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by sinnerswing 4733 days ago
Obama: "but Bin Laden's dead and Al Qaeda has been defeated."

No. THEY WON.

2 comments

Meanwhile, we're about to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban, and we're supplying arms to Al Qaeda loyalists in Syria.
Bill Maher has an excellent clip on this. He boils it down to, "Basically we're arming Al Qaeda."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6paYu3GM2Y

No they didn't; vrtually none of their objectives have been met, except that of getting the US to remove its military forces from Saudi Arabian soil.

I get your point, but it's a purely rhetorical one that has little to do with actual history. Al Qaeda had real objectives of their own, rather than simply existing to make us fearful.

Bin Laden's overall strategy against much larger enemies such as the Soviet Union and United States was to lure them into a long war of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender. He believed this would lead to economic collapse of the enemy nations. Al-Qaeda manuals clearly express this strategy. In a 2004 tape broadcast by al-Jazeera, bin Laden spoke of "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy". [1]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden#Beliefs_and_ide...

That doesn't really bear out your point.
I wasn't the one making the point.

That said, if their goal was to bankrupt us & draw us out by a war of attrition - it's easy to say that they achieved their objective.