The Bin Laden View Since September 11th 2001

September 11^th 2001, was a big victory for Osama Bin Laden because of what he was able to compel The United States into. On the basis of 9-11, the United States has launched two costly wars and spent itself into debt in the process. The financial crisis was just icing on the cake. By engaging Bin Laden and his allies in the battlefield, we’ve given him exactly what he wanted. His allies have been able to bleed the Western coalition of some six thousand lives and tire out an increasingly war weary public, while costing the West a great amount of material wealth. He’s also been able to bring able to full fruition his vision of a great conflict between his version of Wahhabi Islam and the West.

This makes terrorist propaganda become something of a self fulfilling prophecy. I’ll have more on this later this weekend. So far it sounds mint for Al Qaeda, but at the cost of declining support within the Middle East and broader Arab world where they need to draw support to survive because of their attacks against fellow Muslims. Further while the West’s efforts have proven costly to itself, it has increasingly marginalized Al Qaeda into smaller bases of operation, most notably Yemen. Yet as a check on CIA director Leon Panetta’s’ dangerous statement about America defeating Al Qaeda, isolated doesn’t equal defeated. One man has the ability to destroy thousands.