Tony Karon writes today that al-Qaeda has failed:
The purpose of the 9/11 attacks was not simply to kill Americans; they formed part of bin Laden’s strategy to launch a global Islamist revolution aimed at
ending U.S. influence in Muslim countries, overthrowing regimes there allied with Washington, and putting al-Qaeda at the head of a global Islamist insurgency whose objective was to restore the rule of the Islamic Caliphate that had once ruled territory stretching from Moorish Spain through much of Asia.
Today, however, al-Qaeda is believed to comprise a couple of hundred desperate men, their core leaders hiding out in Pakistan’s tribal wilds and under constant threat of attack by ever-present U.S. drone aircraft, their place in Western nightmares and security assessments long-since eclipsed by such longtime rivals as Iran, Hizballah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
All true. At the same time, 9/11 touched off two wars; a regime of officially sanctioned torture by the United States; a massive increase in our surveillance apparatus; a population grown so fearful that it’s meekly accepted a new routine of intrusive security checks that would have been unthinkable a generation ago; and a multi-trillion dollar debt that’s still growing without end. Osama didn’t get his caliphate, but still: if what he got at the cost of 19 lives and few box cutters was a failure, I’d hate to see what counts as a success.
