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All the Presidents' Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror
From the New York Times best-selling author, a tragic history of the United States’ war on terror across four presidential administrations.
2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Within days, the United States began to declare its war on terror: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” President George W. Bush proclaimed. The resulting war on terror cost trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, a series of misguided wars, and the damaged perception of American power. And yet despite its blunders, this campaign has kept America safe from large-scale foreign attack.
Based on hundreds of interviews, All the Presidents’ Wars focuses on critical decisions of four successive presidents—Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump—and their global consequences. One of the few journalists to interview Osama bin Laden and have unparalleled access to the US intelligence community, Peter Bergen covers the history that might have been avoided: the many terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups around the world; the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, largely responsible for the Iraqi civil war in the mid-2000s; the birth of ISIS; the resurrection of Afghanistan’s Taliban; and Trump’s war with Iran. From the failure to capture and the eventual killing of Osama bin Laden to the disastrous rise of sectarian violence in the Middle East, Bergen traces the profound ramifications of this epoch in American life.
All the Presidents’ Wars also explores the innovations and unintended consequences of each presidency’s military and political decisions, including debates over military intervention and withdrawal; the tactics of special operations units, armed drones, and armies of counterterrorism partners; and whether the idea of war ever properly captured the defining conflict of recent American foreign policy. All the Presidents’ Wars is essential reading to understand America’s devastating war on terror and to avoid the mistakes of the past.
2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Within days, the United States began to declare its war on terror: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” President George W. Bush proclaimed. The resulting war on terror cost trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, a series of misguided wars, and the damaged perception of American power. And yet despite its blunders, this campaign has kept America safe from large-scale foreign attack.
Based on hundreds of interviews, All the Presidents’ Wars focuses on critical decisions of four successive presidents—Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump—and their global consequences. One of the few journalists to interview Osama bin Laden and have unparalleled access to the US intelligence community, Peter Bergen covers the history that might have been avoided: the many terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups around the world; the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq, largely responsible for the Iraqi civil war in the mid-2000s; the birth of ISIS; the resurrection of Afghanistan’s Taliban; and Trump’s war with Iran. From the failure to capture and the eventual killing of Osama bin Laden to the disastrous rise of sectarian violence in the Middle East, Bergen traces the profound ramifications of this epoch in American life.
All the Presidents’ Wars also explores the innovations and unintended consequences of each presidency’s military and political decisions, including debates over military intervention and withdrawal; the tactics of special operations units, armed drones, and armies of counterterrorism partners; and whether the idea of war ever properly captured the defining conflict of recent American foreign policy. All the Presidents’ Wars is essential reading to understand America’s devastating war on terror and to avoid the mistakes of the past.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published August 11, 2026
About the author
Peter L. Bergen
13 books182 followersPeter Bergen (born 1962) is an American born, England-raised print and television journalist, author, and CNN's national security analyst. Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, marked the first time that bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western audience. Bergen has written several books including: Holy War, Inc., The Osama bin Laden I Know, and The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and al-Qaeda (Jan. 2011).
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 1, 2026
This was one of the most frustrating books to read not because of the writer but because of subject matter. Mr Bergen does an amazing job blending together the tactical and strategic logic of the GWOT and the countless mistakes that were made. It is frustrating that after 25 years a clearer picture has come to light that the impact of these decisions. I really appreciate Mr. Bergen documenting these decisions, the rationale behind things, and impact. Throughout it all, I also appreciated that Mr. Bergen also called out that there hasn’t been a large scale 9/11 style attack on the US homeland in the last 25 years. As time moves forward, we have to reckon with the impact of these wars of choice.
October 6, 2026
The title of Peter Bergen’s latest book ALL THE PRESIDENT’S WARS: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF THE WAR ON TERROR is a misnomer. The War on Terror did not begin on 9/11 as attacks against American interests took place long before planes flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983; the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996; or the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 all come to mind. It seems that the United States has been involved in preventing terrorist attacks for decades before 9/11 and will continue to be involved in counter-terrorism for years to come. This being the case Peter Bergen’s book is important as it lays the foundation of what took place in the recent past, errors and successes, and what we can learn to be more effective in counteracting terrorism today as recently as last week when a possible attack against a military base in England that housed American bombers was thwarted, in addition to dealing with asymmetric warfare, an outgrowth of President Trump’s invasion of Iran.
In reviewing that past four administration’s policies toward Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran Bergen immediately cuts to the crux of the problem – decision makers needed to frame, “what kind of war are we embarking on” in response to the attacks on 9/11. Each administration would answer the question quite differently with varying degrees of success. The Bush administration would come up with the vague term, “the War on Terror,” and it came to mean that the war would be fought globally and for decades into the future. This created a series of consequences that we are still dealing with today.
The War on Terror precipitated great change in the Middle East, the sharp increase in sectarian violence between Shia and Sunnis and the rise of Iran as a critical player in the region. Bergen is correct in arguing that by overthrowing Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Iraq Washington inverted the power structure in Iraq allowing the Shia to come to power fostering a civil war that included the rise of ISIS and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Further, the true winners of the war were the Shia and their Iranian ally who would emerge as the dominant force in the region in part because of Bush’s invasion of Iraq and currently because of Trump’s invasion of Iran.
There have been some successes along the way, a surge of troops and a new counter-insurgency strategy after the invasion of Iraq fell apart, but in the end the Shia came to power. Another short term success was the capture of Osama Bin-Laden and his death resulting in a weakening of Al-Qaeda, however, eventually it reconstituted itself though it did not form a strong alliance with ISIS. Once Bin Laden was out of the picture President Obama shifted his focus away from Iraq to Afghanistan reinforcing his belief that the US should withdraw from that country as soon as possible. This led to a number of decisions that would eventually lead to Trump’s signing a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban.
Bergen, a well-respected national security journalist and one of the leading authorities on his subject, has written a sobering, meticulously researched postmortem of U.S. foreign policy encompassing the 2001-2026 time frame. It is clear that American administrations had policy choices over the last two and a half decades and Bergen, not surprisingly focuses more on the poor decisions as opposed to the positive ones. He eviscerates the Bush administration, delving into the consequences for poor decisions leading up to the invasion of Iraq and its “occupation” of that country and setting the stage for the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The dilly dallying of the Obama administration decision making, and Trump’s negotiations with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan, and his invasion of Iran are all discussed. These examples reflect the growing belief in foreign capitals that the United States had little idea as to what it wanted to accomplish or how to achieve it. This would lead to a change in the global order as the United States has gone from the upholder of a rule based system, to being seen as a destabilizing force as it pursued what Richard Haass describes in his excellent work, WAR OF NECESSITY, WAR OF CHOICE.
Bergen provides many insightful observations throughout the monograph. First, he points out that Al-Qaeda assassinated Ahmed Shah Masood, the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, a mortal enemy of the Taliban, and a leader the United States was working with two days before 9/11. Bin Ladin did so to to mollify the Taliban as he realized that the United States would soon retaliate against the theocratic organization very harshly. In discussing the Arab Spring of 2011 Bergen interestingly describes it as “the Arab spring would soon turn into the Arab winter.” Bergen supports this assessment by exploring the overthrow of Muhammar Gahdaffi and the resulting civil war; the rise of ISIS and its expansion to control 33% of Syrian and 40% of Iraq before its “Caliphate” was defeated.
Bergen reviews many important events and personalities of the period under discussion that have been dealt with elsewhere from his previous books and the works of Steven Coll, Craig Whitlock, Lawrence Wright, and the most recent monograph by Carter Malkasian, THE AMERICAN WAR IN AFGHANISTAN. The run up to the invasion of Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld’s approach to war and his refusal to provide the necessary assets to capture Bin Laden at Tora Bora, the incompetence of Peter Bremer’s de-Bathization and disbanding the Iraqi army that allowed the Shia to come to power after Saddam Hussein was captured and killed reflecting the self-righteousness of the Bush administration. The author examines the different approaches on fighting the war in Afghanistan focusing on the ideas of General Stanley McCrystal and Colonel H.R. McMaster and disagreements with President Obama in an excellent chapter entitled “We are out of Schlitz.” The role of Pakistan in harboring the Taliban fearing US withdrawal from Afghanistan and whether they hid Osama Bin Laden (Bergen argues decisively they were not aware of his presence in Abbottabad) are examined as is the lack of competence in the Afghani and Iraqi militaries after years of American training cutting and running from the Taliban and ISIS. Lastly, Ahmid Karzai’s relationship with American diplomats and US distrust of the Afghan president.
The Obama administration does not fare very well in Bergen’s analysis. He argues that Obama was obsessed with not getting into any more “stupid” wars. However, his inability to make up his mind about how many troops to commit in Afghanistan, whether to go along with a surge, his refusal to enforce his own “red line” pertaining to Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria, his administrations framing the Afghan War as a Taliban insurgency that was supported by Pakistan when in reality it was a three tiered conflict: inter-tribal, inter-ethnic, and inter-state, and for not taking ISIS seriously enough referring to them as the “B” team of terrorists and moving too slowly in confronting the terrorist threat many American felt they presented. Obama’s Vice-President Joe Biden is also criticized a great deal as he argued to withdraw US troops from Iraq even as the civil war exploded, he was a sceptic who believed little could be done to assist Afghanistan and opposed any surge and wanted to focus on Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban, and even went so far as claiming he supported the attack on Bin Laden’s compound resulting in his capture when in fact he argued against it. Later he would claim that the Pentagon did not counsel him to leave 2500 troops in Afghanistan as a means of blocking the Taliban and maintaining security as American troops withdrew. Generals have argued that Biden was not telling the truth especially when the evacuation turned into a disaster. All in all, it appears as if the administration was at times in disarray.
One policy that reflects Obama’s willingness to adapt to the new asymmetric warfare was his adoption of the use of drone warfare as a vehicle to avoid committing further US troops as he wanted to pivot American foreign policy toward Asia. American drone attacks increased substantially under Obama particularly in the tribal regions of Pakistan where the Taliban had sanctuary and Yemen where Muslim extremists were protected. The Obama administration even went after an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki who was the brains behind the failed “underwear bomber” attack on a Northwest flight on Christmas day 2009.
Bergen is correct when he points out despite Donald Trump’s bragging about how he would defeat ISIS and disparaged Obama’s approach, he pursued a policy that was developed over a two year period before he became president. Trump may have speeded up the process but they both deployed a relatively small number of American troops on the ground in Syria and Iraq who operated through local allies. In Iraq the Counter Terrorism Service, and in Syria with Kurdish fighters. The ultimate victory over ISIS was fostered by Iraqi and Kurdish troops. Trump’s Afghan policy was rather disjointed, represented by negotiations to withdraw American troops before the 2020 election. Bergen dissects negotiations to end the war and it is clear that all that Trump wanted was to get out and did not care about the carnage that would take place once the Americans left. This would take place under Biden who similarly wanted out of Afghanistan leaving many locals to be victims of Taliban retribution despite their services to America over the years.
If one were to sum up American foreign policy toward the Middle East since 9/11it would center around the fact that Washington creates a plan to get involved be it the invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the overthrow of Muhammar Gahdafi, or the invasion of Iran. All of these actions created unaccounted for consequences because the United States never seems to have a plan for “the day after.” Today, we are dealing with the fallout from Trump’s invasion of Iran with higher gas and diesel prices causing an increase in inflation that has resulted in incalculable damage for the American people.
As Scott Anderson points out in his September 6, 2026, New York Times review entitled, “Why the War on terror is Still Haunting Us,” “Quite early in “All the Presidents’ Wars,” the journalist Peter Bergen’s chronicle of the “war on terror,” the reader is likely to conclude that the groups of American officials who have presided over the past two and a half decades of conflict in the Middle East consist of idiots, fools or knaves. The further one progresses into this damning and meticulously researched book, the more this assessment seems confirmed.
In fairness, the war on terror hasn’t been an unmitigated catastrophe. The development of advanced weaponized drones facilitated the killing of Qaeda leaders at long range and with little risk. American military commanders also eventually adopted counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq that proved very effective, even if they failed to change the ultimate outcome of that conflict. And while it is difficult to get all hopped up over something that didn’t happen, the fact is that there hasn’t been a large-scale terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11.”
Still, at the cost of trillions of dollars, the lives of some 7,000 U.S. servicemen and women, as well as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and two failed war efforts — with a third in progress — one would hope for some more bright spots.
Anderson goes on to write; “One might wish that “All the Presidents’ Wars” was coming out a few months from now, in time for the full magnitude of the stupidity attending Trump’s war of choice against Iran to be realized. As it is, Bergen’s last words were penned in mid-March 2026, just a few weeks into this latest American misadventure.
As has been the case so many times over the past 25 years, this folly, too, was peddled as part of the war on terror, but undertaken with even less forethought than its predecessors. Incredibly, Trump seemed to take no notice of how the weaponized drone has enabled Ukraine to keep the vastly larger Russian Army at bay for over four years. Nor did he seem to consider how this innovation might factor into a conflict with Iran, one of the world’s pioneers in the manufacturing of cheap and sophisticated drones.
A major theme of Bergen’s book is the repeated failure of American leaders to plan for “the day after” a military action is taken, but in Iran, he makes clear, Trump didn’t even plan for “the day of.” As a result, it is now all but certain that the United States is headed for another major defeat in its war on terror. For the gory details on that, though, one will have to wait for Bergen’s next book.”
In reviewing that past four administration’s policies toward Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran Bergen immediately cuts to the crux of the problem – decision makers needed to frame, “what kind of war are we embarking on” in response to the attacks on 9/11. Each administration would answer the question quite differently with varying degrees of success. The Bush administration would come up with the vague term, “the War on Terror,” and it came to mean that the war would be fought globally and for decades into the future. This created a series of consequences that we are still dealing with today.
The War on Terror precipitated great change in the Middle East, the sharp increase in sectarian violence between Shia and Sunnis and the rise of Iran as a critical player in the region. Bergen is correct in arguing that by overthrowing Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Iraq Washington inverted the power structure in Iraq allowing the Shia to come to power fostering a civil war that included the rise of ISIS and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Further, the true winners of the war were the Shia and their Iranian ally who would emerge as the dominant force in the region in part because of Bush’s invasion of Iraq and currently because of Trump’s invasion of Iran.
There have been some successes along the way, a surge of troops and a new counter-insurgency strategy after the invasion of Iraq fell apart, but in the end the Shia came to power. Another short term success was the capture of Osama Bin-Laden and his death resulting in a weakening of Al-Qaeda, however, eventually it reconstituted itself though it did not form a strong alliance with ISIS. Once Bin Laden was out of the picture President Obama shifted his focus away from Iraq to Afghanistan reinforcing his belief that the US should withdraw from that country as soon as possible. This led to a number of decisions that would eventually lead to Trump’s signing a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban.
Bergen, a well-respected national security journalist and one of the leading authorities on his subject, has written a sobering, meticulously researched postmortem of U.S. foreign policy encompassing the 2001-2026 time frame. It is clear that American administrations had policy choices over the last two and a half decades and Bergen, not surprisingly focuses more on the poor decisions as opposed to the positive ones. He eviscerates the Bush administration, delving into the consequences for poor decisions leading up to the invasion of Iraq and its “occupation” of that country and setting the stage for the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The dilly dallying of the Obama administration decision making, and Trump’s negotiations with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan, and his invasion of Iran are all discussed. These examples reflect the growing belief in foreign capitals that the United States had little idea as to what it wanted to accomplish or how to achieve it. This would lead to a change in the global order as the United States has gone from the upholder of a rule based system, to being seen as a destabilizing force as it pursued what Richard Haass describes in his excellent work, WAR OF NECESSITY, WAR OF CHOICE.
Bergen provides many insightful observations throughout the monograph. First, he points out that Al-Qaeda assassinated Ahmed Shah Masood, the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, a mortal enemy of the Taliban, and a leader the United States was working with two days before 9/11. Bin Ladin did so to to mollify the Taliban as he realized that the United States would soon retaliate against the theocratic organization very harshly. In discussing the Arab Spring of 2011 Bergen interestingly describes it as “the Arab spring would soon turn into the Arab winter.” Bergen supports this assessment by exploring the overthrow of Muhammar Gahdaffi and the resulting civil war; the rise of ISIS and its expansion to control 33% of Syrian and 40% of Iraq before its “Caliphate” was defeated.
Bergen reviews many important events and personalities of the period under discussion that have been dealt with elsewhere from his previous books and the works of Steven Coll, Craig Whitlock, Lawrence Wright, and the most recent monograph by Carter Malkasian, THE AMERICAN WAR IN AFGHANISTAN. The run up to the invasion of Iraq and Donald Rumsfeld’s approach to war and his refusal to provide the necessary assets to capture Bin Laden at Tora Bora, the incompetence of Peter Bremer’s de-Bathization and disbanding the Iraqi army that allowed the Shia to come to power after Saddam Hussein was captured and killed reflecting the self-righteousness of the Bush administration. The author examines the different approaches on fighting the war in Afghanistan focusing on the ideas of General Stanley McCrystal and Colonel H.R. McMaster and disagreements with President Obama in an excellent chapter entitled “We are out of Schlitz.” The role of Pakistan in harboring the Taliban fearing US withdrawal from Afghanistan and whether they hid Osama Bin Laden (Bergen argues decisively they were not aware of his presence in Abbottabad) are examined as is the lack of competence in the Afghani and Iraqi militaries after years of American training cutting and running from the Taliban and ISIS. Lastly, Ahmid Karzai’s relationship with American diplomats and US distrust of the Afghan president.
The Obama administration does not fare very well in Bergen’s analysis. He argues that Obama was obsessed with not getting into any more “stupid” wars. However, his inability to make up his mind about how many troops to commit in Afghanistan, whether to go along with a surge, his refusal to enforce his own “red line” pertaining to Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria, his administrations framing the Afghan War as a Taliban insurgency that was supported by Pakistan when in reality it was a three tiered conflict: inter-tribal, inter-ethnic, and inter-state, and for not taking ISIS seriously enough referring to them as the “B” team of terrorists and moving too slowly in confronting the terrorist threat many American felt they presented. Obama’s Vice-President Joe Biden is also criticized a great deal as he argued to withdraw US troops from Iraq even as the civil war exploded, he was a sceptic who believed little could be done to assist Afghanistan and opposed any surge and wanted to focus on Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban, and even went so far as claiming he supported the attack on Bin Laden’s compound resulting in his capture when in fact he argued against it. Later he would claim that the Pentagon did not counsel him to leave 2500 troops in Afghanistan as a means of blocking the Taliban and maintaining security as American troops withdrew. Generals have argued that Biden was not telling the truth especially when the evacuation turned into a disaster. All in all, it appears as if the administration was at times in disarray.
One policy that reflects Obama’s willingness to adapt to the new asymmetric warfare was his adoption of the use of drone warfare as a vehicle to avoid committing further US troops as he wanted to pivot American foreign policy toward Asia. American drone attacks increased substantially under Obama particularly in the tribal regions of Pakistan where the Taliban had sanctuary and Yemen where Muslim extremists were protected. The Obama administration even went after an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki who was the brains behind the failed “underwear bomber” attack on a Northwest flight on Christmas day 2009.
Bergen is correct when he points out despite Donald Trump’s bragging about how he would defeat ISIS and disparaged Obama’s approach, he pursued a policy that was developed over a two year period before he became president. Trump may have speeded up the process but they both deployed a relatively small number of American troops on the ground in Syria and Iraq who operated through local allies. In Iraq the Counter Terrorism Service, and in Syria with Kurdish fighters. The ultimate victory over ISIS was fostered by Iraqi and Kurdish troops. Trump’s Afghan policy was rather disjointed, represented by negotiations to withdraw American troops before the 2020 election. Bergen dissects negotiations to end the war and it is clear that all that Trump wanted was to get out and did not care about the carnage that would take place once the Americans left. This would take place under Biden who similarly wanted out of Afghanistan leaving many locals to be victims of Taliban retribution despite their services to America over the years.
If one were to sum up American foreign policy toward the Middle East since 9/11it would center around the fact that Washington creates a plan to get involved be it the invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the overthrow of Muhammar Gahdafi, or the invasion of Iran. All of these actions created unaccounted for consequences because the United States never seems to have a plan for “the day after.” Today, we are dealing with the fallout from Trump’s invasion of Iran with higher gas and diesel prices causing an increase in inflation that has resulted in incalculable damage for the American people.
As Scott Anderson points out in his September 6, 2026, New York Times review entitled, “Why the War on terror is Still Haunting Us,” “Quite early in “All the Presidents’ Wars,” the journalist Peter Bergen’s chronicle of the “war on terror,” the reader is likely to conclude that the groups of American officials who have presided over the past two and a half decades of conflict in the Middle East consist of idiots, fools or knaves. The further one progresses into this damning and meticulously researched book, the more this assessment seems confirmed.
In fairness, the war on terror hasn’t been an unmitigated catastrophe. The development of advanced weaponized drones facilitated the killing of Qaeda leaders at long range and with little risk. American military commanders also eventually adopted counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq that proved very effective, even if they failed to change the ultimate outcome of that conflict. And while it is difficult to get all hopped up over something that didn’t happen, the fact is that there hasn’t been a large-scale terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11.”
Still, at the cost of trillions of dollars, the lives of some 7,000 U.S. servicemen and women, as well as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and two failed war efforts — with a third in progress — one would hope for some more bright spots.
Anderson goes on to write; “One might wish that “All the Presidents’ Wars” was coming out a few months from now, in time for the full magnitude of the stupidity attending Trump’s war of choice against Iran to be realized. As it is, Bergen’s last words were penned in mid-March 2026, just a few weeks into this latest American misadventure.
As has been the case so many times over the past 25 years, this folly, too, was peddled as part of the war on terror, but undertaken with even less forethought than its predecessors. Incredibly, Trump seemed to take no notice of how the weaponized drone has enabled Ukraine to keep the vastly larger Russian Army at bay for over four years. Nor did he seem to consider how this innovation might factor into a conflict with Iran, one of the world’s pioneers in the manufacturing of cheap and sophisticated drones.
A major theme of Bergen’s book is the repeated failure of American leaders to plan for “the day after” a military action is taken, but in Iran, he makes clear, Trump didn’t even plan for “the day of.” As a result, it is now all but certain that the United States is headed for another major defeat in its war on terror. For the gory details on that, though, one will have to wait for Bergen’s next book.”
October 15, 2026
Infinity stars!!! I learned sooooo so much from this book!
October 7, 2026
This is a masterful telling of all the wars the United States has waged on terrorists since the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda. The book begins with the red flags the intelligence community was trying to wave in the face of the Bush administration before the 9/11 attacks, but because nothing like those attacks had ever happened before, the opportunity to predict them effectively and deter them was missed. "The opportunity was missed" is the theme of this book--so many times the U.S. president and his advisors blew the call, not just in hindsight but with the information available at the time. George W. Bush, especially, totally messed things up when, instead of continuing to beat back and render ineffective the Taliban in Afghanistan after the initial invasion in 2002, he turned attention to invading Iraq, which was terrible for Iraq's people (who were not in a great place, anyway) and eventually allowed the resurgence of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and eventually ISIS. The people of the Middle East came to see the United States as another hostile colonial power that disrespected Islam, like Britain and the Soviet Union before it. Another theme of this book is the lack of a meaningful "day after" plan on the part of the military and the administration, multiple times, once an initial objective, such as driving out the Taliban or toppling Saddam Hussein, was achieved. Following Bush, Obama, Trump (twice), and Biden made terrible missteps that led us to the quagmire we are in at present with the Taliban back ruling Afghanistan, Iraq still on shaky ground without a reliable government, a hopeless war of choice on Trump's part in Iran, and various allies and enemies throughout the Middle East and the world who do not see the United States as a reliable partner and increasingly see us as a weakened enemy without even the principles that guided us before Trump's incompetent, grifter government took over (again). A depressing but necessary and informative book.
September 18, 2026
I read Bergen's The Longest War: A History of the War on Terror and the Battles with Al Qaeda Since 9/11 ten years ago, found it a masterful synthesis of all things Global War On Terror at that time....and this, with 15+ years of further misadventure incorporated, is much the same. In the best and most awful way, because GODS what an unforgivable mess. And it's all laid out here, 25 years' worth, all its many many tentacles and casualties and shames.
October 29, 2026
A brilliantly clear reckoning with America’s 25 year global war on terror. Bergen thoughtfully lays out the facts and comes to some rock solid and fair conclusions. A timely, incisive, damning and compelling account of the times, decisions and their ongoing impact, so for anyone who wants to understand American foreign policy, this is essential reading. A deeply insightful, meticulously researched, horrifying and fascinating read.
September 30, 2026
It's a really good book, the title explains what it's about. It is very well written and researched. As someone who followed the events at the time, there is not a lot of information that I did know already know, but, that's probably just me. I really liked Bergen's thoughts on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That was the really good stuff. The whole war in Iraq was such a fiasco, and it never should have been fought in the first place. It was a huge was a lives, time and money. The US took its focus off Afghanistan and allowed the Taliban to regroup. And now they're back in power.
Good coverage of these momentous events.
Good coverage of these momentous events.
October 10, 2026
An excellent history of the United States' War on Terror. Bergen masterfully synthesizes all the events of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and examines how four different presidents approached these wars. I found Bergen's analysis to be very insightful, and I learned so much from this book. Highly recommended.
October 7, 2026
Fantastic. Insightful. Damming.
October 15, 2026
In the 25th anniversary year of 9/11, Peter Bergen has provided readers with a carefully researched and highly readable account of America’s foreign policy throughout “the war on terror.” From Bush’s war against Iraq, Obama’s prolific use of drones in countries the US was not at war with, Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, to Trump’s war on Iran, it is a story replete with very questionable political decisions. I highly recommend this book! No heroes here.
September 27, 2026
Finished. Excellent, authoritative history of our post-9/11 foreign policy, showing how it knocked us off our 'unipolar moment' and we haven't regained our balance.
October 19, 2026
Lies, grandstanding, disregard for the opinions of actual experts, moments of incredible personal bravery and heroism, but ultimately for what? And so much more. What has come from the expense of so much blood and treasure for these wars of choice?
September 16, 2026
I interviewed the author and wrote a review for The American Conservative
"No one can forget seeing the Twin Towers collapse and the Pentagon burn. We were glued to televisions and radios before the advent of smartphones. We were terrified, confused, wounded, and, as the initial shock began to subside, vengeful. Our collective sense of safety from foreign attack was shattered not by an invading army but by 19 hijackers, mostly Saudis who had entered the country legally.
In a surreal sequence of events lasting about two hours, the suicide pilots murdered 2,977 people in New York, Washington, and a Pennsylvania field.
But against whom to direct our wrath? In a stirring address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush correctly identified the jihadist organization al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden as the perpetrators. Yet the coming war, Bush made clear, would not be confined to striking bin Laden’s remote Afghanistan base. It would be global—but morally simple—as the president divided the world into two camps.
“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” Bush declared. The Taliban, Afghanistan’s fanatical Islamist rulers, were up first: Hand over bin Laden or be destroyed...."
https://www.theamericanconservative.c...
"No one can forget seeing the Twin Towers collapse and the Pentagon burn. We were glued to televisions and radios before the advent of smartphones. We were terrified, confused, wounded, and, as the initial shock began to subside, vengeful. Our collective sense of safety from foreign attack was shattered not by an invading army but by 19 hijackers, mostly Saudis who had entered the country legally.
In a surreal sequence of events lasting about two hours, the suicide pilots murdered 2,977 people in New York, Washington, and a Pennsylvania field.
But against whom to direct our wrath? In a stirring address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush correctly identified the jihadist organization al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden as the perpetrators. Yet the coming war, Bush made clear, would not be confined to striking bin Laden’s remote Afghanistan base. It would be global—but morally simple—as the president divided the world into two camps.
“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” Bush declared. The Taliban, Afghanistan’s fanatical Islamist rulers, were up first: Hand over bin Laden or be destroyed...."
https://www.theamericanconservative.c...
September 27, 2026
OK this is some intense reading but one hell of a complete breakdown of America's war on terror. In particular if you are interested in what is happening now with Iran and this undeclared by Congress war that is indeed a war just read the last hundred or so pages for an in-depth analysis.
September 10, 2026
How have I never read one of Peter Bergen’s books? His ability to explain the decisions of each president and their administration on actions taken in the Middle East since 9/11 is so digestible. I was thrown with some of the findings that were put forth in this book that even as someone who was in their early thirties when 9/11 happened and was following along with what our government was reporting was upsetting news to me. All the President’ Wars does a deep dive in the real reason we attacked Iraq and how there were so many missed opportunities by every president to end the war. From the first drone strike that actually killed three of our own because of human error to Trump only negotiating with the Taliban and then leaving it up to Biden who basically pulled the rug right out from under the Afghanistan people when he announced while his team was trying to negotiate with the Taliban that the US was 100% leaving the country. Once that was said, any hope of leverage was gone, the Taliban took control. The number of casualties from military, civilians, hired fighters over these 25 years are just incredible.
What is really upsetting and frustrating is the ability to be lied to and manipulated into believing we had a purpose and a plan. Peter Bergen really knows what he is talking about and I now have a huge backlog of his books that I need to read. I feel like I have a better understanding of the last 25 years having read All the Presidents’ Wars.
Thank you, W.W. Norton & Company and Peter Bergen for providing this e-ARC via NetGalley for review.
What is really upsetting and frustrating is the ability to be lied to and manipulated into believing we had a purpose and a plan. Peter Bergen really knows what he is talking about and I now have a huge backlog of his books that I need to read. I feel like I have a better understanding of the last 25 years having read All the Presidents’ Wars.
Thank you, W.W. Norton & Company and Peter Bergen for providing this e-ARC via NetGalley for review.
September 9, 2026
Good overview of the War on Terror
October 13, 2026
simply DNFing for now because this isn’t the right book for a tropical vacation. absolutely fascinating topic and will be returning to this at the right future moment.
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