> I thought nothing would ever be the same.
And nothing ever was. Plenty of stupid political decisions today, and untold billions of wasted money some of which is spent today are a direct consequence of 9/11.
And nothing ever was. Plenty of stupid political decisions today, and untold billions of wasted money some of which is spent today are a direct consequence of 9/11.
The mantra 'never leave a crisis unused' is enough to explain everything else that followed. Getting the United States out of the middle East was never going to happen as a result of this, rather the opposite and that too would have the effect of driving more people in to the hands of the extremists.
https://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223...
"Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred.
...
All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.
This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat."
Yes, but what was the end goal? He wasn't doing it just for shits and giggles.
Sure the whole debacle did cost US a lot of money, lives and perhaps prestige. But that does not mean al-Qaeda achieved their goals. The US is for better or worse even more entrenched in the ME, with bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. And Israel and the Saudis are still there.
Some tend to think that anything which is bad for the US means the terrorist are winning, because "they just wants to hurt us". But it doesn't work like that. Terrorism is a tactic employed by certain groups to achieve certain goals. It is possible that both parties are weakened by a conflict.