Looks like he got more than he bargained for. We invaded TWO Muslim countries, with more to follow. Totally backfired on him.
Did it backfire?
On the one hand, Al Queda is not now a popular group in the Middle East.
But in another way, it succeeded spectacularly. The US meddling in the middle east was largely as a function of our economic prosperity, using our military for 'influence'.
The US has made a lot of mistakes post-9/11 in large part attributed to it, and has lost trillions in wealth over the costs of our wars and increased 'national security', and is a lot less influential in the world in many ways - but most especially with a far more more hostile middle east. Middle' Easterners' approval of the US has *plummeted*.
In part over corrupt and mismanaged war policies in Iraq, in part of scandals from Abu Ghraib to mistreatment of prisoners (who were largely innocent caught up in a ridiculous 'pay for prisoners' program), in part just the nature of people resenting occupation and the problems like collateral vicilan damage it brings and more, Middle Easterners may not have embraced Al Queda, but the US has suffered in relations.
While right-wing politicians may like to get votes with lies about 'Saddam and al Queda', a secular government like Saddam's was bin Laden's enemy. What seems to have radicalized bin Laden more than anything else was that when Saddam, who had been backed by the US when he killed 'the right people', invaded Kuwait, bin Laden wanted to lead a Muslim army against Saddam and drive him out - not to have the western non-Muslims invade the Middle East, and he was denied. Osama may not have been able to defeat Saddam; we did.
Osama couldn't defeat Saddam without us - and we couldn't for political reasons have invaded Iraq in the full-scale war we did without 9/11.
A main goal of Osama's is for the Muslims in the Middle East to not have the west 'corrupting' them, through wealth, force, and so on. As he has seen happening as his home country of Saudi Arabia chose the US over him as it is closely tied with the US who protects its security, including things like US miitary bases in Saudi Arabia, now removed.
He has largely achieved what he'd want - a US weaker in wealth and reputation, with a far more skeptical middle east about the US.
You could argue the other side - with the US building the world's largest diplomatic base in Iraq for a permanent strategic presence from where it can attack others.
And Al Queda did lose a 'host nation', driven out of the Taliban's Afghanistan (though they seem to be returning to power now) and into the Pakistani region.
But I suspect Osama's view would be that that was already in the plans one way or another, and that 9/11 was a big setback.
For example, the US might face a lot more difficulty launching a war against Iran now that it would have if not for 9/11 and the other two wars.
That's because of everything from the world's lack of support for more US-driven middle eastern war, to our domestic opposition to the cost and more war.
I doubt bin Laden's plans really cared much about this though. He was just trying to build Muslim hate towards the US to increase his standing and recruitment.
And all reports I've seen suggest that Al Queda is far more powerful, with thousands more recruits directly caused by the US response to 9/11, than before 9/11.
The leadership of Al Queda except the top two has been killed, but there have been all kinds of people joining it seems around the world, where Al Queda is now a big 'brand'.
Before 9/11, bin Laden was a 'major global terrorist threat' - with operations like a bomb in a hotel, a bomb at an embassy, a bomb on a small US naval ship.
There were news stories, with IIRC casualties in the tens, and largely ignored here.
The 9/11 impact on the US has been at least thousands of times as large.
I don't think 'backfired' is the word for 9/11. Literally on 9/11, my position was, the one thing we should do is not overreact to this and hurt our own country.' Oops.
Backfired better describes the results of our own policies to 9/11.
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