The terrorists won, briefly.
They won when the took advantage of the weak and confused intelligence and security network left in disarray during the Clinton Administration, inherited by the then recently-installed Bush Administration.
If Bin Laden was seeking to wipe out the United States as a political adversary, he failed miserably. If he was seeking to draw the United States into an interminable war in Afghanistan, he failed to do that, too. We have done that to ourselves, substituting a police of realpolitik for rainbow-chasing nation-building.
The terrorists have lost, in the long run.
No self-supported society will ever allow itself to be forever intimidated by sudden sporadic attacks on its civilians. Rather than intimidating the world, Al-Qaeda and their copy-cat coteries have united us against terrorism, from Madrid and London, to Mumbai and Bali. The world more greatly appreciates the subtlety of hatred that deceives unwitting fanatics and takes root in quiet communities.
Al-Qaeda may have exposed our weaknesses in protecting ourselves as a nation, but we have taken steps to deal with those blind spots. We now discuss the role of religion in the public square; we are questioning the dangerous doctrine of political correctness, which has up to know safely permitted us to naively assume that all cultures are the same. We are no longer deluded into thinking that Islamic fundamentalist fanaticism is nothing to fear, and that indeed unchecked tyranny in the Middle East can create greater harm when unheeded.
If the terrorists have won in any other capacity, it is only for those extreme civil libertarians who cannot abide greater scrutiny in national security. Yet even they should evince some grudging appreciation, for the ballooning of Big Government and return to reviewing the founding principles which we are defending anew, they in turn has motivated the growing dedicated community of voters across the country who want to see limited government, fiscal responsibility, and effective enforcement of this nation's laws and political order.
Indeed, the terrorists have not won, they have lost, big time.