Perhaps it wasn't their aim; but it's certainly a victory: they caused society to start punishing itself in some quixotic overreaction.
The billions of travellers since the attacks are now constantly nervous - not of an attack anymore because the odds of that are so vanishingly small you don't seriously consider it - but of saying or doing something that some over-eager security policy has irrationally branded dangerous. It's like passing a pack of dangerous animals: you never know what's going to set em off, but whatever you do don't draw attention.
So yeah, they have won. It's not hypothetical; it's a fact of everyday travelling life.
The billions of travellers since the attacks are now constantly nervous - not of an attack anymore because the odds of that are so vanishingly small you don't seriously consider it - but of saying or doing something that some over-eager security policy has irrationally branded dangerous. It's like passing a pack of dangerous animals: you never know what's going to set em off, but whatever you do don't draw attention.
So yeah, they have won. It's not hypothetical; it's a fact of everyday travelling life.