From Bin Laden's point of view did his plan fail?

In My Humble Opinion
1

From Bin Laden’s point of view did his plan fail? - possibly in the worst way? I think his main idea was to kill the President and most Congressmen. As a secondary effect he wanted to destroy the WTC and maybe other buildings (and kill people).

I think the idea was to throw our country into chaos and once accomplished many more smaller terrorists actions would continue such chaos.

The Pentagon plane (IMHO) chose that as a secondary target because he missed his primary and military jets were in the area.

Now what Ben Ladin has is a fully intact US gov’t and a people who is really really pissed at him + full backing by NATO.

2

I think the ‘plan’ was a success.

I think the aim was to traumatise as many americans as possible. How better that reducing a world renowned icon like the WTC to dust? 24 hour coverage on television. THe delay of the second plane hitting the second tower? Everyone has seen it. Everyone will never forget where they were when they heard the news.
The pentagon was a ‘bonus’. By hitting the military personally, they now have a personal stake in what happens next.
Now the US is inflamed, ready to strike first and ask questions later. That’s just what the terrorists want. To inflame more people. To cast the US as an agressor. To end the US sterling attempts at creating dialog between differing sides in the Middle East and other places.
They basically want the US to sink to their level.

3

I also think that the attacks achieved their goal. They were terrorist attacks, not strategic attacks. Terrorists generally want to strike at crowded places. The idea being that it gives other people the helpless sense that they can be attacked anywhere.
The US had assumed that they were safe from such attacks, we now know differently. My guess is that the president was probably a secondary target.

4

I think it achieved its goal. It over terrorized people.

I mean we got people in North Dakota worried about bombings. For what? The attacks were symbolic.

It will disrupt our ecomomy. It settled the economic debate over spenders vs savers. It will allow anyone to justify any amount of spending.

It got him noticed. And it cost us, physically, emotionally and financially.

The biggest gripe I have is how it was done so simply, without nukes or germs or chemicals but with a simple knowledge of flight and physics and a lot of determination.

5

Let’s assume that it really was bin Laden that was behind this…let’s not jump to conclusions until the evidence is in and it’s become history before we state that it was him and his followers. Please remember, there is no concrete evidence at this time to link him.

But regardless of who ever it was here are my thoughts:

I think that the collapse of the WTC towers was a bonus. Meaning that I don’t think they knew it would result in THAT must destruction. I think having the planes flying into the buildings would be statement enough but the collapse of both buildings was not by design.

The plan to complete destruction amongst other buildings failed. I think that the Pentagon was an after-thought. Given where they actually hit. They were heading for other targets and it wasn’t the area they hit. Their tactical hit was a minor one given the fact that the big wigs of our military are located on the other side of the Pentagon.

The Pennsylvania crash was because, from hearing people that were on the phone with loved ones, was because passengers may have prevailed and may have taken out the terrorists before they could crash that plane in another building.

Overall, I suspect that having the world’s outcry and the world’s support of our country is not what they wanted to see, whoever it was. I think they wanted to see a fracture of our society. I think they wanted a big blast, which they got, they got our attention – damn straight. But I don’t think that whoever is behind this realized the support of other nations to the degree they claim to have and the fact that most of our citizens are not willing to put up with bullshit. They took a group of innocent people and a few children and made them flying bombs…they didn’t destroy us, they unified us. They made us stronger, our families, our friends and our collegues.

An out cropping of making us look like asses is the fact that we will not stand for it…so I assume that he/she thought he/she broke our backs but actually he/she failed in that he/she made us stronger. I will never look at a fellow known American again with contempt or anger. My fellow American has simply become one that might have faults but is not an enemy, he/she will always be my sister or my brother.

I hope the perpetrator of this horrific crime knows that he did a lot for this country. He/she took us out of complacency (sp) and sent us directly to banding together to continue to be the freeist (I pray) and strongest nation on this planet. Nothing will shake that with me and I hope my fellow countrymen/woman.

Never fear the threats but the act of war is a strong thing, we were thrown into war and didn’t know it. It’s horrible but whoever did this will forever be in the spotlight and I believe in our nation enough that we will counteract this with the right measures. So no, it failed in my eyes.

6

I believe the attacks were to successful. I seriously doubt that the terrorists ever envisioned such nations as Libya, Cuba and Pakistan denouncing their acts. To many countries were hit by this cowardly attack which will lead to the terrorists demise.

7

Actually, Techchick, I think they did hope the buildings would fall. According to some of the interviews with engineers I saw, they all knew that something like this would happen someday. (One of them even tried to calculate how long the towers would stay up while he watched the footage of them burning.) Evidently, its pretty common talk among engineers as they have to figure out such things when designing a building. Of course, I don’t think that it crossed too many engineers minds to think that someone might deliberately crash a fully fueled plane into a building.

Even if the terrorists didn’t know, they do now, and they’ll probably try the same thing again, some place else.

8

I have to reluctantly say that it was probably the most successful (quasi) military operation to date according to it’s actual tactical goals. It was entirely useless relative to any strategic goals if there were any.

9

If it’s any consolation…if one of OBL’s goals was to live to a ripe, old age, then his plan failed miserably.

10

OBL hates the regimes of the Persian Gulf, beginning with the Saudi regime. They are the real enemy and he wants to bring them down. He is not alone in this. They are dictatorships which have little popular support. They have ruling classes which squander the area’s great wealth. He believes that only US arms keep these regimes in power. He believes that the US people are indifferent to their government’s support for these regimes because it costs them nothing in pain and suffering. He believes that inflicting pain and suffering will focus the attention of the US public on Middle Eastern issues in a new way. He believes that the predictable violent response of the US government can create further problems for certain governments in the Islamic world and further alienate them from their subjects.

OBL finds the question of Palestine useful as a propaganda tool, but it is definately a secondary concern of his.

11

I think it’s too early to tell. As I read it, his ultimate – strategic – goal was to inflict an injury on us so bad that we would be forced to retaliate massively. His hope was then that our retaliation would justify his call to jihad – as he has done – and that Muslims all over the world would answer that call by rising up against the west in general and us in particular. That hasn’t happened, at least not yet.

I think part of the reason is that the most people in the world, including most Muslims, don’t agree that killing several thousand civilians is a good thing. Moreover, our military response so far has been relatively restrained. Afghanistan under the Taliban was already pretty much a pariah state anyway. We haven’t declared a crusade or any other such nonsense and we haven’t gone off half-cocked with big military attacks against other supporters of Arab terrorism. And we certainly haven’t gone nuclear.

On the down side, there seems to be a lot of individual-level support for bin Laden in Muslim countries. The governments have mostly come down against him, or at least not for him, but there seems to be support by some segments of the populace. Worse, the segment that supports him tends to be unattached young men, exactly the audience he wants to reach.

Likewise, their plan was almost certainly not to do a one-shot hit and then run into the mountains to hide out. The ongoing anthrax attacks, though they seem pretty mickey-mouse, are likely intended to push us into even more overt responses. I think we can expect to see more, maybe not as overt as the Sept 11th events, but this is not over yet.

Since this is kind of war we are grossly unprepared for, almost any overt, military response we make will be too much. Our military is extremely well prepared for repelling a massive tank assault. When the enemy is four or five guys in a house in the middle of a middle class neighborhood, our high tech weapons lose a lot of their value, even becoming a detriment. Every time a bomb misses and kills innocent civilians, that counts against us in the Muslim world and turns a few more young men against us.

We call this a war but it needs to be fought with radically different tactics than we’re accustomed to. I can’t help- but think of the scene in the movie Patriot Games where a small squad slips into a terrorist training camp, kills everyone, and leaves in a matter of minutes. Likewise, we’ll need to apply pressure, market pressure, legal pressure, maybe even deadly pressure, against their finances and their supporters.

I’m starting to ramble so I’ll finish up. Only history will tell us how this plays out. In 10 or 15 years, we’ll have a better idea of whether or not he failed. Right now, it’s impossible to say.

12

Mixed into the Saudi Arabia regime equation is also the fact that Mecca is there - Islam’s holiest city - in a land “littered” (in his eyes) with the presence of Americans.

  • Jinx
13

Somehow, I missed Cuba’s and Libya’s denouncement of the events of 9/11/01. Actually, the last I thought I heard was Cuba and Sudan made no comment. This was the status as of the day airports were hoping to re-open. Was that on Fri, 9/14/01, I believe?

Do you what was Syria’s recation was on this? I WAG Sudan has remained quiet since other UBL’s camps are known to be there, too?

  • Jinx