In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, public discourse was left with a new rhetorical flourish — “the terrorists have won.”Used sometimes as a somber conclusion to a stirring plea and sometimes as a pretentious punch line to a subtle satire, this phrase ambiguously summed up the worst nightmares of the stunned nation.But few Americans realize what it would truly mean for the terrorists to win. The goals and motivation of Osama bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center are as unknown to the American public as his location is to the American military.Any attempt to examine the global drama that is world politics must start by examining the goals and motives of the players involved.On Oct. 30th, 2004, Osama bin Laden addressed a speech to the American people. In it, he not only explained why he feels it is “just and permitted [for] the wronged one to retaliate against the oppressor in kind” but also how he plans to end American military occupation of the Middle East and the world.Bin Laden describes the birth of his hatred for American imperialism as the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that was made possible by the U.S. Navy.”I couldn’t forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy,” bin Laden said. “The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn’t include a weapon?”Although there is no condoning the intentional targeting of civilians — and bin Laden is a monster by the very standard by which he damns America — it must be acknowledged our misadventures overseas called bin Laden to action.We have all felt the frustration of the War on Terror from the cat’s perspective, but there is much to be learned from studying the methods of the mouse.Bin Laden said “all that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.”This style of fighting — of bleeding your opponents dry in fruitless military maneuvers — is not something new to bin Laden. In 1979, he left his home country to combat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, according to a September 2001 BBC Article.Not only did he fight in the Afghan jihad — a battle that was waged with U.S. dollars — but he also received training from the CIA itself, according to the aforementioned BBC article.In his October 2004 speech, bin Laden bragged of his experience in using “guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. … So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.”Speaking of the 2001 attacks, bin Laden boasted “Al-Qaida spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost — according to the lowest estimate — more than $500 billion.”Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah.”Bin Laden’s primary goal is not to attack American citizens. His ultimate end is not to harm America’s service members. These things are merely means justified by his end — and that end is an end to America’s military involvement in the Middle East.When the American economy can no longer support imperial measures overseas, American forces will be forced to retreat to American soil in the same way Soviet forces retreated from Afghanistan.Using an “ultraconservative” estimate, when all is said and done, the War in Iraq alone will cost more than $3 trillion, according to a study by Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.The U.S. Military is composed of more than 702 overseas bases, according to a 2003 Department of Defense (DoD) report. The DoD’s 2008 base-budget was roughly $481 billion according to the DoD.This is more than double the 2008 projected deficit of $240 billion.With more than $10.6 trillion of debt, according to the treasury, and a financial crisis that will decrease tax revenue and give President Obama the justification to enact sweeping expansions in government, it’s hard to see the U.S.’s military might lasting much longer.If the U.S. does not start practicing fiscal responsibility and nonintervention, then we will, truly, have let the terrorists win.