Well, the markets were closed for several days and saw the largest single-day dip after opening in the history of the market.
I doubt they thought we would never again open the stock market. I don't think they thought they were going to destroy a large country with 4 airplanes. I think they wanted to stop things for awhile, scare the s**t out of people for years to come, and put some inconveniences on the lives of Americans for years to come.
For the most part, that has happened.
I think a better response would have been to seal up the borders and allow legal citizens to continue their lives as usual, without passing any more domestic laws. THAT would have been a defeat.
Instead we've opened the borders wider, reduced civil protections of citizens, and stepped up surveillance and suspicion of the citizenry while scaring people into accepting it because it "makes us safer".
When I have to pass through a metal detector to take my kid to see "Sesame Street Live", and explain wy I have a bottle opener on my keychain (yeah, i'm going to rob Big Bird with it) ... I would say that the cavedwellers consider it a success.
And that's really too bad. A mere shutting off of the borders and deporation of those who are here illegally would all but eliminate the foreign threat. Instead we're groping 60 year old grandmothers wearing underwire bra's as the fly from Cincinnati to Cleveland to see their grand kids.
Really, who do you think is laughing?
As to our moral superiority, I don't know where we rank. I'm glad we aren't Rwanda, but the folks in England and Iceland don't seem to be incredibly oppressive either. I like to think we are pretty on-blanace with the rest of the first-world countries.
Then again, if I haven't lived there, it's hard to say.
A mere shutting off of the borders and deporation of those who are here illegally would all but eliminate the foreign threat.
I agree that this would be extremely effective. As you have written elsewhere on this thread, candidates with this stance don't make it on a national level. You would think that 9/11 would have made a majority of Americans more willing to take drastic steps to curb illegals, but instead we had a backlash of "tolerance." Liberals in Ann Arbor brought flowers and gifts to the Muslim-American schools right after 9/11 to show how loving and tolerant we are. Instead of hearing about the Americans who died, after 9/11 we almost immediately started hearing in the MSM about the imaginary threat to islamists living in the U.S. I would hate to think it will take an even bigger tragedy to wake people up.