"A number of analysts have observed that bin Laden won major successes in his war against the United States. “He repeatedly asserted that the only way to drive the U.S. from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing Americans into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt them,” the journalist Eric Margolis writes.
The United States, first under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, rushed right into bin Laden’s trap… . Grotesquely overblown military outlays and debt addiction … . may be the most pernicious legacy of the man who thought he could defeat the United States.
A report from the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies estimates that the final bill will be $3.2–4 trillion. Quite an impressive achievement by bin Laden."