First, in contemporary ideology of terrorism there is a pretty standard way in which terrorism is supposed to work.
What’s the evidence that it actually does work that way — or, for that matter, that these particular attackers believed it would?
I find Abrahms’ theories (described by Schneier in the link upthread; use your favorite search engine to find Abrahms’ papers) to be substantially more descriptive of how the world actually works. In gist, terrorism is ineffective as a means of political change, and terrorist groups are better modeled as gangs of disaffected young men than as political agents seeking change under desperate circumstances.
Also, the poor domestic policy choices of the U.S. government after 9/11 were not inevitable. Contrast them with the substantially more narrowly-tailored responses to the Oklahoma City bombing.
We don’t have to concern ourselves with the general question of whether terrorism is a viable tactic for achieving political ends. We’re discussing a more narrow question: were the 9/11 attacks “successful” and in which sense.
My position is that the attacks were successful beyond the hopes of al-Qaida—they damaged the US in a major fashion (with enthusiastic cooperation of the US government, both Republican and Democratic administrations, I might add).
What’s the evidence that it actually does work that way — or, for that matter, that these particular attackers believed it would?
I find Abrahms’ theories (described by Schneier in the link upthread; use your favorite search engine to find Abrahms’ papers) to be substantially more descriptive of how the world actually works. In gist, terrorism is ineffective as a means of political change, and terrorist groups are better modeled as gangs of disaffected young men than as political agents seeking change under desperate circumstances.
Also, the poor domestic policy choices of the U.S. government after 9/11 were not inevitable. Contrast them with the substantially more narrowly-tailored responses to the Oklahoma City bombing.
We don’t have to concern ourselves with the general question of whether terrorism is a viable tactic for achieving political ends. We’re discussing a more narrow question: were the 9/11 attacks “successful” and in which sense.
My position is that the attacks were successful beyond the hopes of al-Qaida—they damaged the US in a major fashion (with enthusiastic cooperation of the US government, both Republican and Democratic administrations, I might add).