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Al-Qaeda’s Project for Ending the American Century Largely Succeeded by Jim Lobe -- Antiwar.com

Al-Qaeda’s Project for Ending the American Century Largely Succeeded by Jim Lobe -- Antiwar.com
A decade after its spectacular Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York City’s twin World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon and despite the killing earlier this year of its charismatic leader, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda appears to have largely succeeded in its hopes of accelerating the decline of U.S. global power, if not bringing it to the brink of collapse.

That appears to be the strong consensus of the foreign-policy elite which, with only a few exceptions, believes that the administration of President George W. Bush badly "overreacted" to the attacks and that that overreaction continues to this day.

That overreaction was driven in major part by a close-knit group of neoconservatives and other hawks who seized control of Bush’s foreign policy even before the dust had settled over Lower Manhattan and set it on a radical course designed to consolidate Washington’s dominance of the Greater Middle East and "shock and awe" any aspiring global or regional rival powers into acquiescing to a "unipolar" world.

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