Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[Admiral Yi]

You don't judge the success of the terrorist act by what happens to the perpetrator.  By definition, suicide attacks end poorly for the perpetrators.

Suicide bombing is only one type of terror attack, but that's an aside.

I judge the success of terror attacks by what accommodations and concessions they bring about.  Others are taking exception to that.  So please tell me how you judge the success of a terror attack.

[DGuller]

I judge the success of terror attacks by what accommodations and concessions they bring about.  Others are taking exception to that.  So please tell me how you judge the success of a terror attack.

Did you inflict a considerable cost on your target, preferably vastly disproportionate to your own cost?  Did you provoke your target to act in a different way as a result of your act?  By both measures, the answers is a resounding yes from 9/11, in my opinion. 

The 9/11 attacks provoked US to waste enormous amount of resources and diplomatic goodwill in its "War on Terror".  They made US impose considerable costs on itself to secure itself from further attacks.  Arguably, its most profound effect was that it helped set in motion events that endanger the democracy itself in the country, which is ultimately the source of US's power that Bin Laden wanted to curtail.

[The Brain]

My impression (which may be wrong) is that the aim of 9/11 was to damage and humiliate the West and greatly escalate its conflict with extremist Islam. By any reasonable measure I think it succeeded.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah and I think Jake's point on accelerationism is relevant there. It's like anarchist outrages at the turn of the twentieth century. They weren't expecting concessions from the Tsar to anarchsim - it was propaganda of the deed and, if the act failed to inspire a revolution, at least it could provoke a crackdown that would add more fuel for when the revolutionary spark eventually took.

I think there's a similar motivation with the sort of religious terrorism from al-Qaeda.

Some groups you can judge by concessions and accommodations - but in general if that's what they're after they'll normally, eventually, transform into political action. But I don't think that metric appllies to all terrorist groups.

[alfred russel]

My impression (which may be wrong) is that the aim of 9/11 was to damage and humiliate the West and greatly escalate its conflict with extremist Islam. By any reasonable measure I think it succeeded.

The ultimate mission was to undermine the west and establish a caliphate. Maybe success is yet to come, but 20+ years on the leading members have been killed and we seem no closer to establishing the caliphate than at any other time in our lifetime. Westernization is as strong as ever--the World Cup is even coming to the Middle East!

It is a bit contradictory to argue that 9/11 failed and the madrid bombings succeeded--arguably both got the desired response and the caliphate still isn't here. By a consistent measure they either both succeeded or both failed. However, 9/11 was a much more major operation and had more commitment in the planning. You put that much into something and you need some advancement of the ultimate strategic goals. The madrid bombings were specifically planned because of the spanish government's participation in iraq and intended to knock spain out of the war.

[Tamas]

Is it possible that Orban is just straight up bought by Putin? As simple as that?

Quite possibly yes. But he also very much needs the EU grants which are being withheld, and one would think going openly against the EU in what is effectively a war is not helping with that cause.

[Josquius]

Don't forget boosting islamophobia in the west. Huge success from bin laden there.

[The Brain]

My impression (which may be wrong) is that the aim of 9/11 was to damage and humiliate the West and greatly escalate its conflict with extremist Islam. By any reasonable measure I think it succeeded.

The ultimate mission was to undermine the west and establish a caliphate. Maybe success is yet to come, but 20+ years on the leading members have been killed and we seem no closer to establishing the caliphate than at any other time in our lifetime. Westernization is as strong as ever--the World Cup is even coming to the Middle East!

I think the German campaign against France in 1940 can most reasonably be called a success, even though Germany was in ashes and Hitler dead just a few years later. My guess is that we won't see any end result of 9/11 to fully judge in our lifetimes, and I don't think it would necessarily be very meaningful to do so.

When it comes to more immediate effects of 9/11, let's not forget that it directly dragged the West into Afghanistan, a war that it eventually lost in humiliating fashion.

[crazy canuck]

Wait a minute, AR are you trying to suggest that the Roman destruction of Carthage as a rival was not effective?

[Admiral Yi]

Did you inflict a considerable cost on your target, preferably vastly disproportionate to your own cost?  Did you provoke your target to act in a different way as a result of your act?  By both measures, the answers is a resounding yes from 9/11, in my opinion. 

The 9/11 attacks provoked US to waste enormous amount of resources and diplomatic goodwill in its "War on Terror".  They made US impose considerable costs on itself to secure itself from further attacks.  Arguably, its most profound effect was that it helped set in motion events that endanger the democracy itself in the country, which is ultimately the source of US's power that Bin Laden wanted to curtail.

The attritional aspect (we killed two of your guys and only lost one of ours) I can concede, but it seems to me that if we're going to count an increase in resources dedicated to the threat as a success then the Russian Special Operation successfully led to increased military spending in Europe.

[alfred russel]

I think the German campaign against France in 1940 can most reasonably be called a success, even though Germany was in ashes and Hitler dead just a few years later. My guess is that we won't see any end result of 9/11 to fully judge in our lifetimes, and I don't think it would necessarily be very meaningful to do so.

When it comes to more immediate effects of 9/11, let's not forget that it directly dragged the West into Afghanistan, a war that it eventually lost in humiliating fashion.

Hitler was attempting to establish a restored and great german empire in europe, and to that end the campaign against France put him closer to that goal, both because it gained territory in the west access to industry and (imperfect as time would show) security on that border which would make a campaign in the east easier.

Osama bin Laden led a non state organization that wanted to set the stage for a caliphate to be created that repudiated western morality and behavior. He wasn't launching a military campaign: the idea was that 9/11 would create a series of events provoking a west vs. islam conflict that would result in the caliphate. Tactically, 9/11 succeeded in bringing down the WTC, but al qaeda is further from its aims than it was in 2001. Conservative islam is not resurgent; I think in the grand scheme of things it has faded. The Taliban is in charge in Afghanistan, but if that was their aim they didn't need 9/11 and 20 years of war: the Taliban was already in charge there.

[OttoVonBismarck]

On Afghanistan & 9/11, I reject the idea that the long 20 year war in Afghanistan was "caused" by 9/11, that suggests a startling lack of agency in George W. Bush and the subsequent Obama Administration era.

The 9/11 attacks lead us into a direct beef with the Taliban in that our intel told us ObL was in Afghanistan, and the Taliban would not "hand him over." [It is unclear at the time this was all going down if the Taliban really had him in a position where they could just put him in handcuffs and turn him over--the pre-9/11 Taliban like most leaders of Afghanistan in the last few hundred years only exerted loose control over many areas of the country, and the rugged areas al-Qaeda was hunkered down in were not exactly well integrated parts of a modern nation state. Nonetheless the Taliban certainly could have agreed to help bring him in.]

In response to that crisis we unleashed a lot of attacks on the Taliban which caused their long frozen front against the Northern Alliance to collapse. Meanwhile we largely ignored ObL's escape into Pakistan, which intel actively knew was going on, and decided to focus on building a Western society in Afghanistan. Very little thought was put into it past that until around 2007/8, when more thought was put into it and the decision was made to massively double down on nation building and dump a huge amount of additional resources into the country. This continued on with various political and strategic shifts for another 12 years.

None of this was "forced" or even logically followed 9/11. One of the few good things to come out of Afghanistan is I believe we have seen progressively more societal intolerance for American "boots on the ground" responses to problems, Obama showed a lot of restraint there, and Trump and Biden seem outright hostile to it, which is probably a good thing in most circumstances.

Our intervention in Syria as part of the anti-ISIL campaign showed a pretty good template for how we ought have handled the Afghanistan situation. We wanted to fight ISIL in Syria, but were on bad relations with the dictator who ostensibly controlled most of the country at the time, so there was not going to be any cooperation on that front. We basically let Assad and Russia know we'd be going into parts of Syria and fighting ISIL, and they needed to stay out of our way. They had no option to say no, it was simply happening. Assad largely never tried to do anything about it because fighting ISIL served his interests and attacking the United States did not. The Taliban either would not or could not agree to work with us to go after al-Qaeda, but if we had simply presented to them a reality that we were going to start conducting military operations in their border region with Pakistan in pursuit of al Qaeda, and they could either stay out of our way or be attacked, it is highly likely they would have simply angrily raved about it but had their fighters stay out of the way. This was almost certainly the more appropriate action in Afghanistan, unfortunately it was not pursued.

[Razgovory]

I honestly fail to see what Orban stands to win with this.

Maybe he genuinely agrees with Putin and his ideology.

[The Brain]

I think the German campaign against France in 1940 can most reasonably be called a success, even though Germany was in ashes and Hitler dead just a few years later. My guess is that we won't see any end result of 9/11 to fully judge in our lifetimes, and I don't think it would necessarily be very meaningful to do so.

When it comes to more immediate effects of 9/11, let's not forget that it directly dragged the West into Afghanistan, a war that it eventually lost in humiliating fashion.

Hitler was attempting to establish a restored and great german empire in europe, and to that end the campaign against France put him closer to that goal, both because it gained territory in the west access to industry and (imperfect as time would show) security on that border which would make a campaign in the east easier.

Osama bin Laden led a non state organization that wanted to set the stage for a caliphate to be created that repudiated western morality and behavior. He wasn't launching a military campaign: the idea was that 9/11 would create a series of events provoking a west vs. islam conflict that would result in the caliphate. Tactically, 9/11 succeeded in bringing down the WTC, but al qaeda is further from its aims than it was in 2001. Conservative islam is not resurgent; I think in the grand scheme of things it has faded. The Taliban is in charge in Afghanistan, but if that was their aim they didn't need 9/11 and 20 years of war: the Taliban was already in charge there.

I said above what my impression is regarding the aim of 9/11. My impression is not that AQ thought that 9/11 was to be the final blow in the struggle to bring about their long term goals.

[The Brain]

On Afghanistan & 9/11, I reject the idea that the long 20 year war in Afghanistan was "caused" by 9/11, that suggests a startling lack of agency in George W. Bush and the subsequent Obama Administration era.

The 9/11 attacks lead us into a direct beef with the Taliban in that our intel told us ObL was in Afghanistan, and the Taliban would not "hand him over." [It is unclear at the time this was all going down if the Taliban really had him in a position where they could just put him in handcuffs and turn him over--the pre-9/11 Taliban like most leaders of Afghanistan in the last few hundred years only exerted loose control over many areas of the country, and the rugged areas al-Qaeda was hunkered down in were not exactly well integrated parts of a modern nation state. Nonetheless the Taliban certainly could have agreed to help bring him in.]

In response to that crisis we unleashed a lot of attacks on the Taliban which caused their long frozen front against the Northern Alliance to collapse. Meanwhile we largely ignored ObL's escape into Pakistan, which intel actively knew was going on, and decided to focus on building a Western society in Afghanistan. Very little thought was put into it past that until around 2007/8, when more thought was put into it and the decision was made to massively double down on nation building and dump a huge amount of additional resources into the country. This continued on with various political and strategic shifts for another 12 years.

None of this was "forced" or even logically followed 9/11. One of the few good things to come out of Afghanistan is I believe we have seen progressively more societal intolerance for American "boots on the ground" responses to problems, Obama showed a lot of restraint there, and Trump and Biden seem outright hostile to it, which is probably a good thing in most circumstances.

Our intervention in Syria as part of the anti-ISIL campaign showed a pretty good template for how we ought have handled the Afghanistan situation. We wanted to fight ISIL in Syria, but were on bad relations with the dictator who ostensibly controlled most of the country at the time, so there was not going to be any cooperation on that front. We basically let Assad and Russia know we'd be going into parts of Syria and fighting ISIL, and they needed to stay out of our way. They had no option to say no, it was simply happening. Assad largely never tried to do anything about it because fighting ISIL served his interests and attacking the United States did not. The Taliban either would not or could not agree to work with us to go after al-Qaeda, but if we had simply presented to them a reality that we were going to start conducting military operations in their border region with Pakistan in pursuit of al Qaeda, and they could either stay out of our way or be attacked, it is highly likely they would have simply angrily raved about it but had their fighters stay out of the way. This was almost certainly the more appropriate action in Afghanistan, unfortunately it was not pursued.

My recollection is that the US went into Afghanistan in 2001 to hunt bin Laden and the AQ leadership as a direct response to 9/11.