On the morning of September 11, 2001, Marine veteran Joslin Joseph was supposed to be at the World Trade Center. A last-minute argument with a friend kept him away, and instead he watched from a New Jersey hilltop as the towers collapsed. That experience drove him to enlist, fueled by anger and a desire to strike back. But a quarter-century later, he looks back with a stark conclusion: the war on terror has not made America safer, and it has arguably handed bin Laden a strategic victory.
Joseph, who served in Iraq, argues that the United States fell into a trap set by al Qaeda's leader. Bin Laden's stated goal, as laid out in a 2004 video, was to bleed America dry and force its economy to buckle. At the time, his words seemed like the rantings of a madman. Now, with the national debt soaring past $40 trillion and post-9/11 military spending estimated at $18 trillion, Joseph says the prophecy has come true.
The Cost of a Global War
The numbers are staggering. In 2004, the national debt was $7 trillion. Since 2001, military operations have added $8 trillion to that figure. The Department of Homeland Security alone has cost $1.2 trillion, and interest on war borrowing now exceeds $1.1 trillion annually—more than double the entire budget for Veterans Affairs medical and disability care, which has tripled because of these conflicts.
Joseph notes that the expansion of the war went beyond Afghanistan. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, which he himself questioned, opened the door for a broader conflict. Bin Laden understood that American politicians would not risk looking weak on terror, so they would keep expanding operations. Both parties played a role: Democrats criticized Bush's Iraq invasion and the failure at Tora Bora, yet supported Obama's drone strikes and continued troop presence in Afghanistan after bin Laden's death in 2011.
A Spreading Threat
The result has been a multiplication of enemies. Al Qaeda splintered into groups like ISIS, which emerged from the chaos of the Syrian civil war. Iran, watching the U.S. struggle, increased support for proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Islamist attacks have struck from Kenya to France, and the U.S. has responded with more spending and more military deployments.
Joseph points to the current conflict with Iran as an example of the asymmetric cost. The U.S. spends millions of dollars to shoot down Iranian drones that cost thousands. Bin Laden boasted in 2004 that "every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million [U.S.] dollars." That math now seems eerily prescient.
The strain on the military is real. Troops are being deployed repeatedly, leading to burnout and mental health crises. The U.S. is dangerously low on missiles, and military contractors are failing to deliver weapons on time. Even war games with Ukraine revealed that the U.S. military is not prepared for modern warfare.
Joseph argues that the U.S. must reassess its approach. He is not calling for surrender, but for a strategic reset. "We really need to take stock of the lives lost, trillions spent, and freedoms surrendered," he writes. "Our actions are creating exactly what bin Laden wanted."
As the nation marks 25 years since 9/11, Joseph's message is a sobering one: the war on terror has not only failed to defeat terrorism, but it has also achieved one of the enemy's primary objectives. The question now is whether America can change course before it is too late.
