Base-Less

"Not even another 9/11-scale terrorist attack would succeed in launching al-Qaeda's revolution. The years since 9/11 have seen events in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan escalating Muslim hostility toward Israel, the U.S. and those Arab regimes deemed too willing to do Washington's bidding. But even so, al-Qaeda remains a marginal factor. Bin Laden may have imagined that 9/11 would anoint him the head of a resurgent caliphate in the making, but instead it has reduced him and his movement to a life of duck-and-cover in Pakistan's wild frontier—and a political address otherwise known as oblivion."

Tony Karon in Time declares Al-Qaeda to be a failed movement.