In fairness, it’s less controversial and more that the line is outright offensive. At the time, people were being murdered by acts of terrorismin in the troubles, so to wontonly say that those attacks are effective and will get results was extremely insensitive. It’s sort of like saying 9/11 was an effective use of terrorism shortly after it happened, or the 2015 Paris attacks.

I mean I get that it is a pretty touchy subject, but honestly at the end of the day the 9/11 attacks were stunningly effective at doing exactly what Bin Laden wanted us to do, get involved in a long drawn out war that undermined the stability of the US and accelerated its collapse.

The asshole literally wrote this all out in a letter and I am glad it made the rounds recently because we took the bait hook line and sinker. If as a society stories had trained us to think of terrorism not as some existential evil that comes from satan but rather a brutal political/military strategy enacted to accomplish certain logical political aims we might have been more equipped to deal with a 9/11 response more rationally. Specifically maybe we wouldn’t have just signed off on US warhawks throwing Iraq into the mix for absolutely no good reason than imperialism (Bin Laden must have been whooping and hollering happy when he heard the US decided to get itself stuck in TWO endless wars because of his actions).