As the nation looks back on that terrible day, we should spend some time looking back on what's been done and what we are doing in the 14 years that have followed. The act that started this war is no more important than the acts that have followed.

What does this say about us as a nation?

If there was ever any doubt that the US doesn’t have a good handle on who the ISIS leadership is, it should be exemplified by the new reports of US officials openly talking about, in their effort to “destroy ISIS,” assassinating people whose Twitter accounts are seen as too pro-ISIS.
There appears, at the very least, to be some debate among counter-terror officials on the matter, though none seem to be questioning whether or not it’s appropriate to assassinate people on the basis of speech, and are simply arguing over whether or not it’s worthwhile.

I can't help but wonder what we are trying to accomplish by this. However, lets not stop there.
Consider what this West Point professor proposes.

In a lengthy academic paper, the professor, William C Bradford, proposes to threaten “Islamic holy sites” as part of a war against undifferentiated Islamic radicalism. That war ought to be prosecuted vigorously, he wrote, “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage”.
Other “lawful targets” for the US military in its war on terrorism, Bradford argues, include “law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews” – all civilian areas, but places where a “causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited” exist.

There is an obvious trend here: We aren't at war with a "thing". We are at war with an idea.
If you know anything from history, the record for defeating ideas with violence isn't very good. From feeding Christians to lions, to Pinkerton thugs shooting down striking workers, to destroying villages in order to save them, ideas don't get defeated with violence short of genocide.
For a modern example, consider Anwar al-Awlaki, the first American citizen that we assassinated in this war.

The list of plots and attacks influenced by Awlaki goes on and on.
In fact, Awlaki’s pronouncements seem to carry greater authority today than when he was living, because America killed him.

That statement in the NY Times undermines everything about our war strategy and ensures that we can never, ever win.
It's long past time that Americans stop supporting this futile effort. We keep making martyrs faster than we can kill them.

The State Department released a discouraging report a few months back about the environment of terrorism in the world today.

A new report released by the U.S. State Department analyzing terrorist attacks reveals a sharp rise in both the number of attacks worldwide and the effectiveness of terror groups to inflict mass casualties.
According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), the number of terrorist attacks in 2014 increased by 35 percent, while total fatalities increased 81 percent.

That's an awfully poor short-term trend, but it actually is just a continuation of a horrible long-term trend.

More than 32,700 people were killed worldwide in a total of 13,463 terrorist attacks, with more than 34,700 reported injuries. 20 percent of those killed, however, are designated as the perpetrators of the attacks either by suicide or being killed by security forces responding to an attack.

The State Department when asked if the increased terrorism reflected a failure of our anti-terror strategy said, "The numbers don’t tell the whole story.”
My response to that is "the whole story is actually much worse."

We've been 'decapitating' terrorist leaders for nearly 14 years now. If the GWOT was like a game of Call of Duty then we would be winning. But if Vietnam has taught us anything, body counts do not equal victory.

Many officials and experts in the U.S. counterterrorism community now see the destruction of al-Qaeda and its progeny as a more distant goal than at any time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Without a way to measure if we are winning or losing there is no way for us to ever declare victory.
Even our definition of the people we are fighting is so vague that it is almost useless, except for cracking down on political dissent.

Without an official way of measuring I will attempt to use the more traditional ways.
In 2001, the CIA-FBI estimated that there were between 500-1,000 al-Qaeda members worldwide.
In 2011 the government estimate was 3,000-4,000 al-Qaeda members.
Today, because of the rise of Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affilliate in Syria, and the civil war in Yemen allowing AQAP to rebuild, the number of al-Qaeda jihadists globally now numbers in the tens of thousands.

After 14 years and trillions of dollars, al-Qaeda is now many times more numorous and larger than ever before.
And it just keeps getting worse.
Last month American intelligence agencies called the war against ISIS a stalemate.

According to officials familiar with the situation, US intelligence agencies have offered a new assessment of ISIS, cautioning that a solid year of US airstrikes against them in Iraq and Syria hasn’t left ISIS any weaker than they were when the strikes began.
Surprisingly, even though the military has been bragging about how great the war is going throughout the year, military commanders aren’t disputing the assessment, and are simply saying that they believe progress will come at some point in the future, when Iraq retakes Ramadi.

When Iraq retakes Ramadi? Let's rephrase that to if Iraq retakes Ramadi. Two months after the iraqi army started the offensive, they still haven't managed to surround the city.

U.S. intelligence agencies see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: The Islamic State remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the U.S. can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.
The assessments by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others appear to contradict the optimistic line taken by the Obama administration's special envoy, retired Gen. John Allen, who told a forum in Aspen, Colorado, last week that "ISIS is losing" in Iraq and Syria.

This intelligence report comes from the "CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others".
The money quote from the report is, "We've seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers...Overall ISIS still retains the ability to plan and execute phased conventional military campaigns and terrorist attacks."

Outside of the occasional headline about how we killed x number of terrorists, there is nothing but bad news here.
Terror attacks are going up. Terrorists are more numerous, more well-armed, and have more allies than ever before.
How can anyone deny that we are losing?

We should care about the fact that we are losing this war, but unfortunately most Americans don't.
Just as long as we are killing bad guys. Most Americans don't care that we are killing hundreds of civilians in our bombing raids. Until a three-year old boy washed up on a Turkish beach a few days ago, Americans were perfectly happy to ignore the greatest humanitarian crisis of our generation.

Our main export to Syria in recent years, instead of being food, has been TOW anti-tank missles, many of which have wound up in the hands of jihadists.

Since August 9, 2014, we've spent $2.9 billion bombing ISIL, at $8.6 million a day. That does not include the $500 million that Congress approved to arm the Syrian rebels, nor the unknown tens of millions of dollars the CIA has spent arming rebels. A very expensive strategy that has nothing to show for it except for more dead bodies.

In comparison, since March 2011, when the Syria civil war started, we've spent $3,679,166,061 in humanitarian aid, at around $2.452 million a day.

Americans can ignore all this useless bloodshed and waste because it isn't Americans that are paying the ultimate price for it.
But that's not totally true.
We are paying a price. A very heavy price.

Fourteen years of wars, interventions, assassinations, torture, kidnappings, black sites, the growth of the American national security state to monumental proportions, and the spread of Islamic extremism across much of the Greater Middle East and Africa. Fourteen years of astronomical expense, bombing campaigns galore, and a military-first foreign policy of repeated defeats, disappointments, and disasters. Fourteen years of a culture of fear in America, of endless alarms and warnings, as well as dire predictions of terrorist attacks. Fourteen years of the burial of American democracy (or rather its recreation as a billionaire’s playground and a source of spectacle and entertainment but not governance). Fourteen years of the spread of secrecy, the classification of every document in sight, the fierce prosecution of whistleblowers, and a faith-based urge to keep Americans “secure” by leaving them in the dark about what their government is doing. Fourteen years of the demobilization of the citizenry. Fourteen years of the rise of the warrior corporation, the transformation of war and intelligence gathering into profit-making activities, and the flocking of countless private contractors to the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, and too many other parts of the national security state to keep track of. Fourteen years of our wars coming home in the form of PTSD, the militarization of the police, and the spread of war-zone technology like drones and stingrays to the “homeland.” Fourteen years of that un-American word “homeland.” Fourteen years of the expansion of surveillance of every kind and of the development of a global surveillance system whose reach—from foreign leaders to tribal groups in the backlands of the planet—would have stunned those running the totalitarian states of the twentieth century. Fourteen years of the financial starvation of America’s infrastructure and still not a single mile of high-speed rail built anywhere in the country. Fourteen years in which to launch Afghan War 2.0, Iraq Wars 2.0 and 3.0, and Syria War 1.0. Fourteen years, that is, of the improbable made probable.

That's an awfully heavy price to pay to get less than nothing in return.