An interesting editorial on the matter. Bin Laden may not have lost after all:
The Devil likely died happy
But when bin Laden directed those airplanes at civilians ten years ago, he stole a lot more from this nation than the lives of 3,000 of her citizens.
He taught this country the consequences of operating an open, free society. Literally, he showed Americans the price of their liberty, how many of their principles they'd be willing to cast aside, and how quickly they would do it.
In other words, bin Laden showed American exceptionalists how unexceptionally they behave when faced with horrors most older nations have endured.
Beginning the day after the attacks, the United States became a meaner, more paranoid, more impoverished place.
Thousands of people were locked up on flimsy pretexts and held for months without trial. Muslims learned to live with hard stares and suspicion. They were pulled off flights for the sin of having prayed publicly. Gradually, the Muslim world began to believe it was at war.
One can only imagine bin Laden's delight.
Congress, its knees jerking, passed the grotesquely named Patriot Act, removing civil liberties that took centuries to earn. America's famous dedication to individual rights shriveled in the sudden heat. National security, rather than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness became the fundamental determinant.
Americans surrendered to ever more intrusive searches and probes at airports, carried out largely to create the illusion they were being protected.
Habeas corpus was ignored; the White House arrogated to itself the power to pronounce an American citizen an "enemy combatant," stripped of legal rights or due process. Government secrecy and classification of information expanded exponentially.
At the president's direction, White House lawyers concocted specious legal arguments allowing government agents to practise torture. They also began kidnapping people off foreign streets, sometimes the wrong people altogether, and shipping them off to regimes that didn't bother at all with legal opinions.
And then there of course there was the cost. Setting aside the trillions expended in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have bin Laden to thank for a lot of today’s economic misery.
When the economy swooned after 9/11, policymakers responded with near-zero interest rates. Bush told the nation to go shopping, and everyone whipped out a credit card.
By and large, I agree with most of the article. Bin Laden has been largely irrelevant for years. He struck his coup in 2001, and then just had to sit back and let the U.S. government finish the work themselves. Not that he should have escaped justice for the crimes he committed that day, but all the dancing and rejoicing are misplaced. If you really want to have cause to celebrate, get to work on undoing the madness of the last ten years, and return to the relative sanity of September 10.