I think you have to start with the fact that while AQ was at full force and relatively untargetted by the US it took them 8 years between attacks on the World Trade Center, there is just no epistemological model which gives you any way to measure effectiveness once we are already at war in Afghanistan.
Additionally you have a problem of us saying that we have to fight them over there so they can't fight us over here, but that has a side effect of ensuring that they don't have to come over here to fight us. If we include every bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan which has targetted US or coalition forces, the result has been a flurry of successful attacks against us. If you exclude them you end up with a footnote which says "true we haven't been attacked over here but it is also true that resources are being diverted to attack US interests in war zones."
The simple fact is they have done so much and in such a way that the success couldn't be measured even if they wanted to.
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I think you have to start with the fact that while AQ was at full force and relatively untargetted by the US it took them 8 years between attacks on the World Trade Center, there is just no epistemological model which gives you any way to measure effectiveness once we are already at war in Afghanistan.
Additionally you have a problem of us saying that we have to fight them over there so they can't fight us over here, but that has a side effect of ensuring that they don't have to come over here to fight us. If we include every bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan which has targetted US or coalition forces, the result has been a flurry of successful attacks against us. If you exclude them you end up with a footnote which says "true we haven't been attacked over here but it is also true that resources are being diverted to attack US interests in war zones."
The simple fact is they have done so much and in such a way that the success couldn't be measured even if they wanted to.