9/11 – has Bin Laden won the war on terror?

Five years on from 9/11, has Bin Laden won? Can he ever, in his wildest of dreams, have imagined that the collective act of terror that he inspired on 11 September 2001 in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania would result in such a response?

That rather than hunting him down as a common criminal with the full forces of the law, we would declare war on terror and he as its major agent, thereby enhancing both his propaganda and his status in the eyes of the people he most wanted to believe in him and the people he most wanted to scare?

...we shall be talking to probably the most thoughtful man to have led British and Nato forces in recent years, General Sir Rupert Smith, who argues that we have enhanced Osama’s position and that we must not scare ourselves into thinking we have lost in Afghanistan, but that the interveners, as he calls them, in Afghanistan and indeed in Iraq need to rethink what they’re doing altogether.

afghanistan, 9/11,
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