Thus, I maintain the attacks were a huge failure at accomplishing the attackers' political agenda.

In my opinion, it is more meaningful to examine the terrorism against reasonable counterfactuals rather than againswt absolutes. I.e., grade on a curve. I.e., maybe the terrorists have failed, but they still did far better than anybody else using any other policy had done at advancing their agenda.

The world has spent about $5Trillion to prevent the terrorists from succeeding. $5Trillion cash, what are the additional expenses of all the delays of all the passengers, the business lost because foreigners could not get visas to enter the US in a timely fashion (I watched international standards meetings stop picking US destinations for any of their regular meetings, for example).

If in the alternative to spending the $5Trillion we had acceded to their demands and abandoned support for Israel and withdrawn our goyische military from Muslim countries, one might very well argue that we would have taken far more than the $5Trillion+ hit we took. I agree!

SO in conclusion, the terrorist approach to achieving these goals, at a cost of a few $million (?) to the terrorists, cost the West at least $5Trillion to counter, $5Trillion to ensure that the terrorists did not achieve their goals.

What might the terrorists have done otherwise to advance their agenda that would have accomplished more than that?