united states. the attack on 9/11, while tactically brilliant and you have to give him credit for that, was a strategic failure because it has brought about the defeat of his organization which we are now on the cusp of. that is surely not what he wanted. what he wanted is because he believed he could defeat the american people by such a devastating attack we would pull out of the region and therefore he would be able to exploit jihadism in the region and defeat the authoritarian regimes in the region. actually iran's strategy has been much more successful. attacking the united states in the region using proxies in lebanon, in kuwait, in saudi arabia, in iraq and we have pulled away from a lot of those relationships that we have had. so it shows that his thinking about america and his understanding of the american people and our character and our nature is