What was the real target of 9/11?
The 9/11 conspiracy theorists are predictably unanimous in saying that it was a pretext for the War on Terror. It is true that 9/11 enabled the invasion of Afghanistan to be a NATO operation rather than solely US, but the neocon US administration could have just ordered it and the US would have gone in alone. Just two years later for the Iraq invasion 9/11 was impotent and fake weapons of mass destruction had to be concocted. The Libya, Syria and Yemen wars derived no plausible justification from 9/11.
Al Qaeda had nothing to gain by it, though that wouldn’t have stopped them, and the hijackers probably did believe that they were working for al Qaeda.
Actually the most lasting legacy of 9/11 is the displacement of rationality by conspiracy theory, including the mainstream conspiracy theory. The Saudi hierarchy (oil money) funded and enabled it and the neocon US administration (oil money) made sure it succeeded. It was the start of the new millennium and the most important task humanity faced was achieving global unity to eliminate CO2 emissions to stop global warming; an economic disaster scenario for the aforementioned perpetrators. Was 9/11 actually an attack upon climate science, by attacking science and rationality themselves? It may as well have been.