Former top US diplomat reveals mistakes made after 9/11 attacks

Twenty-five years after the attacks on September 11, 2001, a former top United States diplomat has outlined what he feels were missteps made in the aftermath.

In an interview on Friday with journalist Alex Marquardt for the Al Jazeera programme This is America , Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad described how the country’s heightened sense of fear led to a series of spiralling decisions that would transform the world for years to come.

“Anger was a factor of urgency because the people wanted to see action: What are we going to do about this?” Khalilzad said of the attacks.

The events of September 11 are considered the deadliest foreign attack in US history. Nearly 3,000 people died when 19 hijackers crashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Less than a month after the attacks, the US launched an invasion of Afghanistan, with the stated aim of attacking the group responsible, al-Qaeda. It was the start of a nearly 20-year-long war.

“You have to put yourself in the context of the time. We were very angry. We were concerned that other attacks may be planned. There may be sleeper cells,” Khalilzad said. “We wanted to get to as many people – al-Qaeda members – to arrest them.”

Khalilzad was a senior director on the National Security Council at the time of the attacks, serving under then-President George W Bush.

He later served in several ambassadorships, representing the US as the top diplomat in Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations at various points in his career.