The Global War on Terror (GWOT) refers to the worldwide military and political campaign launched by the United States and its allies following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It was conceived as an open-ended struggle against transnational terrorism, aimed primarily at al-Qaeda. Over time, however, it expanded into a sprawling series of wars, occupations, covert operations, and counterinsurgency efforts across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. The GWOT fundamentally reshaped US military institutions, especially the special operations community centered at Fort Bragg. It created the operational, psychological, and moral landscape described in The Fort Bragg Cartel.

The campaign began under President George W. Bush, who framed the attacks on New York and Washington as acts of war rather than crimes. The administration’s response combined retributive force and preventive intervention, embodied in the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. The stated goal was to destroy al-Qaeda’s sanctuary and topple the Taliban regime that had harbored it. The operation quickly succeeded in dispersing the Taliban but failed to achieve lasting stability. The US military soon found itself engaged in an indefinite occupation of Afghanistan, supporting a fragile and corrupt client state that relied heavily on foreign money and military protection. In 2003, the focus of the war on terror shifted to Iraq, as the US invaded the country to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The rationale—linking Hussein to terrorism and alleging weapons of mass destruction—proved false, but the invasion went ahead nonetheless. The collapse of Iraq’s government unleashed sectarian violence and an extended insurgency that became a crucible for American counterinsurgency doctrine and special operations warfare. Both Iraq and Afghanistan became theaters in which elite units such as Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, Army Rangers, and others under Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) were given unprecedented autonomy to identify, capture, or kill targets.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also inaugurated a period of rapid militarization of American foreign policy. The Pentagon’s budget ballooned, surveillance programs expanded, and new military authorities blurred the line between combat and policing. Drone strikes, night raids, and targeted assassinations became routine instruments of American power, as described in the book. These methods depended on intelligence networks and a global infrastructure of bases, contractors, and proxy forces. They also required soldiers who could operate with speed, secrecy, and discretion. These qualities epitomized by the “operator” culture that grew inside JSOC and Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

The scale and intensity of the GWOT created a self-reinforcing cycle. As insurgencies spread from Iraq to Syria, Yemen, and Libya, American forces pursued militants across borders, often without congressional approval or public oversight. The logic of counterterrorism produced an endless stream of new enemies. JSOC perfected the so-called “F3EAD” targeting cycle—Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, Disseminate—which allowed commanders to identify and kill suspects at industrial speed though with dubious accuracy. In F3EAD operations, operators first identify a target (find), then prepare an attack (fix), then gain any available intelligence from a successful raid (exploit, analyze), and finally share that intelligence with relevant parties (disseminate). This mechanized form of war, conducted largely in secret, turned elite soldiers into professional manhunters and normalized perpetual violence.

The psychological effects of this transformation were profound. Repeated deployments, moral injuries, and exposure to traumatic violence generated high rates of post-traumatic stress, addiction, and suicide among special operations troops. Many returned from Iraq and Afghanistan alienated from civilian life and distrustful of the institutions that had sent them to war. The Fort Bragg Cartel portrays a generation of soldiers who learned to kill and smuggle under official sanction, only to carry those habits home. The military’s intense operational tempo and culture of secrecy enabled misconduct to flourish and shielded elite soldiers from scrutiny. As the wars dragged on, the GWOT’s scope expanded far beyond its original purpose. The US established drone bases and counterterrorism outposts across Africa, from Djibouti to Niger. In Pakistan, CIA-directed drone strikes killed thousands, often including civilians, while provoking widespread resentment. In Yemen and Somalia, American special operations forces partnered with local militias and intelligence services to fight loosely defined terrorist threats. These shadow conflicts became the permanent background of US foreign policy. The GWOT had become a global system of continuous war.

Meanwhile, the domestic consequences grew harder to ignore. The cost of the wars exceeded eight trillion dollars. The Department of Defense and intelligence community accrued vast bureaucratic and political power. Civil liberties eroded under expanded surveillance laws, while defense contractors and private military firms profited immensely. Within the military, the special operations community (led by SOCOM and JSOC) became an empire within an empire, commanding enormous budgets and operating largely outside traditional oversight. By the end of the Obama administration, the United States had withdrawn most troops from Iraq but remained deeply entangled in Afghanistan. Obama sought to replace ground invasions with drone warfare and special operations raids, reducing American casualties while maintaining a global campaign of targeted killing. This approach sustained the illusion of a cleaner, more precise war, but in practice it extended the GWOT indefinitely. Operators from Fort Bragg and other bases rotated through deployments in more than seventy countries.

The Trump administration inherited and expanded this system. While publicly criticizing so-called “forever wars,” the administration loosened rules of engagement, escalated airstrikes, and shielded accused war criminals from prosecution. Pardons for Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher and Green Beret Mathew Golsteyn sent a clear signal that elite troops were beyond the reach of military justice. These gestures reinforced a sense of impunity within the special operations ranks, the same culture that Seth Harp documents in his reporting on Fort Bragg, where addiction, trafficking, and violence metastasized after years of secret wars.

The formal end of the GWOT came in August 2021 with the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, yet the conflicts it spawned continued under different names. The Taliban returned to power, while ISIS, al-Qaeda affiliates, and other militant groups persisted across multiple continents. For many veterans, the abrupt collapse of the twenty-year mission confirmed their worst fears: that their sacrifices had been wasted and their institutions had deceived them. Harp’s book traces how this disillusionment fed a crisis of identity within the special operations community, culminating in an epidemic of suicides, murders, and overdoses at Fort Bragg.