The terrorists have won.
We played their game exactly how they wanted us to. Now we are a force of reaction in the world instead of rising above.
A damn shame. We held off the Soviet Union's threats for decades, and then buckled in fear to a bunch of religious whackjobs in the desert. Disgusting, but this is old history. I raged for enough years about the knee-jerk reaction right wingers had to these tactics. But those millions who marched in the streets against the Iraq war before it even started failed against the pseudo-patriotic well crafted onslaught of our corporate media gunning for the contract $$$ to rebuild Iraq with flashy graphics, crying eagles and somber music, and the oil of course. (personally the oil thing was secondary imo, but if it worked all the better for the neo liberal multinational capitalist parasites)