Were the 9/11 attacks successful?

[Jacob]

I'm framing what you're saying in that way.

It's not what I'm saying, though.

[Admiral Yi]

It's not what I'm saying, though.

I'm pretty sure in the other thread you said something to the effect of 9/11 was successful because it weakened democracy in the US.

[Razgovory]

To me the question is to what degree the events of 9/11 set off the chain of events that lead to the current level of danger to American democracy. If 9/11 hadn't happened, would the US still have Trump, the Jan 6th coup attempt, and the complete radicalization of the GOP?

The GOP started going off the rails in the Clinton era, I think the radicalization had nothing to do with 9/11.

Actually, if anything 9/11 moderated things a bit for awhile. We had this temporary era of national unity.

I agree.  Republican animus was aimed mostly outside (so long as you aren't Muslim), instead of outward against the federal government.  I think Trump has a lot of responsibility toward getting the GOP faithful to hate the FBI again though.

[Jacob]

It's not what I'm saying, though.

I'm pretty sure in the other thread you said something to the effect of 9/11 was successful because it weakened democracy in the US.

Yeah, if the attack leads to a significant weakening of American democracy, social cohesion, and/ or institutions it was successful.

That does not mean "the terrorists won". If someone loses a war it does not mean every single thing they did during the war was unsuccessful.

Same as if you punch someone in the face, you have executed a successful strike. Doesn't mean you have won the fight. That depends on what comes after.

But even if you lose the fight, if you punch the guy and intend to break his nose that was indeed a successful punch if it breaks his nose.

[Razgovory]

I had thought that the AQ wanted to draw the US into a ground war where they could deal the US a defeat like the Mujahideen dealt the Soviet Union. If that was the goal they were kinda successful.

[crazy canuck]

I had thought that the AQ wanted to draw the US into a ground war where they could deal the US a defeat like the Mujahideen dealt the Soviet Union. If that was the goal they were kinda successful.

AQ wanted the US to attack their safe location in Afghanistan?  I have not heard that theory as the motivation for the 9/11 attacks.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, that is never what I have heard. Firstly, AQ had larger meta goals, and understanding them requires somewhat looking at the state of the Middle East through the eyes of an Arab Sunni salafist jihadist. To them, they saw the entirety of the Middle East as an unmitigated disaster. The two models were military secular dictatorships (Iraq, Syria,  Egypt, Libya), or absolute monarchies headed by Arab monarchs who had made deep and comprehensive security and diplomatic deals with Western powers, the monarchs themselves were often highly westernized, enjoying alcohol, women and other symbols of Western excess. AQ's main beef with these leaders goes beyond just a personal dislike for their lifestyle, it was also that AQ viewed the Arab world as becoming "infected" with corrupting Western values, and that started at the top.

To fix this, AQ believed these regimes all had to go, and they imagined that could happen through larger conflict in the region. The specifics of the shape of that conflict I don't think AQ necessarily had true detailed plans about. Like there is no evidence ObL and KSM were sitting in a cave in Afghanistan and saying "yes, so we think Bush will then invade Iraq, which will let us start insurgency there, and then maybe some years later a large Arab popular uprising will engulf Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria, and we can be involved there." They basically were working at more of a basic level: if we blow shit up and cause trouble, it's going to cause more trouble, it's going to get Western powers eventually fighting in the Middle East, which will harden Arab hearts against the West and the regimes that support the West, and let insurgency grow.

It's basically a mentality of "we need to just always be starting fires, eventually one will catch and spread really big."

In that lens, to some degree the Arab Spring was ObL's wet dream, but unfortunately for him he was basically removed from operational involvement by then and was hiding in his Abottabad compound--and he died less than a year after the Arab Sping started, and AQ itself was long crippled and ineffective at this point. ISIS which had an origin in both Ba'athists and AQ offshoots in Iraq, was following to some degree the dreams ObL had decades prior when such an opportunity presented itself.

Getting America involved in a war in Afghanistan was, IMO, not remotely part of the plan. For one, while in the West we often lazily lump all these central and near Asian Muslim countries together, AQ does not actually think that way. AQ had always been very focused on Arab Islam, and countries like Afghanistan which are not part of the Arab world were peripheral to that--remember the Arabian language has a very special place in Islam, as does the Arab peninsula. Afghanistan was a place where Arab jihadists went to help fellow Muslims at least in part because "that is where the fight was", there was no other place to fight in a battle of quasi-Westerners (Soviets) versus Muslims. After the Soviets withdrew and the country fell into Civil War, with the Taliban eventually settling into controlling most of the country, Afghanistan was just a convenient location where AQ could operate because the tribal areas on the Pakistan border gave it a lot of latitude to operate and the Afghan Taliban was friendly so they didn't have troubles there.

The goal was always a fight in the Middle East, not a fight in central Asia, and moreover--Afghanistan was in a "good" state as far as AQ was concerned--control by hardcore Sunni Muslims who were vehemently against Western values, and imposed strict Islamic morality on the populace. AQ had no desire to see that change, which it did for 20 years after the Taliban were toppled.

[OttoVonBismarck]

If I had to guess AQ probably assumed America would not invade Afghanistan with boots on the ground, because the vast majority of Afghanistan and the Taliban had no direct involvement with AQ. The logic is, "Why would Americans jump into a country that has barely settled a Civil War and that has no real economic or political value?" If I had to make a guess, I suspect AQ expected special forces raids at most, and probably lots of bombing of training camps etc, and likely they expected that the fact they had large networks of cave hideouts that crisscrossed the border with Pakistan, meant they would mostly be able to hunker down and survive until the U.S. trained its attention elsewhere.

[Darth Wagtaros]

It was the beginning of the end of American hegemony.  It eroded civil freedoms; cost massive amounts of money- at home and abroad - gave the idiots the excuse to go after that nasty Saddam fellow and get sucked into a mess. 

Yes, in many respects it did work if that were the endgame for Al Queader. 

The US remains heavily invested in Saudi Arabia, in which Meccer and Mediner are.