Some argue that the terrorists are waiting for the right time to strike again. But I find it very hard to believe that they are sitting around while we totally destroy their networks and cut off their money supplies all over the globe.
The terrorists stated goal was to destroy the United States by attacking its economy. Think of the economic troubles just a few Stinger missles could have wreaked on our economy. All it would have taken was a couple of planes brought down by Stingers over Thanksgiving weekend (after 9/11) and the vast majority of Americans would be too skitterish to fly again anytime soon. Bring down another plane or two over the next few months and most Americans would vow to never fly again. I know that I wouldn't. I recently flew to Florida as hostilities were breaking out in Iraq and I was so nervous about the prospects of a SAM attack by some terrorist out on a raft that I flew out of Manchester, NH instead of Logan.
Anyway, I think we have devastated Al Qaeda and it is possible that they are finished for good. But I do not think we should end the war on terrorism. We need to keep on flushing them out and killing them. We must not stop until we have had several years without any terrorist attack whatsoever.
9/11 was binLaden's one and only shot. He thought he was dealing with Clinton, and, instead, Bush has kicked his ass in Afghanistan, killed some of his top operatives, imprisoned others, and smashed Hussein as an added bonus.
binLaden calls for a jihad, and more Arabs get killed.
al-Qaeda's in a "going-out-of-business" mode.
I'm sure we did. We had several leads on the 9/11 hijackers but never rounded them up. After 9/11, we rounded up a bunch of them. I also imagine that we throughly disrupted their weapons suppliers by posing as buyers and sellers. This would make everyone suspicious of everyone else and disrupt their acquisitions.
Some argue that the terrorists are waiting for the right time to strike again.
Nope. It really surprises me that they haven't been able to mount an attack on us somewhere in the world. I wonder if there is something going on a high levels in the Middle East - similar to the way Arafat can shut off the terror attacks against Israel. Whoever ultimately supports these terrorists was scared to death by the awful success of 9/11 (and possibly our stern warnings/actions afterwards) and shut them down. Of course, this also means that they can turn it again in the future. Maybe what we did in Iraq will suppress this (there's also the unresolved issue of the dead Saudi princes last year - since when does a Saudi prince die of "thirst" in the desert???).
All it would have taken was a couple of planes brought down by Stingers over Thanksgiving weekend (after 9/11) and the vast majority of Americans would be too skitterish to fly again anytime soon.
This is why I think UBL was (fortunately) a dummy. It didn't even have to be as spectacular as Stingers. Once you think like a terrorist and have no regard for human life, there are dozens of dastardly things you could do here in the USA to shake us up. Just sit in pickups near the end of a runways and fire AK47's and RPG's at jetliners as they land and take off, invade daycares and hold a bunch of children hostage, random bombings of shopping malls, multiple simultaneous large arson attacks in a single city, etc. Guaranteed 24x7 coverage for your cause on all the news.