Why bin laden lost

From , confidence in bin Laden collapsed in many Muslim-majority countries, falling from 59 percent to 26 percent in Indonesia, and from 56 percent to 13 percent in Jordan. In a poll taken in 11 Muslim countries, a median of just 13 percent had a favorable view of al-Qaeda, whereas 57 percent had an unfavorable view.

Another key al-Qaeda goal was to assume leadership of the global jihadist movement. Today, al-Qaeda affiliates in North Africa and Yemen remain a threat. But history seems to have moved on. Al-Qaeda was a marginal player in the grand drama of the Arab Spring. Al-Qaeda is a loose terrorist network focused on launching spectacular attacks to mobilize Muslims, which sometimes relied on host governments like the Taliban.

ISIS is simultaneously a terrorist network, an insurgency, and a quasi-state, with tens of thousands of fighters , widespread territorial control, and extensive funding. Bin Laden saw the caliphate as a distant goal.

In his declaration of war, bin Laden promised that Muslim martyrs would receive 72 pure virgins in heaven. ISIS offers sex slaves right now. Front-loading the rewards proved popular. By , an estimated one thousand foreign fighters were joining ISIS every month, far in excess of new al-Qaeda recruits. War is not a sports match where one team wins and the other team loses.

Instead, each side has its own separate tally. But a sober assessment of the last 20 years suggests that the United States lost the broader war.

But Americans have paid an exorbitant price for the two-decade campaign in strategic, economic, and moral terms. Austria-Hungary used the attack as a pretext for war against Serbia, triggering a cataclysmic conflict, World War I, in which four empires collapsed—the Russian, German, Ottoman, and Austria-Hungarian. Recounting the costs is numbing: over 7, Americans killed, tens of thousands of soldiers seriously wounded, trillions of dollars expended, and over , civilian deaths in Iraq alone.

ISIS is an even more ruthless and capable adversary. If we consider the United States on defense, the success of the homeland-security complex in making Americans safer is highly debatable. A trillion dollars has poured into counter-terrorism programs, but to what end?

There have been some genuine payoffs. But as Steven Brill described in The Atlantic , the spigot of homeland security expenditure also produced a carnival of waste, endless turf wars between bloated federal agencies—and, in many cases, remarkably little additional security.

Tens of billions of dollars were poured into programs like FirstNet, a telecommunications system for first responders, which may never be built.

You will be notified in advance of any changes in rate or terms. You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling Customer Service. Skip to Main Content Skip to Search. Essay The Last Days of Osama bin Laden Revelations from the Abbottabad files show a terrorist leader scrambling for relevance in a world that had moved on. By Peter Bergen. World oil consumption will likely peak sometime in this current decade, then decline.

Even to the extent that they continue to burn oil, that oil will come from many more sources than in the past. Instead, getting out of Afghanistan liberates the U. Read: Why it matters that Osama bin Laden was once pulled over for speeding.

Decisions in Afghanistan by Republicans and Democrats alike were driven much more by domestic political competition than by realities inside Afghanistan. George W. John Kerry and Barack Obama were compelled to overpromise about Afghanistan despite their own misgivings.

Donald Trump backdated a debacle because he wanted a seemingly cheap win for Through the Cold War, the U. Since , the U. We are surely headed to another vicious round of foreign-policy partisanship after the fall of Kabul. For five years, pro-Trump voices have championed protectionism, isolationism, and the betrayal of allies such as Estonia, Montenegro, and the Syrian Kurds.

Trump himself envisioned U. Over the next weeks, pro-Trump critics of Biden will astonish the world with their shamelessness, as they convert from attacks on endless wars to laments for the last helicopter out of Saigon.

That shamelessness will prove more effective than it deserves to—but less effective than it needs to. The brave lives lost in Afghanistan, the money squandered there: Those will haunt American society for a long time.

But the new possibilities opened for the United States, the freedom of action recovered, the future waste now prevented—those will be realities too. The material, economic, financial, and moral assets that make America strong—the United States still possesses all of those. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest.