It is a cliché to state that September 11 was a threshold for our nation. However, with those aged under 35 unlikely to have direct, mature experience with the immediate impact of 9/11 on the United States, it bears repetition.  

On 9/11, I had already been an American diplomat focused on the Middle East for 17 years. I was serving in Washington as director of the office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs at the State Department when the terrorists struck. The immediate sense of confusion and chaos quickly gave way in our country to a quiet determination to eliminate the threat and make America safe in the sense of "never again." I don't recall a conscious personal decision, but the events certainly reinforced my career choice of diplomatic service for the United States in the Middle East as relevant and meaningful.  

Only three years after 9/11, a series of happenstance events made me the chief of mission and then ambassador to Jordan, a nation in the eye of the storm. 

 Twenty-five years later, each one of which seemed tinged in some ways by the events of that September day in 2001, the best I can offer is a litany of lessons learned: 

Handling Dissent 

Support in the State Department for the immediate American response to go after the Taliban and Osama bin Laden network in Afghanistan was strong and uniform. The same could not have been said about the 2003 war in Iraq. Most of my colleagues in the Near East bureau were at best uneasy about the war even before it began.  

What do public servants do in such a situation? Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan Crocker, then the senior-most diplomat responsible for Iraq affairs on a daily basis, set for me a life-long example. He co-wrote an internal memo entitled, "The Perfect Storm," for Secretary Colin Powell's use, explaining all that might go wrong with an invasion of Iraq. President Bush disagreed and went forward. Crocker could have leaked his memo to the media, or resigned in a huff, but did neither. He stayed on to do his level best to make the president's policy succeed and prove himself wrong. With American soldiers' lives on the line, Crocker understood the task of a professional diplomatic service is not to make decisions but to advise leaders, and then implement those leaders' decisions to the best of their ability.  

However passionate we may feel about policy, a sense of humility and proportion is needed from the professionals, who do not have the vantage point of the one person who matters, the one sitting behind the Resolute desk.   

Guarding against Group Think 

The flip side of managing dissent is ensuring that it is heard and channeled in constructive ways so policy debates are tested by alternative points of view. It is hard enough to nurture creativity in a bureaucracy, let alone in a policy arena where the stakes are high, the politics can be raw, and questions of loyalty can surface. Yet one of the lessons learned from that period is that basic assumptions were too infrequently challenged internally. Justification of the war in Iraq by charges that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was not an invented conspiracy. It was largely taken as a "given" throughout the foreign policy system at all levels.  

What is usually ignored in the historical accounts is that Saddam behaved as if he had WMD to hide, so we all believed he was hiding something. In fact, what he was hiding was the fact that he did not have WMD, which would have exposed his weakness not only to his external enemies, but more importantly to his own populace. No one seemed to imagine that possibility at the time, and few acknowledge it today. Wise policy makers should encourage responsible internal debates that challenge group think assumptions, especially when it comes to assumptions about an adversary's behavior based on American concepts of rationality.  

Overreaching and Under-resourcing 

During my tenure as ambassador, Jordan was a key partner in the contest in Iraq, and a contributing ally in the war in Afghanistan. I spent uncounted hours and days with our generals from both theaters who were visiting Jordan to consult and garner help. The picture that emerged was that the visitors from Kabul all wanted more US soldiers and assets, while those responsible for operations in Iraq often believed that they could have done with fewer. As those campaigns' goals morphed into nation-building, it became obvious Washington really just thought "more was better" in the case of Iraq. Secretary Condoleezza Rice made the interesting observation that for too long in the Middle East, America had prioritized stability over democracy, and in making that false choice, ended up with neither.  

The problem with that formula proved to be the difficulty, cost, and inadvertent instability associated with trying to superimpose an American vision of democracy on another culture and nation-state. Iraq is a far better place than it was in 2001, but the price for all concerned was high.  

Over-learning the Lessons 

One consequence of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been an understandable American popular and political aversion to getting entangled again in conflicts overseas. President John Quincy Adams famously said, "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." That was wise advice in the 1820s, but is not as relevant today for a globalized superpower. Sometimes, there are monsters to destroy abroad, and only the United States can do it.  

But we shouldn't do it alone. A political climate in America and globally needs to be created to sustain the policy. If it is truly a monster we are taking on, we need to appreciate that half-hearted, episodic efforts will not succeed.  

I am thinking of our conflict with Iran, which has been on and off again for almost 50 years –yet not one which any president has overcome. The result was ever-shifting, ineffective policies which Iran's leaders learned to out-wait. President Trump has done more to neutralize Iran's ability to threaten its neighbors than any of his seven predecessors. A successful conclusion is going to require persistence (dispensing with Washington's daily scorecard), a multifaceted strategy that combines military, economic and diplomatic pressure, and a communication strategy that convinces the American public and global allies that well-defined ends will justify the painful means.  

The lesson of 9/11 is not a retreat to isolationism, but an embrace of sophisticated statecraft in the pursuit of American interests based on lessons learned from the past.