Countering al-Qaeda’s Ideology: Re-assessing U.S. Policy Ten Years After 9/11

Abstract

The U.S. has made sweeping changes to its national defense strategic goals and objectives since 9/11. In response to the rise in prominence of al-Qaeda and it‘s extremist ideology, the U.S. established the Department of Homeland Security, created the Office of Director of National Intelligence, and adopted new legal definitions for detention and interrogation policy. The U.S. has expanded intelligence-gathering and information-sharing mechanisms and learned to fight an enemy that wears no official uniform, that has no borders, and that represents no sovereign state. During the same period the U.S. government launched military contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, deploying hundreds of thousands of troops.