"We Blew It After 9/11" — Timothy Snyder on the Lesson Trump Learned

Timothy Snyder argues that America’s post-9/11 response was a historic mistake: instead of learning restraint, the country invaded Iraq, expanded the national security state, and missed chances to invest in fusion and other real technologies. He says the deeper lesson of crises is that they reveal character, and he believes the U.S. “blew it” by choosing fear, overreaction, and bad policy.

He warns that Donald Trump and his allies may have absorbed the wrong lesson from 9/11 too: that a frightening event can be used to justify more power for government and more support for the people already in charge. With the midterms approaching, Snyder suggests a manufactured or exploited crisis could be politically useful to Trump if Republicans are behind.

Snyder also says the election matters because it will shape AI policy, the health of U.S. institutions, and America’s standing in the world. He frames the core historical question as whether the U.S. can move beyond imperial habits toward a real democracy, and he ends on guarded hope that a better government could still make the country much better than it is now.