India, Oct. 4 -- They came. They ruined. They handed us back to the same old enemies. This is how a war supposedly fought for security can end: with a country left carrying the consequences long after the soldiers who invaded it have gone.

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq offer a record of military intervention that is impossible to separate from the destruction of institutions, displacement, sectarian violence and the weakening of societies supposedly being protected. Brown University's Costs of War project estimates that the post-9/11 wars produced between 4.5 million and 4.7 million direct and indirect deaths and displaced more than 38 million people. Iraq remains the clearest e...