Wars the US waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown University.
To a lot of Americans, the life of a single American is more important than the lives of thousands of non-westerners. The harsh reality is this goes beyond our government, a lot of everyday Americans are conditioned to see Middle Easterners as barely human.
I mean, most Americans will tell you the War on Terror was bad, but they'll usually just say it was "unnecessary" "because it cost U.S. troops." Then they'll go "9/11 never forget!" for decades to come over 3,000 dead Americans.
I read that the clique around Bush did aim to "pay back" stuff a thousand times, seems that they more or less managed to do that, even though the pay back was genocide against innocent people, which the USA has a tradition that reaches further back then the Vietnam War.