This article is correct that there is blame for the war on terror and that the collateral damage was incurred almost entirely by citizens of other countries.<p>But if we are going to assign blame, we must point the finger at almost all Americans as a society.<p>> Not surprisingly, public support for responding militarily to the 9/11 attacks ran high in early fall 2001. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released two days after the Twin Towers fell found that 93 percent of Americans backed taking military action against whoever was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. More than eight in ten respondents said their support extended to going to war. [0]<p>It’s easy to throw stones in retrospect, but I hope we have the humility to wonder if we would’ve done any better in the same role as GWB. Americans live in a representative democracy and any decision which has 80%+ public support is the result and responsibility of our collective society, not just our leadership.<p>I hope we mourn the failures of the war and learn from these mistakes. One lesson I hope we learn is that we can’t expect our leaders to take the moral high road given their incentives under the current system. I don’t know what to do about this, but if we just chalk this up to one man’s failed administration it will happen again.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/us-war-afghanistan-twenty-years-public-opinion-then-and-now" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.cfr.org/blog/us-war-afghanistan-twenty-years-pub...</a>