White House Counterterrorism Director Says Goal Is to Make His Own Position Obsolete

The Trump administration has drafted a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy with one audacious goal: to render strategic counterterrorism operations obsolete before the 25th anniversary of September 11th arrives in 2026.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump and Senior Director for Counterterrorism, outlined this approach during a recent interview, explaining that the administration’s intent is to fundamentally transform how America addresses terrorist threats.

Here are the facts. Terrorism, as Gorka correctly notes, is not thermonuclear warfare with China. It involves individuals with box cutters hijacking planes, militants with AK-47s, or attackers driving pickup trucks into crowds. These are serious threats, certainly, but they do not require the full strategic apparatus of the United States government to be permanently focused on them.

The logic is straightforward: if counterterrorism can be managed sub-strategically through partnerships with allies and domestic law enforcement agencies, then America can avoid the forever wars that have drained resources and lives for nearly a quarter century.

“We have a draft counterterrorism strategy that we’ve prepared for the president where our intent is to finish the job,” Gorka stated. “I’d like to see myself or my position put out of business.”

This represents a dramatic departure from previous approaches. The goal is not merely to manage terrorism indefinitely, but to collapse terrorist entities to such a degree that they no longer warrant White House-level attention. As Gorka put it, the administration wants to put “the foot to the floor, pedal to the metal” to achieve this objective.

The contrast with the Biden administration could not be starker. While the previous administration allegedly targeted Virginia Catholics for their religious beliefs and pursued dubious terrorism charges against American citizens with no actual terrorist connections, the Trump administration is focusing resources on eliminating actual jihadist threats abroad.

This strategy allows American special operators, intelligence professionals, and military personnel to target those who have killed Americans or are actively plotting to do so. That is what counterterrorism should be: precise, effective, and temporary.

The broader strategic vision makes sense. America cannot afford to dedicate top-tier national security resources to counterterrorism in perpetuity. Twenty-five years after 9/11, the question is not whether terrorism can be completely eliminated from the world, but whether the United States must remain in a permanent wartime posture to address it.

The answer, according to this administration, is no. By aggressively targeting terrorist networks now and empowering regional partners to maintain security independently, America can transition counterterrorism from a strategic priority to a law enforcement and intelligence function.

This approach acknowledges reality: terrorism will likely never disappear entirely, but it need not dominate American foreign policy and military strategy indefinitely. The goal is achievable degradation of terrorist capabilities to the point where they pose manageable rather than existential threats.

Whether this strategy succeeds depends on execution. But the underlying premise is sound. America has spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives fighting terrorism since 2001. If the Trump administration can genuinely finish the job and allow the nation to move beyond forever wars, that would represent a historic achievement and a restoration of strategic proportion to American national security policy.