Ted Koppel: Nine years after 9/11, let’s stop playing into bin Laden’s hands

By Ted Koppel

Sunday, September 12, 2010

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. …

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald’s. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos? It is past time to reflect on what our enemy sought, and still seeks, to accomplish — and how we have accommodated him.

Ted Koppel: Nine years after 9/11, let’s stop playing into bin Laden’s hands

See mjh’s blog — Feel Safer Standing In Line to Take Off Your Shoes?

Fahreed Zakaria: Why America Overreacted to 9/11 – Newsweek 9/4/10