The anger endures, as evidenced in the NSFW rant of post-9/11 culture above. Jonathan Freedland, meanwhile, lands in a place similar to my own:
The [post-9/11] mindset has to go. In those dazed days after the attacks, a new foreign policy doctrine was hastily assembled. It said that the world faced a single, overarching and paramount threat in the form of violent jihadism. Every other battle had to be subordinated to, or subsumed into, that one…
Such talk has been a constant of the 9/11 decade but its time has passed. For one thing, it's predicated on a mistake. The right way to regard the 2001 attacks was as a heinous and wicked crime – not a declaration of war. As Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, argued in her first Reith lecture calling it a war "legitimises the terrorists as warriors". It's exactly what al-Qaida wanted – feeding their fantasies of grandeur – and we gave it to them.
Readers on our Facebook page are tackling the same question. One writes:
I think Osama did win. His goal was to take the United States down. Look at what's happened to us since 9/11: economic disaster, political disarray, and we've forgotten what it means to work together as Americans. Yes, these are the results of what happened on 9/11. I'd say he achieved his goal.
I wouldn't and didn't go that far. Many more factors contributed to the catastrophes, foreign and domestic, of the Bush administration. Another writes:
He won in the US by flying planes into our towers and our hearts, thereby denying us our freedoms through war and legislation and the TSA. But he's lost himself with the Muslim and Arab community. The Arab Spring was all about pushing Bin Laden and all other despots aside who wanted to lead by force, intimidation, and manipulation of the Muslim faith.
My point entirely. 9/11 as a tactic worked in baiting the US into self-destruction; but al Qaeda's global strategy failed spectacularly – because of its own inherent contradictions and brutality and because of good, old-fashioned, pains-taking intelligence work, new drone technology, and a president who finally wanted to save face in getting the hell out of Afghanistan. Another:
For bin Laden to win, he would need to show expanded positive influence, most Muslims dislike his views and orthodoxy. So, no he didn't win. But the US blundered into the very trap he set, and so we absolutely LOST.
Another:
He didn't win; he was neutered for years before he was ultimately killed in fairly humiliating fashion. That said, I agree with the Sullivan/Frank Rich theory that we didn't exactly "win" either – a classic lose-lose. If I had to pick a winner(s), the Iranian regime and the "too big to fail" Wall St. banks seemed to have a pretty good decade…
From a 2002 review of the NSFW scene above:
[Director Spike] Lee worked closely with [David] Benioff on updating 25th Hour to a post-9/11 New York City. "My fear was that someone who didn't know New York would direct it, so I was thrilled," says Benioff, adding that Lee assuaged his fear that key moments in the novel would fail to make the transition to screen: "When we met, he had the script and the book all underlined — and he wanted to put the 'fuck you' rant back in the movie." The scene is a diatribe in which Monty vents his rage at virtually every human element of the city he loves, invoking familiar stereotypes in a raw, emotional outpouring that's at least as much self-hate as hate itself.
The top YouTube comment:
This clip uses what I call the "South Park Rule". As long as you insult/offend all groups equally, no one can call you out for being a bigot. Equal opportunity? ranting.
The Dish 