osama bin laden was pretty clear in his goals, to bring America to its knees, through war, a divided country, one that would be humiliated on the world stage and it is pretty clear, 19 years later, that he undoubtedly won.

The absolute hardest thing but the best thing would have been as a country after 9/11 was really to do nothing. But he knew America, the real nasty soul of America, and that we would have never proceeded in that way because we are a violent country and entitled country.

Our civil liberties were weakening already before 9/11, but they were destroyed completely in the name of fighting terror and for what. As a person living here everything has gotten worse essentially since that day.

ultimately it harbored and gave way to a culture of fear mostly acutely felt by white suburbanites. The attitude was not just we won’t be attacked again, but we won’t ever even be scared again, not realizing fear was controlling everything. And you see that still today.

All culminating to Americans being the most scared humans to ever walk the planet. Scared of our own shadows. Constantly killing innocent ppl bc a cop, a soldier, an armed man was scared. Terrorism wins when it strikes fear into people and causes them to self destruct.

One thing I would like to add to this. America was fucked and on this path before anyone even knew the name bin laden. This is a simplistic outline mostly focusing on foreign policy and how that shaped domestic society ongoing.