How 9/11 Helped Shape Our Politics Today

From the moment they occurred, the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were seen as inaugurating a new age of asymmetric violence and warfare. President George W. Bush described the war on terror that followed as a generational conflict. Yet, for all the transformations it produced, Al-Qaeda and Islamic militancy more broadly have, in my view, receded within a decade. Not so much because it was defeated on the battlefield but because it was unable to gain much support among Muslims. When popular uprisings swept the Arab world in the early 2010s, protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere in the region took to the streets not in the name of Islam, but democracy. The Arab Spring, more than any military victory, signaled the decline of militancy. Al Qaeda faced its greatest defeat at Tahrir Square. Islamic militancy flourished principally on the battlefields of war on terror, in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, a trajectory epitomized by the emergence of the Islamic State from within the American prison system in Iraq. While Islamic militancy still survives in pockets of weak or fractured states, elsewhere it has petered out into the province of petty criminals or...