Declaring Victory

An important question that lingers on the eighth anniversary of 9/11 is how does this end, exactly? On the one hand, for all the terrible things that have happened since that terrible morning, our worst post-attack fears have very much not materialized. Insofar as America seems to be in rickety shape right now, that has far more to do with the collapse of an asset bubble and the grim medium-term fiscal outlook than with anything al-Qaeda is plausibly going to do. At the same time, despite some recent wins against al-Qaeda in the Pakistani frontier regions it doesn’t seem likely that we’re going to totally eliminate jihadist activity in various far-flung corners of the globe.

So does it make sense to spend years and years more on a permanent emergency footing? It seems to me that it doesn’t, and that James Fallows’ September 2006 article “Declaring Victory” is still one of the most important and relevant things published since 9/11. Obviously to some extent you need to update the thinking to take into account the past two years’ worth of activity, but it basically rings true to me today.