It's important to recall how small of an organization al-Qaeda was in 2001.

By 2001, al Qaeda still had no formal branches or franchises. Its membership included a core of just under 200 people, a 122-person martyrdom brigade, and several dozen foot soldiers recruited from the 700 or so graduates of its training camps.

Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush vowed to “starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest.”
So how did that work out?

Seventeen years later, Al Qaeda may be stronger than ever. Far from vanquishing the extremist group and its associated “franchises,” critics say, U.S. policies in the Mideast appear to have encouraged its spread.
...The group has amassed the largest fighting force in its existence. Estimates say it may have more than 20,000 militants in Syria and Yemen alone. It boasts affiliates across North Africa, the Levant and parts of Asia, and it remains strong around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The GWOT is catastrophic failure on a Napoleon-invading-Russia level.
How did this happen? Well, part of the blame is incompetence (i.e. using a sledgehammer-to-swat-flies strategy). Part of the blame is sending a military to crush an "ism". Part of the blame involves other reasons, but a major reason is because in at least two cases we became de facto allies of al-Qaeda.

For more than two years, a Saudi-led alliance - backed by US logistical and weapons support - claimed it crushed al-Qaeda's ability to carry out attacks from Yemen.

However, an investigation by The Associated Press found the coalition has been paying some al-Qaeda commanders to leave key cities and towns while letting others retreat with weapons, equipment, and wads of looted cash.

Hundreds of al-Qaeda members were recruited to join the coalition as soldiers, the report said.

Key figures in the deal-making said the United States was aware of the arrangements and held off on drone attacks against the armed group, which was created by Osama bin Laden in 1988.

Remember that this is the same group that attacked the U.S.S. Cole.

And in that fight, al-Qaeda fighters are effectively on the same side as the Saudi-led coalition and, by extension, the US.

"Elements of the US military are clearly aware that much of what the US is doing in Yemen is aiding AQAP and there is much angst about that," said Michael Horton, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation.

"However, supporting the UAE and Saudi Arabia against what the US views as Iranian expansionism takes priority over battling AQAP and even stabilising Yemen," Horton said.
...Within this complicated conflict, al-Qaeda says its numbers - which US officials have estimated at 6,000 to 8,000 members - are rising.

The coalition and al-Qaeda militants have been described by the International Crisis Group as having a “tacit alliance” in Yemen, and we are in alliance with the coalition.

AQAP is benefiting from the tremendous amount of light and heavy weaponry that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are sending to Yemen to arm the militias - everything from assault rifles to anti-tank guided missiles.

According to the International Crisis Group, AQAP “has acquired a wide range of new weaponry, including heavy weapons from Yemeni military camps or acquired indirectly from the Saudi-led coalition”.

In other words, this is a serious military force in Yemen that sees us as a sworn enemy and we are helping it.
But that's nothing compared to al-Qaeda in Syria.
To put this into perspective, consider our new stated strategy in Syria.

The Trump administration has opened a new chapter in American involvement in Syria, vowing to remain until the civil war’s conclusion in a bid to halt Iran’s expansion across the Middle East.

So chasing Iran out of Syria is our main purpose there. Now contrast that statement with this news.

An Israeli news site reported on Monday that an enigmatic Sunni militia linked to al-Qaeda called Jaish ul-Adl (Army of Justice) recently attacked a patrol of the Iran Revolutionary Guards, composed of Iranian soldiers and local volunteers. They took 14 soldiers into captivity, with plans to summarily execute them.

Now if al-Qaeda was our enemy, then we would share a common ally. Thus chasing Iran out of Syria would not be tops on our agenda.
But that's not the case. Instead we are working with al-Qaeda in Syria because we share a common enemy with al-Qaeda.

Currently, the Syrian government and its allies have been preparing to begin a military offensive against the last rebel-held province in the country, a province that is openly dominated by Al Qaeda-linked groups — namely Al-Nusra Front, now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Despite the fact that Al Qaeda’s presence in the area is well known, top U.S. government officials and even U.S. President Donald Trump have recently urged Syria to refrain from “recklessly” attacking the Idlib province, claiming that militants in the province are “not terrorists, but people fighting a civil war against a brutal dictator.”
Not only that, but the U.S. government has now openly made plans to attack the Syrian government if Al Qaeda affiliates in Idlib, including the controversial White Helmets group, make accusations against the Syrian government regarding the use of chemical weapons. Recent statements from U.S. officials show that the Trump administration is set to take Al Qaeda affiliates at their word and lay blame for any use of chemical weapons on the Syrian government, despite the fact that the U.S. government has admitted in the past that these very “rebel” groups possess chemical weapons themselves.

Furthermore, last July, Brett McGurk – the U.S. government’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (Daesh, ISIS) – called Syria’s Idlib province “the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11, tied directly to Ayman al-Zawahiri [current leader of Al Qaeda].” He then immediately added that the Al Qaeda presence in Idlib was a “huge problem” and had been so “for some time.”

Since McGurk’s warning, Al Qaeda’s presence in Idlib has only grown, making recent comments from U.S. officials regarding Idlib’s “rebels” a clear example of the U.S. government seeking to defend the world’s current “largest Al Qaeda safe haven” despite continuing to blame the terror group for the September 11 attacks.

Can you even imagine George Dubya Bush saying on September 12, 2001, that we must defend al-Qaeda because they are enemies of Iran?
He would have been lynched, and rightly so.

U.S. cooperation with Al Qaeda in Syria is hardly new. Back in 2016, an Al-Nusra Front commander told German newspaper Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger that, when the Al Qaeda-linked group was “besieged” by Syrian and Russian military forces, “we had officers from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and America here, …experts in the use of satellites, rockets, reconnaissance and thermal security cameras” that helped prevent the group’s defeat. When asked specifically whether U.S. officers were present, the Al Nusra Front commander stated that “the Americans are on our side.”

If that was true, then that is treason.
But when has al-Qaeda even been mentioned in the news recently?

Then, a year later, the U.S. again aided Al Nusra by essentially removing the group from Washington’s terror watchlist, despite the fact that it is Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch. The removal took place after Al Nusra Front changed its name to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), following which the U.S. declined to add the group’s updated name to the terror watchlist. MintPress News previously noted that the U.S.’ reluctance in adding the group to the watchlist was likely related to the fact that some of the smaller rebel groups that joined Al Nusra Front under the HTS banner had previously been armed and funded by the U.S. government.

Even the U.S. State Department admitted at the time that the name change was likely “an al-Qaeda play to bring as much of the Syrian opposition under its operational control as possible” — which is exactly what took place as Al Qaeda consolidated control over the vast majority of the last “rebel” stronghold in Syria, the Idlib province.

So al Nusra is no longer a terrorist group because they rebranded themselves.
Maybe bin Laden made a mistake by not hiring a New York PR firm.

It makes me wonder, "Why does no one care about this?"