Zalmay Khalilzad, a former senior US diplomat who served as ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations, has said that post-9/11 anger and fear drove a series of consequential strategic errors, including the decision not to negotiate with the Taliban in 2001. Speaking to Al Jazeera's programme This is America on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Khalilzad said the US should have engaged the Taliban in a political process rather than pursuing a two-decade military campaign, and acknowledged that the intelligence used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq — centred on claims of weapons of mass destruction that proved false — was "problematic." Despite these admissions, Khalilzad defended the eventual 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan and argued that the Taliban, which has since retaken power, has broadly served American counterterrorism interests.