Heroism and Resilience

Then there is the stock market. The terrorists wanted to force a collapse in equity prices that would do severe and lasting damage to the U.S. economy. Osama bin Laden himself emphasized as much in comments made in the months after the attacks. In a videotape released in April 2002 and evidently made in late 2001, the terrorist leader noted that there had been a 16 percent drop in U.S. equities, and offered the following calculations: "The capital in circulation in this market amounts to $4 trillion. If we multiply 16 percent by $4 trillion to find out the losses that their shares suffered, we find that it is $640 billion. This is their loss in shares, and credit goes to God Almighty. This number is equivalent to the budget of Sudan, for instance, for 640 years."

From the perspective of five years, bin Laden's remarks are notable for their fatuousness as well as their malevolence. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which closed at 9,605 on September 10, 2001, closed above that level less than two months later, on November 9. The Nasdaq Composite, which closed at 1,695 the day before the attacks, took just one month to recover, closing at 1,701 on October 11. Similarly, the Standard & Poor's 500, which closed at 1,092 on September 10, ended at 1,097 a month later. True, the market fell back in 2002, but this was followed by a steady recovery in 2003. As of mid-2006, the Dow was above 11,000, the Nasdaq was above 2,000, and the S&P 500 was over 1,200. Moreover, all these indices have long been hovering comfortably above their pre-9/11 levels. Meanwhile, the economy continues to grow, and unemployment remains low.

Strong Horse vs. Weak Horse

In short, the economic damage done on September 11 was more transient than might have seemed possible in the days after the attacks. The overriding theme, in both the stock market and the economy overall, has been resilience.

Consider, by contrast, the evident economic circumstances of Al Qaeda. In an audio tape released last April, bin Laden angrily voiced a familiar litany of terrorist threats. What was more interesting about the tape, however, is that it also contained what Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria called "a parochial appeal for foreign aid, to help those Qaeda supporters in Waziristan who have been rendered homeless by Pakistani Army attacks." Osama, that is, was looking for handouts to help his organization build some mud huts. In more recent communications, the mass murderer has mourned the death of his Iraq-based affiliate Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the latest in an ongoing series of Al Qaeda operatives eliminated from the field by the United States and its allies.

Five years ago, Al Qaeda had free rein in Afghanistan, operating terrorist camps and strongly influencing the Taliban government. Today, the organization is a cave-based phantom, a shadow of its former self. Undeniably, Al Qaeda remains dangerous, and it remains possible that the group will pull off some substantial attack against the U.S. as a follow-up to 9/11. There have been, of course, attacks in England, Spain, Indonesia and elsewhere in the past five years, conducted by Al Qaeda or by groups it has inspired. But in the sweep of five years, the most salient feature of the movement led by bin Laden is its weakness. This is bad news for someone who once notoriously proclaimed that people will prefer a strong horse over a weak one.

A powerful sign of American resilience is that there remains a deep and broad consensus among the public that Al Qaeda must be hunted to the ends of the earth and destroyed. This fact has been obscured to some degree by the political debates underway on issues ranging from National Security Agency wiretapping, to how prisoners should be treated at Guantanamo Bay, to the justification and prospects for the Iraq War. Yet despite all this contentiousness, there is a bedrock agreement about confronting the people behind 9/11. Nobody of any significance argues for negotiating a peace with Al Qaeda, nor does anyone worth listening to claim that the terrorist group has anything of value to offer the world. There are few calls for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. In the debate over Iraq, both proponents and opponents of the war argue that their respective positions are more suitable for the cause of defeating Al Qaeda.

Of course, there remains on the negative side of the balance sheet in the War on Terror the fact that bin Laden is evidently still alive, as is his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. Yet the propaganda of Al Qaeda notwithstanding, one doubts that its leaders feel triumphant on the fifth anniversary of the barbaric attacks they instigated. Bin Laden's words are shrugged off, his reach is limited, and the organization he built is in disarray. He may well be a man living his own nightmare.

Meanwhile, there is plenty to see and do in lower Manhattan. New buildings are going up. The New York Stock Exchange continues to be a thriving place of business and a tourist attraction, famous for it bustle of traders and the ringing of the opening bell. And when bin Laden is killed or captured, that will be just one more reason for stocks to rise. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Osama. It tolls for you.

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KENNETH SILBER is a writer and editor who focuses on science, technology and economics. With Research columnist Alexei Bayer, he is a co-author of a chapter in the book Condensed Knowledge (HarperCollins).