Aletho News

Nearly half of US citizens say Washington’s post-9/11 wars ‘worth the cost’

The Cradle | September 3, 2026

Nearly half of US citizens believe the wars waged by Washington in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond after the 11 September 2001 attacks have been “worth it,” a YouGov poll published on 2 August shows.

The poll was commissioned ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks, which the US government used as a pretext to launch the so-called “War on Terror” that led to the deaths of nearly 5 million people.

Respondents were asked if fighting “against the threat of terrorism through military operations abroad” and introducing “increased security and surveillance inside of the United States … have been worth the cost.”

Forty-eight percent responded yes, while another 27 percent said they weren’t sure. The remaining 25 percent said no.

Support for this view was strongest among Republicans, with 71 percent responding yes.

When asked whether some people in the US government knew about the 11 September attacks beforehand but let the attacks happen anyway, 39 percent of respondents agreed, and the same number disagreed.

Immediately after the attacks, US officials blamed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Al-Qaeda was founded in the 1980s in Afghanistan. At the time, the CIA was arming and funding Islamic extremists known as “mujahideen” to fight the occupying Soviet Army.

The CIA later supported Al-Qaeda militants fighting in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Iraq, and Syria, while claiming to be opposed to the group.

In 2024, the US helped install former Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Ahmad al-Sharaa as president of Syria following the CIA’s 14-year covert war to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad.

When YouGov asked if Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was involved in the 11 September attacks, 38 percent agreed, while 34 percent disagreed.

Pro-Israel officials in the administration of former US president George W. Bush began pushing for an invasion of Iraq immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC.

The US government and media launched a massive propaganda campaign to wrongly convince US citizens that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had collaborated with Al-Qaeda to carry out the attacks and that the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction that could threaten the US homeland.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents to the poll said that the amount of surveillance by the US government had been affected “a lot” by the 9/11 attacks.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Bush signed the Patriot Act, which gave the US government sweeping powers to surveil US citizens, allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to track their phone calls and movements.

When YouGov asked if “Muslims in the United States have been treated better, about the same, or worse than people of other religions,” 52 percent of respondents said Muslims have been treated worse.

Among Democrats, 71 percent agreed with the statement, while 28 percent of Republicans agreed.

After 9/11, many US citizens became hostile to Muslims, viewing them as “terrorists.”

A 2023 report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University estimated that 4.5 million people have died as a consequence of the US wars since the 9/11 attacks.

The US military carried out attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

Of the 4.5 million deaths, roughly 900,000 were killed by direct violence. Roughly 3.6 million resulted from “indirect” deaths caused by the aftereffects of the wars.

September 3, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Afghanistan, Middle East, United States