Conclusion

Since 9/11, the US-led counterterrorist strategy initiated by the Bush administration and largely preserved by Obama’s has:

Been apparently effective in preventing another major terrorist attack by radical Islamists on US soil, except for the small-scale attacks during the Boston Marathon and in Orlando and San Bernardino.

Resulted in the widely-publicized killings of Osama bin-Laden, Saddam Hussein, Anwar al-Awlaki, leaders and members of ISIS, the Taliban, and other icons of international terror, and initially drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.

Installed ostensibly “friendly” and “democratic” governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But this counterterrorist strategy has also:

Been largely ineffective in reducing the global incidence and lethality of terrifying acts of political violence, which have skyrocketed since 9/11;

At the same time, terrorist groups have grown and spread;

Lost freedoms in the US have not been restored;

US-led wars continue to be waged in many countries.

Furthermore, amid huge increases in military spending and big profits for military contractors and armaments manufacturers, many Western economies remain dysfunctional, tottering on the edge of catastrophe.

Based on such circumstances, most Americans do not feel more secure now than on September 10, 2001. Instead, “a majority of Americans believes that over the last decade the US over-invested resources in some of the responses to the 9/11 attacks and that this over-investment has contributed to America’s economic 274problems today,” and two in three believe US power and influence have diminished in the world over the last decade. ¹