For them, it meant nothing less than changing the way the West approached the world. Nor is it to say the West should have ignored the threat from Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and Islamist militancy in general. What al Qaeda was getting ever better at, however, was identifying points of vulnerability and exploiting them to increasingly devastating effect. Al Qaeda killed 3,000 on 9/11, but if they had been able to kill 3 million he said, they would have done so. The irony is that while so much of the intellectual and financial energy has gone into the larger wars since 9/11, the West has actually had considerable success on the counterterrorism front.

Source: Thanhnien News September 10, 2016 11:26 UTC