I foolishly went along with Dubya after he promoted that nonsense in the wake of 9/11.
I understand why he did it—he wanted cooperation from Muslim-dominated governments in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But he should’ve just pushed for their cooperation without spreading the “Religion of Peace” crap.
If he had boldly stated that our response to 9/11 is to kill however many people in Afghanistan and Pakistan until both of those countries surrender, the war in Afghanistan wouldn't have lasted nearly as long. And it would have taught other nations not to promote the death to America cells like Al Qaeda as much as Afghanistan and Pakistan did.
And we shouldn't have let the media define the war with whatever goal post they declare -- in that case it was that we hadn't gotten Bin Laden yet. As a reminder, we didn't get the emperor of Japan, but Japan surrendered to us in WW2 and nobody today says Japan beat the U.S. That's the reason it was 80 years between Pearl Harbor and 9/11 -- everybody paying attention learned that attacking us is unhealthy.