Have most of the last nine years since September 11, 2001, been spent overreacting to the events of that day?

Ted Koppel has an interesting opinion piece in the Washington Post. (Link) In it he writes, “The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another.”

He states plainly that our initial reaction and offensive action in Afghanistan was correctly done, but then we lost our way by getting sidetracked in Iraq. In the process, we’ve spent over $1,000,000,000,000 on these two wars.

He quotes bin Laden: “In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. ‘All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’ in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.’”

Have our actions since that terrible day been out of proportion?