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Or did Washington fall into al Qaeda’s trap? Europe To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. Accept (/build/images/svg/sprite.68b43361c11f23b39049016b32e6ae31.svg#icon-check) Manage my choices (/build/images/svg/sprite.68b43361c11f23b39049016b32e6ae31.svg#icon-edit) One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Try again (Verdicts on the War on Terror differ on either side of the Antlantic.) Cover image: Verdicts on the War on Terror differ on either side of the Antlantic. © France 24 (/build/images/svg/sprite.68b43361c11f23b39049016b32e6ae31.svg#icon-play) 04:30 Issued on: 11/09/2026 - 11:16 Modified: 11/09/2026 - 11:17 (/build/images/svg/sprite.68b43361c11f23b39049016b32e6ae31.svg#icon-replay) 04:30 min Share (/build/images/svg/sprite.68b43361c11f23b39049016b32e6ae31.svg#icon-share) (https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/press/) From the show (/build/images/svg/sprite.68b43361c11f23b39049016b32e6ae31.svg#icon-caret-down) (Press Review) (/build/images/svg/sprite.68b43361c11f23b39049016b32e6ae31.svg#icon-clock) Reading time 2 min PRESS REVIEW: Friday, September 11– 25 years on from 9/11, the international press reflects on the war on terror, its legacy and its failings. In France, the far-right National Rally party tries desperately to distance itself from the overtly racist comments of one of its security officials, made while on duty for his day job as a police officer. Finally, a fossilised feather may give us new insights into why birds survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The Washington Post headline reads "the 9/11 response got the most important thing right", despite mistakes – the paper acknowledges – in Iraq and Afghanistan. A similar verdict from the Wall Street Journal : taking the war to terrorists abroad and holding any country harbouring terrorists responsible were two key principles that protected the US against any similar attack in the 25 years that followed. There is a different angle in the European press. The Times reminds us that the Bush administration were quick to conflate an attack perpetrated by Saudi citizens with Iraq, an "entirely unrelated country". Here in France, Le Monde has interviewed a former French intelligence official, who, when asked whether Osama Bin Laden had succeeded in his objectives, said "al Qaeda's trap was the long wars into which America plunged." In France, the National Rally seek to distance themselves from a scandal after a police officer with close ties to the party inadvertently recorded himself complaining about seeing Black and Arab people around the town of Carcassonne using offensive racial slurs. Quoted in Le Figaro , representatives of the far-right party called the incident an "isolated case" and insist that such convictions have no place within their ranks. L'Humanité , though, argues that the officer said out loud what the National Rally truly believes, citing MP Caroline Parmentier, who has bemoaned a "normalisation of homosexuality", referred to the travelling community as "scabious bohemians", and lamented the "demonisation" of Nazi-collaborationist leader of Vichy France, Maréchal Pétain. 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