Comment by gambiting

Well, no, not really - Bin Laden's stated goal was to commit attrocity so great against the American people that they will have to look into who those people are and why they did it, at which point hopefully they will discover their own government's work in the middle east and rise up against the government in protest.

Obviously, that didn't happen - I don't think your average American had any interest in looking into any of it, they just went "Arab people bad, let's invade", and of course accepted even greater invigilation and intrusion into their daily life and travel than ever before, all in the name of "safety". So yeah, terrorists made our lives miserable - but they failed to achieve their goals.