Twenty years after the Sept. 11 attack a question remains if the mission in Afghanistan achieved its objective of eradicating terrorism. Allen Weiner, an international legal scholar and senior lecturer at Stanford University, said that the initial goal to destroy al-Qaeda’s base in Afghanistan was largely achieved. “Al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan were destroyed, many of its leaders were killed and captured (although some, including Osama bin Laden, managed to escape at least initially), and its ability to plan, finance, and execute major global terrorist operations was severely diminished,” Wiener said in an interview published on the University website. However, the initial success did not last, Wiener said, “although al-Qaeda never resumed significant operations in Afghanistan, the organization metastasized, and lethal variants of the organization arose in” other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere. Also, other terrorist groups such as ISIS emerged, he added. Al-Qaeda, designated as a terrorist …