Originally Posted by DaTruth

If bin Laden's goal was to have an effect on American society that went well beyond the direct damage caused on 9/11, he accomplished that goal. Two wars that have each lasted more than a decade. The Patriot Act. TSA. The Department of Homeland Security.

Every backwater town and police department gets Homeland Security money to buy all this fancy equipment to make you feel safer. The reality is that it is a job engine for the well-connected, and it gives some cops the ability to play out their fantasy of being soldiers.

If we had the American mindset of say, 1911, in 2011, the response would have been much different. There would have been retaliation, of course, and the security lapses would have been examined and corrected. But that would have been the extent of it. The best rebuke to the terrorists would have been for American life to go on as close as possible to how it did prior to the attacks.