Al-Qaeda won when they got the US to invade Afghanistan, the place where empires go to die.
Discussion
Also got us to invade Iraq, spend several trillion dollars, murder 100s of thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, strip Americans of their rights via the Patriot act, create TSA and Honeland Security, etc…
Yeah, I think we can easily say the terrorists won, the American people lost, the Afghan and Iraqi ppl lost, but those in power including politicians, lobbyists, and the military industrial compel also won
Pharma won too. The Taliban prevented heroin production. Once they were ousted, heroin production boomed. Shipped to America. Millions(?) of American civilians dead.
The big US security state talking point was that the terrorists hated us because of our freedom. So they got rid of our freedoms.