Yep.
IMO the whole point of terrorism is to bait groups into acting against their own interest, by inciting them to overreact offensively and defensively.
AFAIK, part of the intended outcome for the terrorist is for the target group and it's members to do the following kinds of things:
[x] Respond with needless and wasteful overextension.
[x] To focus their efforts on the wrong issues and become neglectful of their internal affairs.
[x] To expose their vulnerabilities in the process of reaching out in response.
[x] For them to needlessly stifle themselves out of fear, to waste resources and miss opportunuties out of excessive precaution and suspicion.
[x] For the members of the target group to feel greater doubt about the loyalties of others and the effectiveness of their leaders and protectors.
[x] For the target group to seem paranoid, toxic, dangerous to align with, to be harder to deal with, and to be less trusting even of trustworthy would-be allies.
Sure, America and Friends wiped out a lot of people who disliked us, and some who wanted to personally hurt us if we got close enough for them, along with some extra folks on the side. Iraq is no longer 100% ruled by terribly murderous authoritarian regimes, Afghanistan isn't 100% Taliban-controlled, and some key people got killed. That's cool, I guess.
But sometimes, I feel like that wasn't the best outcome we could have had. Thousands of Americans dead, thousands more injured and traumatized, trillions spent. We've destabilized the region even further, killed a whole bunch of people, many of whom didn't want to hurt us originally or at all. Tons of folks have died due to infighting. Our allies have suffered and are less eager about going to war. Millions of folks got screwed or displaced by the conflicts. We've used an enormous volume of labor and resources to shoot people and blow things up in a place where most of the folks don't want us, or if they do, really only want us to use us. We've pissed off many folks who'd otherwise like us, burnt bridges, goodwill, and sympathy. We keep riling ourselves up and convincing our people to live in terror and feel dependent, and it's been used as a pretext for all sorts of unconstitutional, wasteful, corrupt, and horrendous actions and policies. It's distracted us enormously from the real threats to our people, and to humanity generally.
Like, can you imagine if we'd done a more controlled response? If we'd invested all that effort into bettering America and the world? In actually helping our people and protecting them from the things that are actually likely to harm them? Imagine if all the folks killed as part of the outcome of our response were still alive. If we'd spent that all those funds, resourcrs, and man hours on research, preventative medicine, education, planning, infrastructure, reforms, and optimization? I feel like that would have pissed off AQ far more, and have helped our people in actually tangible ways more than a fleeting feeling of vengeance has.
Whatever though, it's all the past. I feel like we can learn from that though. I hope we as a country don't respond to future tragedy so self-destructively, but that's hard to pull off...
