Proposition: Al Qaeda wanted to get the West to stop fking with the Middle East. (”Terrorism is geopolitical, [not ideological].”)
Reality: No 9/11 likely means no Iraq War.
Three possibilities:
1. They were too stupid to realize invasion would be the response.
2. They were too drunk on ideology to realize invasion would be the response.
3. The proposition is false. That wasn’t their actual goal.
Didn’t Osama specifically think that dragging the Americans into an endless war in Afghanistan would ruin them the same as it did the Russians?
Wasn’t his other goal to get US troops out of Saudi Arabia, and they pulled out in 2003?
But that’s different than getting the US to just GTFO.
I think the motivation is in significant part ideological, not just geopolitical, because a campaign to just get the US to leave would look more like what was done by the IRA, and would likely have been far more successful.
One would look to cause large amounts of expense without large amounts of casualties, creating the political drive to Do Something, but without the political drive for an invasion.
I won’t go into them, but if one is willing to die, there are all sorts of ways to be extremely expensive to the elites that won’t create enough ire among the regular people to politically support a war effort.