John Howard recalls events of 9/11 and thoughts on Taliban in Afghanistan

With Afghanistan back in the hands of the Taliban, John Howard insists it was right to go into the country following the terrorist attacks on the US which killed 2996 people.

The Taliban has won a major “propaganda” victory against the United States in the wake of the collapse of the Afghan government but “it’s hard to believe it is the end” of America as a leading power, according to former Prime Minister John Howard.

“From a propaganda point of view, the last few weeks have been bad for America,” Mr Howard said, reflecting on the 20 years since al-Qaeda launched a series of audacious terrorist attacks on the US which killed 2996 people.

“But there is a lot of truth in the comment that for America to have dealt with getting 120,000 people out of Afghanistan was a remarkable operation,” including Afghans the West had a “moral obligation” to look after.

“I was particularly agitated about that, because I’ve never forgotten the quite shameful way in which the then government way back in the 1970s (under Gough Whitlam) refused a lot of the Vietnamese.”

Prime Minister John Howard with US president George W Bush in the oval office at the White House in Washington on September 10, 2001.

John Howard with George W. Bush at the Washington Navy Yard on September 10, 2001.

Recalling the events of 9/11, Mr Howard — who was in Washington visiting with then-US President George W Bush and had been at the Pentagon less than 24 hours before a hijacked Boeing 757 slammed into its western side — said that at the time no one knew exactly how much the world had changed.

“I think anybody who says I knew instantaneously, the world had changed forever. I think they’re just making that up,” Mr Howard said.

“My experience is that it came as a complete shock, that you go through the process of trying to assimilate what it means over a period of day, hours, and then weeks.”

“(But) by the time I hopped on the plane to come back to Australia, yeah, that the world was going to be a very different place.

“We had a lot of people calculating the possibility that it was the first of a series of attacks (potentially on) London or Paris or Tokyo.

“That was a very strong sentiment.”

Smoke and flames erupt from the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Picture: AFP

The World Trade Center following the terror attack.

With Afghanistan back in the hands of the Taliban, however Mr Howard said he had: “remained of the view that the right decision was taken 20 years ago” to go into the country, even if the mission morphed from rooting out al-Qaeda into a larger nation building project.

“I don’t think that decision in those terms has ever taken is just something that was I suppose a constructive consequence of maintaining the original success of the military mission that a certain amount of nation building became involved,” he recalls, adding that in many ways the mission remains a success,” he said.

“When we first went into Afghanistan it was to root out, to disable al-Qaeda, and make sure another attack did not occur, and of course, get bin Laden.”

“It was all achieved – it took a while, but al-Qaeda was disabled, and there have been no further terrorist attacks of that magnitude orchestrated out of Afghanistan.”