The WOT should have started and ended with bombing the Taliban to smithereens in retaliation. Then we decided we were going to take the opportunity to fix the middle east and it all went south.
The WOT should have begun with the nuking of Mecca - and ended with every major Muslim capital being reduced to a pile of smoldering radioactive ash.
I don’t agree with her point of view but a third choice was always available, there was what actually transpired, or no retaliation, but also a completely different menu of retaliatory measures against actual perpetrators.
Instead, with the exception of Afghanistan, almost all of our joint western policy since 2001 in the Middle East has been counter-productive and against our own best interests.
Saudi Arabia was never punished yet it was more responsible than the Taliban even, for the atrocities of 9-11. Iraq was invaded and occupied at great cost for no real gain and no purpose other than to fulfill the vengeance of the Bush family against Saddam. This was their squabble and had nothing much to do with 9-11 or any other terrorism. Syria and Libya were declared enemies even though what replaced them or tried to in the case of Syria was far worse than what we had. Libya had become a reliable partner and no threat to the west at all. Syria was only doing what any western country would have done in similar circumstances.
There is still time to fix all this up, but we will never get back the wasted treasure (especially in terms of lives) that was expended under the cover of vengeance for 9-11. And there has not been a lot of actual retaliation against the real perps of those attacks. We are asked to believe that Osama bin Laden is dead. But the Saudi government continues to thrive and do business with the west. There should have been at least an unmistakeable display of our resolve to show the Saudis that encouragement for such actions would cost them a lot. Maybe an overthrow of their dynasty would have been a step too far, but we did almost nothing and so they must have drawn the conclusion that if the time comes when they want to repeat this sponsorship, it won’t cost them much to do so.
For most of thirty centuries nations have failed to "FIX" the middle east. It is truly broken. Its where big nations go to die.