Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders were driven into hiding. In addition, the U.S. government exerted great effort to track down other al-Qaeda agents and sympathizers throughout the world and made combating terrorism the focus of U.S. foreign policy. Meanwhile, security measures within the United States were tightened considerably at such places as airports, government buildings, and sports venues. To help facilitate the domestic response, Congress quickly passed the USA PATRIOT Act (the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001), which significantly but temporarily expanded the search and surveillance powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law-enforcement agencies. Additionally, a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security was established.

Despite their success in causing widespread destruction and death, the September 11 attacks were a strategic failure for al-Qaeda. Following September 11, al-Qaeda—whose name in Arabic means “the base”—lost the best base it ever had in Afghanistan. Later some in al-Qaeda’s leadership—including those who, like Egyptian Saif al-Adel, had initially opposed the attacks—tried to spin the Western intervention in Afghanistan as a victory for al-Qaeda. Al-Adel, one of the group’s military commanders, explained in an interview four years later that the strikes on New York and Washington were part of a far-reaching and visionary plan to provoke the United States into some ill-advised actions:

Such strikes will force the person to carry out random acts and provoke him to make serious and sometimes fatal mistakes.…The first reaction was the invasion of Afghanistan.
But there is not a shred of evidence that in the weeks before September 11 al-Qaeda’s leaders made any plans for an American invasion of Afghanistan. Instead, they prepared only for possible U.S. cruise missile attacks or air strikes by evacuating their training camps. Also, the overthrow of the Taliban hardly constituted an American “mistake”—the first and only regime in the modern Muslim world that ruled according to al-Qaeda’s rigid precepts was toppled, and with it was lost an entire country that al-Qaeda had once enjoyed as a safe haven. And in the wake of the fall of the Taliban, al-Qaeda was unable to recover anything like the status it once had as a terrorist organization with considerable sway over Afghanistan.

Bin Laden disastrously misjudged the possible U.S. responses to the September 11 attacks, which he believed would take one of two forms: an eventual retreat from the Middle East along the lines of the U.S. pullout from Somalia in 1993 or another ineffectual round of cruise missile attacks similar to those that followed al-Qaeda’s bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Neither of these two scenarios happened. The U.S. campaign against the Taliban was conducted with pinpoint strikes from American airpower, tens of thousands of Northern Alliance forces (a loose coalition of mujahideen militias that maintained control of a small section of northern Afghanistan), and more than 300 U.S. Special Forces soldiers on the ground working with 110 officers from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In November, just two months after the September 11 attacks, the Taliban fell to the Northern Alliance and the United States. Still, it was just the beginning of what would become the longest war in U.S. history, as the United States tried to prevent the return of the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies.

In December 2001, faced with the problem of where to house prisoners as the Taliban fell, the administration decided to hold them at Guantánamo Bay, which the U.S. had been leasing from Cuba since 1903. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it on December 27, 2001, “I would characterize Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as the least worst place we could have selected.” Guantánamo was attractive to administration officials because they believed it placed the detainees outside the reach of American laws, such as the right to appeal their imprisonment, yet it was only 90 miles (145 km) off the coast of Florida, making it accessible to the various agencies that would need to travel there to extract information from what was believed to be a population of hundreds of dangerous terrorists. Eventually, some 800 prisoners would be held there, although the prison population was reduced to less than 175 by the time of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

In his State of the Union speech on January 29, 2002, President Bush laid out a new doctrine of preemptive war, which went well beyond the long-established principle that the United States would go to war to prevent an adversary launching an attack that imminently threatened the country. Bush declared: I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.

The effort to connect Iraq to the events of September 11, 2001, began within hours of the attacks. These notes, written by Department of Defense official Stephen Cambone at 2:40 PM on September 11, capture directives issued by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Among them is the instruction, “Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit SH [Saddam Hussein] at same time – not only UBL [Usama bin Laden].”
Bush identified those dangerous regimes as an “axis of evil” that included Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. At the graduation ceremony for West Point cadets on June 1, 2002, Bush elaborated on his preemptive war doctrine, saying to the assembled soon-to-be graduates and their families, “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.” Bush believed that there would be a “demonstration effect” in destroying Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq that would deter groups like al-Qaeda or indeed anyone else who might be inclined to attack the United States. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith later explained, What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack. Thus, though there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq had collaborated with al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks, the United States prepared for conflict against Iraq in its global war against terror, broadly defined.

On March 19, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, President Bush issued the order for war:

For the peace of the world and the benefit and freedom of the Iraqi people, I hereby give the order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. May God bless the troops.
On March 20 the American-led invasion of Iraq began. Within three weeks U.S. forces controlled Baghdad, and the famous pictures of the massive statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled from its plinth were broadcast around the world.

The September 11 commission and its findings

In 2002 President Bush had appointed a commission to look into the September 11 attacks, and two years later it issued its final report. The commission found that the key pre-September 11 failure at the CIA was its not adding to the State Department’s “watch list” two of the “muscle” hijackers (who were trained to restrain the passengers on the plane), the suspected al-Qaeda militants Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. The CIA had been tracking Hazmi and Mihdhar since they attended a terrorist summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on January 5, 2000. The failure to watch-list the two al-Qaeda suspects with the Department of State meant that they entered the United States under their real names with ease. On January 15, 2000, 10 days after the Malaysian meeting, Hazmi and Mihdhar flew into Los Angeles. The CIA also did not alert the FBI about the identities of the suspected terrorists, which could have helped the bureau locate them once they were inside the United States. According to the commission, this was the failure of not just a few employees at the CIA but a large number of CIA officers and analysts. Some 50 to 60 CIA employees read cables about the two al-Qaeda suspects without taking any action. Some of those officers knew that one of the al-Qaeda suspects had a visa for the United States, and by May 2001 some knew that the other suspect had flown to Los Angeles.

The soon-to-be hijackers would not have been difficult to find in California if their names had been known to law enforcement. Under their real names they rented an apartment, obtained driver’s licenses, opened bank accounts, purchased a car, and took flight lessons at a local school; Mihdhar even listed his name in the local phone directory.

It was only on August 24, 2001, as a result of questions raised by a CIA officer on assignment at the FBI, that the two al-Qaeda suspects were watch-listed and their names communicated to the FBI. Even then the FBI sent out only a “Routine” notice requesting an investigation of Mihdhar. A few weeks later Hazmi and Mihdhar were two of the hijackers on the American Airlines flight that plunged into the Pentagon.

The CIA inspector general concluded that “informing the FBI and good operational follow-through by CIA and FBI might have resulted in surveillance of both al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi. Surveillance, in turn, would have had the potential to yield information on flight training, financing, and links to others who were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.”

The key failure at the FBI was the handling of the Zacarias Moussaoui case. Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was attending flight school in the summer of 2001 in Minnesota, where he attracted attention from instructors because he had little knowledge of flying and did not behave like a typical aviation student. The flight school contacted the FBI, and on August 16 Moussaoui was arrested on a visa overstay charge. Although Moussaoui was not the “20th hijacker,” as was widely reported later, he had received money from one of the September 11 coordinators, Ramzi Binalshibh, and by his own account was going to take part in a second wave of al-Qaeda attacks following the assaults on New York and Washington.

The FBI agent in Minneapolis who handled Moussaoui’s case believed that he might have been planning to hijack a plane, and the agent was also concerned that Moussaoui had traveled to Pakistan, which was a red flag as militants often used the country as a transit point to travel to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. On August 23 (or 24, according to some reports) CIA director George Tenet was told about the case in a briefing titled “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.” But FBI headquarters determined that there was not sufficient “probable cause” of a crime for the Minneapolis office to conduct a search of Moussaoui’s computer hard drive and belongings. Such a search would have turned up his connection to Binalshibh, according to Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a leading member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of the FBI. The 9-11 Commission also concluded that “a maximum U.S. effort to investigate Moussaoui conceivably could have unearthed his connection to Binalshibh.”

The hunt for bin Laden

In September 2001 President Bush announced that he wanted Osama bin Laden captured—dead or alive—and a $25 million bounty was eventually issued for information leading to the killing or capture of bin Laden. Bin Laden evaded capture, however, including in December 2001, when he was tracked by U.S. forces to the mountains of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s trail subsequently went cold, and he was thought to be living somewhere in the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal regions.

U.S. intelligence eventually located him in Pakistan, living in the garrison city of Abbottabad, and in the early morning hours of May 2, 2011, on orders from U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, a small team of U.S. Navy SEALs assaulted his compound and shot and killed the al-Qaeda leader.

Why is it so hard for the U.S. to win wars? NPR

Why is it so hard for the U.S. to win wars?
July 15, 20266:05 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Greg Myre

The U.S. has fought three major wars in the past quarter-century, in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. None has gone as planned.

Transcript
AILSA CHANG, HOST:

The U.S. has been at war for more than 20 of the past 25 years, in three major conflicts all in the same region – first, Afghanistan, then Iraq, now Iran. Now, none of the wars have gone nearly as well as U.S. presidents said that they would. So why is the U.S. so often at war and finding it so hard to win? NPR’s Greg Myre has our story.

GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Here’s President George W. Bush in 2001…

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

GEORGE W BUSH: The Taliban regime is coming to an end.

MYRE: …And President Obama in 2011…

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BARACK OBAMA: The end of war in Iraq reflects a larger transition. The tide of war is receding.

MYRE: …And President Trump just a few days ago.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The Iran war has been a tremendous military success.

MYRE: In all three wars, the U.S. military unleashed overwhelming power that greatly weakened or ousted the enemy in the early days of fighting. Yet, time and again, raw military might has not translated into clear political success and the kind of fundamental change the U.S. was seeking.

PETER BERGEN: We generally do a pretty good job of the breaking things and killing people – the inception of the wars.

MYRE: Peter Bergen is the author of a new book, “All The Presidents’ Wars,” which looks at U.S. conflicts over the past quarter century. Bergen, a national security analyst at CNN, says the U.S. keeps falling short when it comes to ending wars.

BERGEN: We, the United States, tend to not plan for the day after – the peace that follows the war.

MYRE: With an emphasis on military power over diplomatic deals, the U.S. keeps expecting wars that will be brief and relatively low cost. That’s according to Paul Salem, a Middle East analyst in Lebanon.

PAUL SALEM: The U.S. has an imperial appetite but a tourist’s approach to it.

MYRE: Salem is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. He says this contradiction defined the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and a similar scenario is playing out in Iran.

SALEM: Their recent history is not one of stability and deep institutions that you can just come in and change somebody at the top and everything works out.

MYRE: Peter Bergen reinforces that idea. He says the U.S. has been acting like an empire without wanting to be an empire.

BERGEN: Empires typically require people to learn languages, stay there for a long time, not be there on just short tours. We don’t do the kinds of things that would be necessary to hold on to territories for a long time. We’re very reluctant to do it.

MYRE: President Trump promised to keep the U.S. out of forever wars, yet, in attacking Iran, he’s taking on the largest and most powerful U.S. rival in the region. And the president is trying to do it without ground troops, which has limited U.S. casualties. Douglas Lute, a retired Army lieutenant general, does not support using ground troops, but he says it’s important to recognize that without them, the U.S. needs to scale back its goals.

DOUGLAS LUTE: When we launch only a bombing campaign but we retain maximalist goals, like regime change, you don’t have any prospect for success unless you’re just lucky. And being lucky is not the place to start a military campaign.

MYRE: Trump has called, at various times, for eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, toppling the government, destroying its air force, navy and missile program. Lute sees parallels to earlier wars when he served as the so-called war czar, coordinating efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan under Presidents Bush and Obama.

LUTE: We’ve had repeated disconnects between ends, ways and means. We’ve had a lack of sufficient understanding of what we were getting into.

MYRE: For all its muscle, U.S. military power has its limits and diplomacy has largely been sidelined, according to Paul Salem.

SALEM: Advice from the State Department was kind of brushed aside as, you know, too weak and too wimpy-wise (ph). We’ve seen it again in this war. There’s barely any State Department input or advice.

MYRE: These analysts say there is a Middle East war that offers valuable lessons – the first U.S. war against Iraq back in 1991. The goal was limited – drive out Iraqi troops who’d seized Kuwait. President George H. W. Bush rallied support at the United Nations and built a large international force. Again, Douglas Lute.

LUTE: I count that war as the last time that we really had realistic objectives.

MYRE: He was then an army major in a cavalry unit that took part in the swift, decisive ground campaign.

LUTE: We had admittedly limited objectives – right? – which was to liberate Kuwait. But it was not to take on Baghdad, not to overthrow Saddam, not to replace the Iraqi government.

MYRE: Trump is looking to end the Iran war. Yet Paul Salem thinks that however this conflict concludes, it won’t be the final word. The U.S., he says, is capable of striking Iran whenever it wishes. And while Iran will be vulnerable…

SALEM: It is able to inflict a cost on the global economy and, as indirectly, on the U.S. president. I think there will be future, you know, wars and confrontations.

MYRE: And it’s still not clear how this one will end.

Greg Myre, NPR News.

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All the Presidents’ Wars with Peter Bergen | WorldNow
October 15 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

How did the War on Terror reshape America – and the world?

Peter Bergen, the journalist who conducted the first televised interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997 and author of All the Presidents’ Wars, joins WorldNow with Jim Falk to examine the decisions of four U.S. presidents over 25 years of conflict and their lasting consequences: from the rise of ISIS and the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan to today’s war with Iran.

The details:

When: Thursday, October 8 | 7:00pm-8:00pm EDT
Where: Zoom Webinar
Tickets: No charge, RSVP Required

Tickets

Meet the Guest

Peter Bergen is the author of seven books, including Manhunt, one of three New York Times bestsellers. Bergen is vice president at New America, professor at Arizona State University, and CNN national security analyst.

He is the author of All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror, available September 8th, 2026.

Meet the Host

Jim Falk is Vice Chairman of the Board of Global Santa Fe, a member organization of the World Affairs Councils of America. He is the host of WorldNow with Jim Falk and the producer and host of The Forum, the weekly public affairs program on KSFR-FM, Santa Fe Community Radio (KSFR.org). A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Falk led the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth as President and CEO from 2001 to 2021, helping expand the organization’s role as one of the nation’s leading forums for international affairs and public policy. His guests have included diplomats, senior intelligence officials, policymakers, military leaders, scholars, journalists, and bestselling authors from around the world. Through WorldNow and The Forum, he continues his commitment to fostering informed, civil dialogue on the international, political, social, and cultural issues shaping our world.

The Future of the Foreign Affairs Workforce: Rebuilding Public Service. New America online

July 14, 2026

The Future of the Foreign Affairs Workforce: Rebuilding Public Service
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The United States faces increasingly complex global challenges, and the strength of its foreign‑affairs institutions depends on the people who serve within them. A year ago, widespread Reductions in Force (RIFs) significantly affected the State Department. How did these reductions impact the nation’s diplomatic readiness, the safety of all Americans, and the world? How can the government rebuild public service and best ensure a State Department prepared for the challenges of the future?

Join New America’s Future Security Program, as it welcomes Elizabeth Campbell, Jenny Mattingley, and Amb. Eric Rubin to discuss the future of public service and the impact of RIFs.

Elizabeth Campbell is a Fellow with New America’s Future Security Program, founding Executive Director of CoAction Global, a nonprofit impact accelerator, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

Jenny Mattingley is Vice President, Public Policy & Stakeholder Engagement at the Partnership for Public Service. She previously served in the executive branch at OMB focusing on hiring reform and the workforce pillar of the President’s Management Agenda and spent several years consulting with good government organizations, served as the executive director of the Performance Improvement Council and the founding director of the White House Leadership Development Program.

Ambassador Eric Rubin retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in September 2023 after 38 years of service. He served as the elected president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) from 2019 to 2023, after his posting as U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria (2016–2019). He is also a Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Join the conversation online using #PublicService and following @NewAmericaISP.
Participants
Peter Bergen

Elizabeth Campbell
Fellow, Future Security

Jenny Mattingley
Vice President, Public Policy & Stakeholder Engagement, Partnership for Public Service

Amb. Eric Rubin
Senior Fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis Former President, American Foreign Service Association Former U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria

Jaipur Lit Festival, Jaipur, India

14 January – 18 January 2027
Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur
The world’s grandest celebration of

books and ideas

Festival Hotel

About the
Festival

The world’s greatest literary show turns 20 in 2027!
For two decades, the Jaipur Literature Festival has stood at the intersection of unbridled change – transforming minds, inspiring new writing and empowering fresh literary ideas. Never just a gathering of authors, it has, since its inception, evolved into the world’s most expansive and democratic platform for informed discourse. As we celebrate our 20th edition, we reaffirm our vision: to curate conversations and dialogue around books and ideas that connect the past with the present and shape the future.

In an era riddled with geopolitical conflicts, wars, and fragmentation, literature acts as the glue that holds humanity together, and Jaipur Literature Festival is a living manifestation of that space where stories, languages, and ideas bridge divides, reminding us that dialogue is more urgent than ever. Teamwork Arts, a trailblazer in immersive cultural and intellectual experiences, invites the world to join us in Jaipur from 14th to 18th January 2027 at Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur, as we write the next chapter of the ‘greatest literary show on Earth!’
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The
Friend of the Festival
Experience
Discover the iconic Jaipur Literature Festival your way! Become a Friend of the Festival and access the finest of the facilities that the festival has to offer!

Exclusive Festival Access

Dedicated Hospitality

Specially Curated Events

Exclusive Festival Access

Dedicated Hospitality

Specially Curated Events

Become a Friend of The Festival

“…But the granddaddy of them all—and the epicenter of many a conversation—is the Jaipur Literature Festival, which draws visitors every winter all the way from Sydney or New England.”
Pico Iyer

Author
“ The world’s most incredible festival of books, a Disneyland for literature, and I’ve never seen anything like it before”
Steve Brusatte

Author
One Festival Many Ways to
Experience
Secure your EARLY BIRD TICKETS now before they vanish! Celebrate two decades of ideas, debate, and magic at the Jaipur Literature Festival’s landmark 20th edition. Get free access across festival venues for the lowest possible price, whether you’re a passionate book lover, a student eager to learn, or a member of the media, we have a category tailored just for you. Don’t let the door close on the greatest literary show on earth.

Media Registration
FREE*

Exclusive registrations for media persons officially representing print, online and electronic media.

Coming Soon

Student Registration
INR 250/-

INR 100/-

(FOR ALL FIVE DAYS)
For schools bringing batches/individual students attending the Festival on all days or on specific days.

Register to Attend

General Registration
Starts at
INR 200/-

Includes access to the Festival: session venues, food courts, merchandise space, book sales, and art installation spaces.

Register to Attend

Friend of the Festival
Starts at

INR 14,500/-

Experience Jaipur with us as a Friend of the Festival and access the finest of the facilities that the iconic Jaipur Literature Festival has to offer!

Coming Soon

Jaipur Music Stage
Starts at
INR 499/-

Jaipur Music Stage is the ultimate platform for the finest folk, fusion, and world music performances by a range of artistes!

Coming Soon

Jaipur BookMark
Starts at
INR 1500/-

Secure your spot at South Asia’s biggest annual publishing conclave. Book your tickets for Jaipur BookMark 2027 now!

Coming Soon

Virtual Session Registration
FREE*

Dive into inspiring discussions and insights from Jaipur Literature Festival. Let’s celebrate literature together from the comfort of your home!

20 years of voices and ideas around the globe. The Jaipur Literature Festival 2027 speakers will be announced soon!
Speakers Archive

ALL THE PRESIDENTS’ WARS: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF AMERICA’S WAR ON TERROR — AT CONN AVE, Politics & Prose, DC

PETER BERGEN — ALL THE PRESIDENTS’ WARS: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF AMERICA’S WAR ON TERROR — AT CONN AVE

Politics and Prose Bookstore Logo in black
PETER BERGEN — ALL THE PRESIDENTS’ WARS: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF AMERICA’S WAR ON TERROR — AT CONN AVE
From the New York Times best-selling author, a tragic history of the United States’ war on terror across four presidential administrations.

2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. The resulting war on terror cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. And yet despite its blunders, this campaign has kept America safe from foreign attack. Based on hundreds of interviews, All the Presidents’ Wars focuses on critical decisions of four successive presidents—Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. One of the few journalists to interview Osama bin Laden and have unparalleled access to the US intelligence community, Peter Bergen explores the birth of ISIS; the many terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups; the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, largely responsible for the Iraqi civil war in the mid-2000s; the resurrection of Afghanistan’s Taliban; and trump’s war with Iran. All the Presidents’ Wars is essential reading for understanding the devastating history of America’s war on terror and for avoiding the mistakes of the past.

Peter Bergen is a journalist, documentary producer, professor, and author of seven books, including Manhunt, one of three New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Washington, DC.

This event is free with first come, first serve seating.

To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.

DATE:
Sun, 9/27/2026
TIME:
3:00pm
PLACE:
Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008
Non Fiction
EVENT RELATED BOOKS & PRODUCTS

PREORDER
All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror
All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror

Peter Bergen
Current price: $32.99
Hardcover
ISBN: 9781324124061
Publish Date: 9/8/2026
From the New York Times best-selling author, a tragic history of the United States’ war on terror across four presidential administrations.

2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. The resulting war on terror cost trillions of…

Read More about All the Presidents' Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America's War on Terror
Available for Preorder
Publish Date: 9/8/2026

The Man Who Stole the Gods: author Matthew Campbell with Peter Bergen and Tess Davis, HYBRID New America, DC

The Man Who Stole the Gods

A conversation with Matthew Campbell and Peter Bergen with Tess Davis

HYBRID
New America
740 15th St NW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20005
12PM – 1PM EDT

Join the New America Fellows Program and Future Security Programs, and the Antiquities Coalition for a conversation about The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy in-person and online on June 10.

From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the galleries of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Man Who Stole the Gods is a tale of stolen treasures and the battle to reclaim a nation’s soul.

Amidst the chaos of Cambodia’s brutal genocide, priceless treasures of the ancient Khmer Empire vanished from sacred temples, looted by smugglers and trafficked into the hands of elite collectors. At the center of it all was Douglas Latchford, later known as “Dynamite Doug,” who orchestrated one of history’s most audacious cultural heists while presenting himself as an expert on Khmer art.

In The Man Who Stole the Gods, Matthew Campbell unravels the story of Latchford’s criminal enterprise and a global conspiracy of greed and collusion involving some of the world’s most powerful museums and collectors.

Copies of The Man Who Stole the Gods are available for purchase online. Books will be on sale at the event.

Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.

Well executed German radio doc on the hunt for bin Laden

https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/audio/zeitzeichen/audio-schuesse-auf-den-terrorfuersten-das-ende-von-bin-laden-100.html

Schüsse auf den Terrorfürsten: Das Ende von bin Laden WDR Zeitzeichen 02.05.2026 14:52 Min. Verfügbar bis 02.05.2099 WDR 5Zehn Jahre dauert die Suche nach Osama bin Laden, Führer der Terrorgruppe al-Qaida. und Drahtzieher von 9/11. Am 2.5.2011 tötet ihn ein US-Kommando beim Sturm auf sein Versteck in Pakistan.In diesem Zeitzeichen erzählt Martin Herzog, wie die Fahndung nach Osama bin Laden zur teuersten Verbrecherjagd der Geschichte wird und welche Risiken US-Präsident Barack Obama mit dem Zugriff eingeht. Nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September ruft George W. Bush den “Krieg gegen Terror” aus. Im Zentrum steht Osama bin Laden, Sohn eines saudischen Milliardärs und Anführer der Terrororganisation al-Qaida. Seine Spur verliert sich bereits nach wenigen Monaten in den afghanisch-pakistanischen Bergen. Zehn Jahre brauchen die US-Spezialeinheiten, um ihn schließlich in einer schlichten Wohnanlage in Pakistan aufzuspüren. Dort töten sie ihn. In der westlichen Welt wird die Nachricht vielfach mit Genugtuung aufgenommen, das Kapitel 11. September scheint beendet. Menschenrechtler sehen den Zugriff hingegen als Hinrichtung, weil Osama bin Laden ohne Rechtsverfahren getötet wurde. Das sind unsere wichtigsten Interviewpartner: Peter Bergen, US-Journalist und Buchautor (CNN) Wolfgang Kaleck, Rechtsanwalt, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Berlin Welches Thema sollen wir im Zeitzeichen recherchieren? Gibt es Kritik oder Lob? Gerne her damit: Einfach schreiben an zeitzeichen@wdr.de Wir freuen uns auch über Bewertungen auf der Podcast-Plattform des Vertrauens! Diese und viele weitere Folgen vom WDR Zeitzeichen findet ihr in ARD Sounds und überall da, wo es Podcasts gibt: https://kurz.wdr.de/podcastpicker-zeitzeichen Die Macher hinter diesem Zeitzeichen: Autor: Martin Herzog Redaktion: Frank Zirpins In diesem Zeitzeichen erzählt Martin Herzog: wie die Fahndung nach Osama bin Laden zur teuersten Verbrecherjagd der Geschichte wird, dass die Suche nach ihm erschwert wird, weil er kein Telefon und kein Internet nutzt, welche Risiken US-Präsident Barack Obama mit dem Zugriff eingeht, ob die Erschießung eine “extralegale” Tötung gewesen ist. Nach den Anschlägen vom 11. September ruft George W. Bush den “Krieg gegen Terror” aus. Im Zentrum steht Osama bin Laden, Sohn eines saudischen Milliardärs und Anführer der Terrororganisation al-Qaida. Seine Spur verliert sich bereits nach wenigen Monaten in den afghanisch-pakistanischen Bergen. Zehn Jahre brauchen die US-Spezialeinheiten, um ihn schließlich in einer schlichten Wohnanlage in Pakistan aufzuspüren. Dort töten sie ihn. In der westlichen Welt wird die Nachricht vielfach mit Genugtuung aufgenommen, das Kapitel 11. September scheint beendet. Menschenrechtler sehen den Zugriff hingegen als Hinrichtung, weil Osama bin Laden ohne Rechtsverfahren getötet wurde. Das sind unsere wichtigsten Quellen und Interviewpartner: Peter Bergen, US-Journalist und Buchautor (CNN) Wolfgang Kaleck, Rechtsanwalt, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Berlin Peter L. Bergen: Die Jagd auf Osama bin Laden. Eine Enthüllungsgeschichte. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, München 2012 Weiterführende Links: Zeitzeichen: 11.09.2001 – Die Terroranschläge auf das World Trade Center und das Pentagon Zeitzeichen: 11.08.1988 – Gründung des Terrornetzwerks al-Qaida Welches Thema sollen wir im Zeitzeichen recherchieren? Gibt es Kritik oder Lob? Gerne her damit: Einfach schreiben an zeitzeichen@wdr.de Wir freuen uns auch über Bewertungen auf der Podcast-Plattform des Vertrauens! Diese und viele weitere Folgen vom WDR Zeitzeichen findet ihr in ARD Sounds und überall da, wo es Podcasts gibt. Die Macher hinter diesem Zeitzeichen: Autor: Martin Herzog Redaktion: Frank Zirpins