Yes. History will record that bin Laden won. There's a pre-9/11 book about bin Laden, "The Man Who Declared War on America". Bin Laden was interviewed.

Consider the situation at the end of the Clinton administration. The US was at peace. The Soviet Union was gone. The US got along with China and Russia. No major enemies remained. The federal budget was balanced. Bin Laden looked at that, and realized that America had to be weakened before it could be defeated. That was his plan.

Mission accomplished.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden:_The_Man_Who_Declare...

Bin Laden’s ultimate objective was to evict US military forces from the Middle East. In response to 9/11, we massively expanded our footprint in the region and formed even deeper relationships with the Saudi government (whom Bin Laden hated for in his view, “[suspending] Islamic laws, and replacing it with statuary laws”). You can read it all in his original, late 90s declaration of jihad against the United States[1] and decide for yourself if you think he ultimately achieved what he wanted, but for my money, he lost basically everything. In the strictest sense, we did stop “occupying” (stationing troops) in Saudi Arabia itself after we kicked off the Iraq war and concentrated our forces in Iraq and at Al Udeid airbase, but I don’t think that was really the spirit of the thing.

[1] https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Declara...

> Yes. History will record that bin Laden won

Or as The Onion has put it:

https://theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-...

> bin Laden won

are his people better off or are they worse off?