From the point of view of OBL, did the the 9-11 attacks achieve their goals?
first off we have to admit we do not know what the guy’s goals were. He claims to have wanted to force American troops out of Saudi Arabia. That was fairly nuts as there were darn few US troops there at the time.
But if we sort of guess at the guy’s to-do list, we might imagine that he wanted to force the vast lumpen Islamic masses to choose between right-wing Islam and The Evil West. That is to say he might have wanted to provoke a clash of cultures. The West was winning with Diet Coke and soft power, by provoking a real war, OBL had a chance.
After all, OBL prided himself on destroying the Soviet Union by fighting it in Afghanistan. Maybe he wanted to lure the West into his playground.
I liken it to a cartoon I watch saw in Mad magazine. A kid has only a nickel to spend at the fireworks stand. He buys a tiny firecracker, lights it and throws it back into the stand. Then he stands back to watch the show.
In the same way, OBL (may have) wanted to use his small capabilities to ignite a general war for his overall amusement.
pure speculation mode Personally, I think his goals were a unified Islamic super-state (with himself and his group at the head of course). Sort of an Islamic super power that could basically have the clout to tell the West to go fuck off and back it up through force of arms.
Definitely…but I think our response was not exactly what he anticipated. No real mystery there, since we don’t really understand him or his (or his groups) goals, it’s not really surprising that he misjudged our response. Heck, prior to 9/11 happening I doubt many American’s know what we’d do in such a situation…and I know our response confused the hell out of our Euro buddies, who at least have some grasp of how we operate.
Yeah…my guess is that we responded much more forcefully than he anticipated. Also, I believe that he was rating our combat ability based on his assessment of the Soviets response in Afghanistan. He also, like many others, believed that the US was unwilling to take serious losses, or that deep down we had the will to fight in the face of such losses, and that if he stung us hard we’d eventually pack up and go home. I think he planned to lure us into some kind of ground war in Afghanistan and then get into the same kind of war of attrition that the Soviets got into (or that we got into in Vietnam). He probably figured we wouldn’t be nearly as vicious or committed as the Soviets (we were considered weak)…and clearly he had no real concept of how warfare had changed since then (though he SHOULD have realized at least part of this, considering the Gulf War).
No…I don’t think it was for his overall amusement. I think he felt if he was able to hand us a defeat as was given the Soviets (or as we suffered in Vietnam), that he would emerge as a power to be reckoned with in the region. Then he could parlay that into building a regional super power (probably with it’s base as Saudi and expanding from there…I’m sure this grand plan only included Sunni) that could, in theory, act as a fundamentalist theocracy that would eventually encompass much of the Middle East, and could act as a counter balance to the US and the West. Then, from a position of strength he could force us (the West) to deal with him on his own terms…or, perhaps tell us to go fuck ourselves and get the hell out of the region.
ETA: It’s pretty obvious in retrospect that his strategy wasn’t grounded in reality. During the Soviet occupation WE footed the bill (several billion dollars worth). True, the Afghani’s did the heavy lifting, fighting wise, but without that material and monetary support they wouldn’t have been able to fight on like they did (just like Vietnam with support from China and the Soviets).
I’m going to say no. Al Qaeda’s goals were to get foreign troops out of Islamic countries. Some have left but obviously many (including American troops) are still there.
Al Qaeda may have had a secondary goal of changing secular governments in Islamic countries towards a more theocratic rule but that doesn’t seem to have happened either.
I think one of his goals was to provoke an over-reaction from the US and he succeeded. Richard Clark, a former NSC official, wrote that in invading Iraq, it was as if Bush was channeling Laden.
It was asymmetric warfare that did over a half trillion dollars in economic damage. They successfully destroyed the most photographed symbol of American commerce, damaged the symbol and control center of American military power and almost took out the highest levels of political power (White House or Capital building). This was done by eleven people using the assets of the enemy as weapons (airplanes and fuel) for a net cost of ZERO.
It was the most successful attack in modern history.
Al-Queda is now the most feared and respected terrorist organization in the world. Even if they’re all killed, history will remember them as the men who managed to hurt the most powerful nation in the world.
As Michael Caine said in The Dark Knight Returns “Some men just like to watch the world burn” or some such. Disaffected and disgruntled intellectuals see what they think needs to be destroyed and are willing to do what it takes to achieve that destruction. The vast majority of humankind just wants to go about their business and live their lives without destroying everything they don’t like. And by vast majority, I mean more than 99%. That still leaves tens of thousands of psychopathic shitheads willing to do the most violent things and the arms manufacturers that want to sell people weapons to protect themselves and do that damage.
Did the 9/11 attacks work. Yes. The economy of the US is in a much worse downturn because of endless war spending.
People are always trying to second-guess what political inspired bloody murderers want even when they have said so themselves and even put out a manifest for all to read. Possible because the ideas sound ridiculous and absurd to us. However just because an idea is ridiculous and absurd doesn’t mean it isn’t sincerely and deeply held. The Bin Laden fatwa.
Bin Laden is an idiot and full of shit, the so called fatwa is bullshit and reads like random spam text trying to sneak past my spamfilter. But here is what I think may be the main points.
a) US troops out of Saudi Arabia. Check. More troops in Muslim lands but you moved your bases to neighbouring countries.
b) US troops out of the Gulf states. Fail. More US troops in Gulf states today than then.
c) Jerusalem back in Muslim hands. Fail. Jerusalem is further from Muslim hands on account of the attacks.
d) Off with the heads of Saudi kings and princes. Fail. The Saud family still rules.
e) Saudi Arabia back on a more conservative track and proper implementation of Sharia. Fail. Saudi Arabia is more liberal today than then.
f) Higher oil prices. Mixed results. Though not much influenced by the attacks either way.
g) General revenge for what the “Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators” has wrought in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, India, Philippine, Somalia, Eretria, Chechnya and Bosnia. Check. The attacks killed many people and destroyed much property and wealth.
I think this portrayal of terrorists as nihilists is actively harmful, as it ignores the concept that we can do things that may aid their recruitment, simply by letting them convince a potential recruit that we are an evil that needs to be defeated.
You don’t need to sympathise with their reasons, just recognise that they exist beyond “they’re evil and they hate our freedom”.
People who want to achieve something have clear goals and work in a steady, consistent way to achieve that task. People who want to stroke their own egos throw off firecrackers and stand back and laugh.
I’ve never closely followed all the various terrorist groups and the various battles in Afghanistan and the Middle East, but from what all I have encountered, I’ve yet to see any evidence of a rigorous attempt to fight the West. There’s essentially just hundreds or thousands of mini-groups with their own mini-dictators who get to live as the overlord of a few dozen guys out in the middle of nowhere. Being able to blow something up in Europe or America gives you a brand name and you get more flunkies and you get to beat your chest.
If you look at cult leaders, revolutionaries, or most terrorist leaders, you’re really looking at the same basic sort of person. Whatever enemy he’s talking about, he’s really just looking to get control of his own group of people and the presence of an enemy helps him to collect those.
After Iraq 1 ,many middle easterners gave credit to Saddam because after a war with America he was still standing. He was still running the country. Sometimes their victories are tiny.
Osama is still standing. He took down 2 huge buildings in the heart of the American economic center. He brought them to the ground. It shocked everyone and showed we could bleed. If they bleed you can kill them. It was an attitude adjustment. It was a huge victory.
If we had quickly rebuilt the towers just like they were, the victory would have been hollow. It would have demonstrated that they can not affect us or our politics. But we got suckered into blowing our economy for vengeance. Instead of acting big ,we went small. We did the wrong thing.
From the 9/11 commission: “[bin Laden] complained frequently that the United States had not yet attacked [in response to the Cole]… Bin Ladin wanted the United States to attack, and if it did not he would launch something bigger.”
So yea, basically he wanted to draw the US into Afghanistan where he thought he could give us enough of a bloody nose that we’d withdraw not only from there but try and minimize our exposure in the Middle East in general.
And it wasn’t a terrible plan, the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan showed that a Superpower can get bogged down there, and the US managed to get at least semi-stuck in Iraq. But bin Ladin apparently over-estimated the desire of the jyhadists to fight in Afgahnistan, and the US wisely used Muslim allies to do most of the ground fighting there, so the end result was a larger US presence in the region instead of the general withdrawl Al-Queda hoped for.
And we have shown no sign of leaving any time soon…so, I’d have to say that he has failed on all accounts. His attack on 9/11 had the same kind of tactical vs strategic aspects to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Tactically it was a success…strategically, it was a huge failure. Anyone who thinks bin Laden doesn’t/didn’t think in strategic terms, or that his attack on the US were solely about simply attacking the US because he didn’t like us (or because he was pissed off at our troops in Saudi) hasn’t been following along very well in the last few years.
It was a major success; the most effective terrorist attack in history. America is politically, economically, and militarily damaged. Saddam, an important enemy of Al Qaeda and a secularist is dead, Middle East secularist and democratic movements seriously weakened. He demonstrated that America is stupid, cowardly, and easily led. And of course he destroyed the Towers and struck the Pentagon.
Basically, he tossed a pebble at our forehead and we ran off in a blind rage and into a pit filled with spikes and sewage.
No it was the most idiotic thing Al-Qaeda could have done. Had they been smart they would have continued bombing minor targets like USS Cole, or the Embassy Bombings. Now we shall crush Al-Qaeda, utterly destroy them without mercy, grind them into atoms, reduce them to ashes, and wipe off the blot from the face of this planet.
Why? Al-Queda doesn’t want to bomb things just to bomb them, it’s goal with the USS Cole, and presumably with the 9/11 attacks was to force the US to send an army to Afghanistan that they could then defeat. If the US continued to refuse to be provoked by minor overseas bombings there wasn’t much point in continuing with smaller attacks.
It’s ultimate goal is destroying America, and Israel. I guess it’s immediate goal was for them to defeat the US in a war-both will fail. They are at far more of a disadvantage then the Imperial Japanese.
No, we won’t. Nor can we. Nor would it matter much if we did; nothing we do now will reach back in time and undo the damage they have done, and that we have done to ourselves.