THE WAR ON TERROR: 9/11/01 - 6/23/25

Donald Trump is the unlikely winner of a decades-long conflict

Before

After

The story is a well known one: on September 11, 2001, two passenger jets flown by Islamic terrorists under the direction of Osama bin Laden, crashed into the World Trade Center. That combined with another similar attack aimed at the Pentagon got the United States all charged up, leading to a full-scale ground invasion in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. 24 years later, the War on Terror was finally won when, on June 23, 2025, President Donald Trump, following up an around-the-clock air bombardment ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ended Iran’s nuclear arms program once and for all with several bunker-busting bombs bringing the same terrorist regime that had taken our embassy hostage in 1979, down to their knees, not unlike Germany and Japan in 1945. Knowing the ultimate result of their folly, would the perpetrators have chosen to do it again?

***

The fact is, the United States was at war with Islamic Jihad well before 9/11. The terrorists considered themselves to be at war with us, but it took two of our most famous buildings falling down to get our full attention. Terror has always been around, in one form or another. It has not always been Islamic.

At the end of the Civil War, Quantrill’s Raiders tried to carry the lost cause of the South in a series of attacks on Union sympathizers. For decades after that, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized African-Americans with raids and lynchings.

Rogue German units called Werewolves attempted to stymie occupation of the Fatherland after World War II. In Vietnam, the Viet Cong carried on guerrilla war against the U.S.

Birth of Israel

But Islamic terrorism took hold after the British defeated and ended the Ottoman Empire in World War I, leading to the first Jewish exodus back to their homeland. Like the Americans who quickly became the most successful people in Texas, within a decade the Jewish arrivals quickly became the most successful people living in Jerusalem, engendering not a little jealousy.

The French Foreign Legion fought against Arab resistance to the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Creation of the state of Israel birthed a true, modern terrorist movement in the Muslim world. This all began in 1948, and now, finally, in light of President Trump’s great triumph, it is worth looking back at events started with the creation of Israel following the Holocaust - in fact it is worth looking at the Holocaust in new light - in order to ask some pertinent questions.

If a time machine could have been invented, allowing people a look at the future, would Nazi Germany have tried to exterminate the Jews if they knew then it would result in total defeat, multiple millions of the flower of German youth dead, followed by decades of occupation by the U.S. and her allies, not to mention a Communist Empire, much of it centered in the eastern half of their homeland? That is just the beginning. It would result in Biblical prophesy fulfilled in the form of Israel’s birth, its rise to power as the Mideast’s major regional power, concluding with total destruction of all their enemies.

The Muslims thought Hitler a savior

Then there are the “dumb Muslims,” who sided with Adolf Hitler and formed S.S. units, as opposed to the “smart Muslims,” who upon seeing the way the war was going, wisely chose to do an oil deal with President Franklin Roosevelt after the Tehran conference, assuring America cheap oil and economic superpower status for time immemorial.

If the Arab world knew, when Israel came into being, that 77 years later their arch enemy would achieve virtual superpower status, would they have engaged in a series of wars that essentially made that enemy stronger?

If Gamel Abdel Nasser could have seen this future, would he have secularized Egypt, opposed the allies at the Suez Canal, and aligned himself with the atheistic Soviet Union, the loser of the Cold War?

What about the combined forces of the Arab world, who attacked Israel in 1967 and again in 1973, only to see the Israelis gain territory and sign an agreement with Anwar Sadat in 1978?

What about Hafez al-Assad, who upon taking control of Syria also aligned with the great loser of history, the Soviets, only to see his son run out of that country, to be replaced with a government promising to align with the United States.

Insanity?

The beat goes on, although there is zero evidence that these Muslim terrorists were in any way learning any of these lessons of history. Yasser Arafat was dumb enough to create Black September, the murderers of the Israeli Olympic team at Munich in 1972. For his troubles he was forced to sleep in a different bed every night the rest of his renegade life, and when he was “awarded” the Nobel Peace prize, it became proof positive that the prize was no longer significant, to be handed out like a box of Cracker Jack’s to a rogue’s gallery of incompetents, unimpressives, and losers of history, in all the years since.

Not to mention, all the masterminds of Munich were hunted down and killed by the Mossad. A series of hijackings resulted in Israeli commando raids elevating the Jewish state to a level of mythological status.

Insanity is defined as failing at something, yet repeating it over and over, always with the same results. History by 1979 certainly taught this lesson to the Islamic world, but did not stop the Iranian Revolution, enslaving an entire nation for generations, creating a pariah state, further elevating Israel to heroic status, until the events of June 23, 2025 ended in its utter and total defeat.

The off-shoots of their failure to read history, blinded by an insane Apocalyptic religious philosophy, included Lebanon, the “Paris of the Middle East,” becoming a permanently failed state; the creation of losers calling themselves Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah; the decision to kill a bunch of Marines, which fired up America enough to arm themselves to the teeth; Muamaar Gaddafi getting bombed into submission by Ronald Reagan, leading him to get rid of his nukes; and blinding the Palestinians into thinking they were a “state,” instead of what they are, a former colony enslaved by the Turks until freed by Lawrence of Arabia.

Palestine is not a country. They are a people freed from the Turks by the British.

The Afghans actually got smart for about six years, aligning with the CIA. Instead of making Afghan a free and prosperous state after Charlie Wilson led them to victory, all they did after helping America defeat the Russians, leading to a global coalition destroying Saddam Hussein, was make the wrong-headed decision to let the Taliban take over, meaning their women would remain uneducated, its people mired in the muck and mire of poverty.

It does not end with the U.S. winning the Persian Gulf War, meaning that in 1991 we achieved a level of power and empire unrivaled by the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the British, Napoleon, or anybody anywhere at any time. You would think at this point somebody over there would figure out that this was the “end of history,” as Francis Fukuyama called it, or a New World Order, as President George H.W. Bush referred to it.

Nooooooo.

Winners and losers in the War on Terror

Had Osama bin Laden seen the future, namely his own sad sack being chased into a cave, his operation dismantled by George Bush’s son, the look on the face of the Navy Seal just before he sent him to judgment - not to mention June 23, 2025 - would he have tried to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993? Or bomb the U.S.S. Cole in 1998? Or destroy the WTC again in 2001? Again, consider the definition of insanity, then apply it to all these Muslim terrorists, and ask some very pertinent questions about what that religion does to the human mind. Why do they keep doing it? Well, there have been a number of Democrat Presidents who have been weak enough to let them get away with it. Read:

Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Bill Clinton in 1998.

Barack Obama in 2011.

Joe Biden in 2022.

The very high opposite of all Bin Laden wanted is what actually happened

At this point the thinking man, first having concluded that Islam and insanity may just be inter-changeable, begins to understand there is an immutable truth at play in the world, which is never, under any circumstances, vote for the Democrats!

But we continue. The Taliban, leaders of a country not turned into a Soviet gulag solely because of the United States, turned on their liberator like a rabid dog biting the hand that feeds them, first giving sanctuary to Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, then fighting a war with America. Would they have done this had they seen what a future Trump did to their neighbor Iran? Not to mention our old friends Russia. Did they learn any lessons from defeat in Afghanistan? In a few years, after the same result fells them in Ukraine, will they learn then? Will that finally be the end of Vladimir Putin? From this angle it looks like they are literally too stupid to gain from this perspective.

Speaking of Trump, let there be no doubt that he has every intention of retrieving Bagram Air Force Base from these jokers, and probably a lot more than that. They have enough time to perceive this future and hand it back over to the Americans. If nothing else, it is time to learn the painful lesson that there is one heck of a big difference between Republicans and Democrats. Failure to recognize that is the difference between watching Biden cut ’n’ run from your country, or being turned into fire by Trump. Speaking of retribution, there are still some folks itching to get some payback in Somalia after Clinton’s “Black Hawk Down” catastrophe.

Just a little food for thought.

Then there is Saddam Hussein, who fought Iran to a standstill in the “war of the Muslim incompetents” (1980-88). Then he failed to heed the lessons of 1991, when “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf dictated to him how to live. He decided to try to become a “modern day Saladin.” How did that work out for him? Well, had he seen his future, which was to be captured like a dog hiding in a hole by the Americans after his kids were tracked down and killed by the same, would he have pretended he still had WMD, or hid them, leading to an invasion in 2003? Not to mention the aforementioned June 23, 2025!

For that matter, would the rogue’s gallery of terrorists who descended on Iraq have done so had they realized they were being drawn into one place where they could all be conveniently killed, as happened after General David Petraeus’s successful ”Surge” in 2007?

Hezbollah? Hamas? Swept like all the others into what Ronald Reagan so eloquently called “the dustbin of history” by Benjamin Netanyahu, who at this point looks like a world leader on par with Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower.

Treason

Of course, the War on Terror should have been won by 2009, but never, ever underestimate the ability of the Democrats, in this case the incompetent Obama, handing the Muslim world a lifeline in 2011.

Then look at both Obama and Joe Biden funding Iran, and ask yourself if there is any motivation for doing such a thing other than treason?

Traitors?

At this point we are able to identify who is on the wrong side of history. The Democrats, quite obviously, but really we need to start getting real about Islam. They are obviously not capable of Democracy or acculturation or even capitalism, really. Freedom and truth are not in their DNA.

On the other hand, has the United States of America ever stood as a more powerful empire than we are post 6/23/25?

Many felt Trump was spared by God for a special purpose. More people believe that now than ever.

We know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the Jews, who they call the “Little Satan,” are the Chosen People. Who then are these Muslims? Are they actually not just on the wrong side of history, but on the wrong side of God, like so many tribes in the Bible defeated by the Jews, often when God came down from Heaven to provide miracles allowing them to win? Literally and actually identifying His enemies?

Finally there is atheist China. They will not learn from this Biblical quote, but they should.

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” - Romans 8:31

Steven Travers is a former screenwriter who has authored over 30 books including The Duke, the Longhorns, & Chairman Mao: John Wayne’s Political Odyssey. He is a USC graduate and attorney with a Ph.D who taught at USC and attended the UCLA Writers’ Program. He played college baseball on a full scholarship, earning all-conference honors and setting school pitching records, before embarking on a professional career in the Cardinals and A’s organizations. Travers also served in the Army JAG corps in D.C., was in investment banking on Wall Street, worked in politics, lived in Europe, and was a sports agent before finding his calling as a writer. He has written for the San Francisco Examiner, L.A. Times, StreetZebra, Gentry magazine, Newsmax, Substack and MichaelSavage.com. He lives in California and has one daughter, Elizabeth. He can be reached at USCSTEVE1@aol.com or on Twitter @STWRITES.