Were the 9/11 attacks successful?

[Jacob]

For those who wish to discuss the topic.

[The Brain]

It's hard to see Russia managing any further successes of note in this war. And winter is gonna be real bad for the Russian forces.

[Valmy]

If the goal was to terrorize and kill people, well mission accomplished.

If their goal was for that terror and killing to serve some higher purpose, I can't say. I don't know what exactly they hoped to accomplish here.

So voted maybe a little. Osama Bin Laden, the guys who carried out the attack, and the other leaders are not around to claim victory or admit defeat so far as I know.

[Barrister]

I think I said everything I had to say already.

Successful in the short term, unsuccessful in the long term.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I went with "Maybe a little bit", I think it succeeded in the immediate sense but did not result in developments going the way ObL would have wanted--in fact some things like the toppling (even if just temporarily) of the Taliban was never to AQ's interests. The toppling of Saddam likely was--even though they were somewhat friendly with Saddam, he still represented the sort of power they wanted to end in the Middle East, but they could not capitalize on that in a meaningful way because of their inability to operate effectively in Iraq due to more entrenched sectarian forces, and then eventually they were outmaneuvered by ISIS.

[Berkut]

I think I said everything I had to say already.

Successful in the short term, unsuccessful in the long term.

It's kind of weird that it is even a debated point.

[Jacob]

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?

If yes those things would still have happened, then 9/11 was IMO momentarily successful, but long term insignificant. If, however, 9/11 contributed significantly to the current state of affairs, then I think it was wildly successful.

But like I said, hard to untangle the counterfactuals from this.

[Barrister]

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?

That's "a butterfly beating its wings in China causing a hurricane on the other side of the world" kind of causation.  Not saying it may not be true, but utterly impossible to measure.

[Jacob]

That's "a butterfly beating its wings in China causing a hurricane on the other side of the world" kind of causation.  Not saying it may not be true, but utterly impossible to measure.

I think it'd be challenging, but not impossible to analyze it sufficiently. I suspect there's a pretty strong thread, but it's beyond my level of knowledge and scholarship to assess appropriately.

Relatedly, I do kind of think that the West in general is overly blithe about external hostile influence operations of all kinds (including but not limited to terrorist attacks), and the degree to which they may be effective in shaping what happens on our societies.

[Berkut]

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?

That's "a butterfly beating its wings in China causing a hurricane on the other side of the world" kind of causation.  Not saying it may not be true, but utterly impossible to measure.

Yeah, I don't think it is possible to measure, but I do think there is pretty obvious and rational arguments that can be made about the impact.

The radicalization of the Conservative agenda was a thing before 2001, but how much of its traction was assisted by the attack and the ensuing War on Terror that lasted a generation?

I think it is far LESS rational to argue that it did not have an effect on turning the GOP into a bigoted, populist, anti-intellectual ideology.

[Valmy]

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.

[Barrister]

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?

That's "a butterfly beating its wings in China causing a hurricane on the other side of the world" kind of causation.  Not saying it may not be true, but utterly impossible to measure.

Yeah, I don't think it is possible to measure, but I do think there is pretty obvious and rational arguments that can be made about the impact.

The radicalization of the Conservative agenda was a thing before 2001, but how much of its traction was assisted by the attack and the ensuing War on Terror that lasted a generation?

I think it is far LESS rational to argue that it did not have an effect on turning the GOP into a bigoted, populist, anti-intellectual ideology.

I think you could make the opposite argument.  The Global War on Terror, by forcing the US to work with international partners all while under a Republican president, slowed or hindered the GOP turning into a bigoted and populist party.  If the peace of the 90s continued into the 2000s the GOP may have gone insular and nativist even sooner.

We'll just never know.


Valmy snuck in with just the same point.

[Jacob]

That's an interesting perspective Valmy and Beeb - one I hadn't considered.

[Berkut]

I went with "Maybe a little bit", I think it succeeded in the immediate sense but did not result in developments going the way ObL would have wanted--in fact some things like the toppling (even if just temporarily) of the Taliban was never to AQ's interests. The toppling of Saddam likely was--even though they were somewhat friendly with Saddam, he still represented the sort of power they wanted to end in the Middle East, but they could not capitalize on that in a meaningful way because of their inability to operate effectively in Iraq due to more entrenched sectarian forces, and then eventually they were outmaneuvered by ISIS.

I think the other point that should be noted is that we are talking about terrorists, right?

All the arguments that amount to "It didn't work" are not really arguments against 9/11, they are arguments against terrorism as a tool itself. I agree with those arguments, by the way - terrorism has a rather astoundingly bad track record at actually accomplishing anything long term in the modern world. 

But almost by definition terrorism is an act of desperation taken by the weak against the strong. It's not like they have some other list of obvious things to do instead. Even if they did, and they did those things....then they would just be all the other people out there doing non-terrorist things to try to effect change, and we would be talking about some other group who decide that political violence and terror is better then doing nothing.

If you want to argue that the most successful, spectacular, and effective (in the sense that it effected things) terrorist attack to ever be staged was a failure, and they should have done something else....what is the something else? Smaller terrorist attacks?

[Berkut]

That's an interesting perspective Valmy and Beeb - one I hadn't considered.

I think that massive acts of terrorism, followed by restrictions on personal liberty, increases in intolerance for "others", and generational war are all pretty bad things as a matter of principle.

I don't think we have to say "Gosh, we just can never know!" When it comes to observing that things happened that everyone agrees are very, very bad for society, then watching society devolve in ways that sure do seem at least tangentially related to the terrible things, and then wonder if maybe things would have been even worse had the terrible thing not happened (which is, then, arguing that the terrible thing actually wasn't that terrible after all - maybe we could arrange for another several thousand dead civilians and some more 30 year wars so we can have some additional maybe awesomeness!).