The real damage wasn't self-imposed. It was imposed on us by poor leaders.

The solution lies within. The events of 9/11 were vivid, but in terms of GDP just a blip. It was the poor leadership that caused so much economic and human damage - spending hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives for basically no return at all.

We'll never have 100% control over foreign actors, but our government is an entirely different case. It exists by our whim alone. If instead we had spent just 1/100th of that money on better government accountability we'd be miles ahead of where we are today.