{"id":447,"date":"2011-09-07T13:56:48","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T11:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=447"},"modified":"2015-04-30T23:44:46","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T21:44:46","slug":"have-the-terrorists-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/have-the-terrorists-won\/","title":{"rendered":"Have the terrorists won?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it&#8217;s been ten long years since those towers turned to <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7935ebf\">dust<\/span>; the <span id=\"tooltip551e6f79362a4\">memorial<\/span> is being <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793668e\">dedicated<\/span> on that site on Sunday. The mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7936a74\">rotting away<\/span> somewhere after being waterboarded 130 times. His boss, Osama bin Laden, is (<a title=\"Is that your final answer? (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/is-that-your-final-answer\/\" target=\"_blank\">supposedly<\/a>) at the bottom of the sea. An attack of the same <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7937244\">magnitude<\/span> has not happened since. Does that mean we&#8217;ve won?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not so sure. Consider that the goal of terrorism is terror. <b>Al Qaeda may have won because:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The US moved its air base out of Saudi Arabia in 2003, <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793762c\">in accordance with<\/span> bin Laden&#8217;s demand to do so.<\/li>\n<li>The actions of 27 people \u2014 19 <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7937a13\">hijackers<\/span> with <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7937dfc\">box-cutters<\/span>, one shoe bomber, six liquid bombers, and one <a title=\"Don't mention the war! (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/dont-mention-the-war\/\" target=\"_blank\">underwear bomber<\/a> \u2014 mean that billions of passengers are <a title=\"The TSA and Thanksgiving (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/the-tsa-and-thanksgiving\/\" target=\"_blank\">strip-searched<\/a> at airports.<\/li>\n<li>Safety fears <span id=\"tooltip551e6f79381e3\">initially<\/span> led people to avoid flying, causing major economic damage to the US <a title=\"Maybe some things do change (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/maybe-some-things-do-change\/\" target=\"_blank\">airline industry<\/a>. The <span id=\"tooltip551e6f79385cc\">tightening belt<\/span> has made pilots, <span id=\"tooltip551e6f79389b4\">flight attendants<\/span> and passengers stressed and <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7938d9c\">surly<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>Fear translated into support for <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7939184\">wars of aggression<\/span> against two countries \u2014 Afghanistan and Iraq \u2014 that had had nothing to do with 9\/11.<\/li>\n<li>The <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793956b\">trillions<\/span> of dollars spent on those two wars have <a title=\"The United States is out of money (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/the-united-states-is-out-of-money\/\" target=\"_blank\">bankrupted<\/a> America in much the same way that the US claims to have bankrupted the Soviet Union to end the Cold War. Leading America into this kind of <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7939954\">trap<\/span> was a stated goal of bin Laden.<\/li>\n<li>The world has seen that the US military has only limited power and that US airspace \u2014 even around the Pentagon \u2014 is sometimes <a title=\"9\/11: History or mystery? (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/911-history-or-mystery\/\" target=\"_blank\">undefended<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Americans <span id=\"tooltip551e6f7939d3c\">surrendered<\/span> basic freedoms and now allow the government to spy on their telephone calls, e-mail, banking and library records.<\/li>\n<li>America allowed itself to be <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793a123\">distracted<\/span> from its real (economic, infrastructure and corruption) problems.<\/li>\n<li>Americans are now <a title=\"How exactly do you &quot;win the future&quot;? (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/how-exactly-do-you-win-the-future\/\" target=\"_blank\">divided against themselves<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For a handful of escaped <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793a50c\">mental patients<\/span>, the terrorists have <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793a8f3\">accomplished<\/span> a lot, even if most of them are dead now. Of course, <b>Al Qaeda may have lost because:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span id=\"tooltip551e6f793acdc\">With little fanfare<\/span>, the US and its allies did attack and destroy most terrorist cells in dozens of countries, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Sudan and Yemen.<\/li>\n<li>The US got its hands on thousands of pages of documents from bin Laden&#8217;s headquarters, which will be of immense value in <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793b0c3\">anticipating<\/span> strategies used by future terrorists.<\/li>\n<li>Radical groups no longer have any <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793b4aa\">appeal<\/span> to Muslims living in the Middle East, as the Arab Spring showed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>We&#8217;ve learned a few things, too. <\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Our knowledge of geography has improved <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793b893\">vastly<\/span>. Everybody now knows where Tikrit, Kandahar and Waziristan are.<\/li>\n<li>The US hasn&#8217;t been able to <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793bc7e\">conquer<\/span> all of <a title=\"What not to say in an Irish pub (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/what-not-to-say-in-an-irish-pub\/\" target=\"_blank\">Afghanistan<\/a>, nor give it a functioning government, but it has <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793c065\">outlasted<\/span> the Soviet army there. At least we&#8217;re still winning the Cold War!<\/li>\n<li>The <a title=\"The Twenty Years' War is (almost) over (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/the-twenty-years-war-is-almost-over\/\" target=\"_blank\">Iraq War<\/a> allowed new, successful military strategies to be developed. I don&#8217;t mean &#8220;shock and awe&#8221;. I mean <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793c44b\">bribing<\/span> warlords not to fight, and separating the warring parties by putting all the Sunnis on one side of town and all the Shia on the other.<\/li>\n<li>From Saddam Hussein&#8217;s scientists, we now know that weapons of mass destruction are much more expensive and difficult to build or acquire than previously thought \u2014 when a country is under sanctions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Is the world safer now? Yes, a little. And after ten years, we should still be <span id=\"tooltip551e6f793c835\">vigilant<\/span>, but no longer afraid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it&#8217;s been ten long years since those towers turned to dust; the memorial is being dedicated on that site on Sunday. The mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is rotting away somewhere after being waterboarded 130 times. His boss, Osama bin Laden, is (supposedly) at the bottom of the sea. An attack of the same magnitude has not <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/have-the-terrorists-won\/\">&#8230; >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[39,67,18,56,35,62],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}