Bin Laden knew that America's military was too formidable to take on directly. But he saw a crack in American solidarity and flew 4 airliners into it. That crack has now festered into an infected, gaping wound that exposes our deepest internal divisions and threatens the very existence of our country.
Bin Laden was clear on his demands - he wanted American military and economic might neutralized. He wanted to disrupt America's influence in the Middle East. He wanted to achieve this by destabilizing American's lives, to make them afraid that everyone and everything was a threat, including each other. This did not happen only by Bin Laden's hand; rather, we Americans are actively fulfilling his plan by our own words and deeds.
Bin Laden knew that a divided America was a significantly weakened one. He saw the divisions that already existed in America between races, classes and religions. He knew that the attacks on 9/11 would polarize our nation, and that when we could not find and defeat the enemy in a ground war we would begin looking for an enemy we could defeat. Eventually we did find an enemy - ourselves; we have attacked each other with a vigor that should be reserved for our enemies.
Yet even with Bin Laden dead we are still sending drones everywhere looking for enemies in a tremendous show of security theater. This show of strength is killing mostly innocent people and destroying America's good standing with the world. This is happening while we arm American police with weapons of war, continuously attack each other from within and destroy our ability to defend ourselves from REAL enemies (Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea). Bin Laden did not need to execute any other attacks on America after 9/11 - he just had to sit back and watch us implode.
EVERYTHING that has happened to America since 9/11 has been self-inflicted. We have given extreme and unchecked power to government and big business while voluntarily restricting our personal rights and freedoms. We have attacked our neighbors and families, unfairly and unjustly. We have broken the few parts of our system that actually worked. And in the process we have wasted incredible amounts of time and money, put ourselves in a financial sinkhole and have left ourselves completely unprepared for large-scale disasters. The billions and billions wasted on the war on terror were diverted from critical internal infrastructure necessary to help us move forward as a nation. Bin Laden would be pleased.
Bin Laden did not create our problems, he just lit a fire under them. The divisions and struggles that we are dealing with in America are real and must be dealt with so we can unite again. The difference is that this time we have to unite under ALL colors, not just white. American strength has always been in our diversity and ability to come together in tough times to pull through. In the past white men have taken the credit for our country's success, but we all know they didn't do much of the work. That truth must be our story so our strength going forward is based upon TRUE solidarity that is unbreakable by terrorism. That day America could be a true world leader once again, because we are not any more.