..or at least looking at it in the wrong direction. Instead of looking at what has been done and asking "are they relevent," look at what tehy should have and would have done, if they had not been infiltrated and subverted by the shadow. Suan and Moirane had a plan and it was working. They were moving subtly and had just about everything in position when the Black Ajah rose up and shattered their plans, and the Tower. Everything that happened after that was not the WT at work but BA manipulations.

There is a parallel to the Children of the light as well, though it is not explored as deeply in the books. It was not an accident that both the organizations that *should* have been major forces for the light were made inefectual at the same time.