How Osama Bin Laden Changed America | The New Yorker Bin Laden,
as medieval ideologist and global terrorist, had a record of
accomplishment that was as vast as it was hideous. He did more
to slash the fabric of American life than anyone since the
Second World War. His capacity to arouse the fevered
imaginations of young fundamentalists led to the murder of
thousands of men, women, and children—among them Muslim men,
women, and children—in Aden, Mogadishu, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam,
Washington, New York, Shanksville, Bali, Madrid, London,
Baghdad, Kabul, and Marrakech. He provoked wars. He forced the
rise of expensive structures of security and surveillance. He
incited a national politics of paranoia and retribution. He did
as much as the economic rise of China and India has done to
undermine America’s short-lived post-Cold War status as a
singular, self-confident, seemingly omnipotent superpower. Bin
Laden signed his last will and testament on December 14, 2001,
while hiding in the caves of Tora Bora, instructin