Yeah, I know death by typhoid fever is no picnic. But I would rather have seen Osama bin Laden arrested and brought to the U.S. for a fair trial and a fine hanging. Justice would have been for him to face the justice system for his war crimes, or to die in an attack. To let nature take its course isn’t justice. If he’s dead of natural causes, he escaped justice.
Is his alleged death a failure of the Bush administration? I don’t agree with those who equate victory over terrorism with whether or not bin Laden is dead or captured. The fact is that he was chased into seclusion and rendered strategically irrelevant. There has not been one successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil by his followers. Even if he’s dead in a cave somewhere — we won.
Still, I would have liked to see that bastard paraded down Broadway in chains. Who wouldn’t?
Likewise, the Internet is buzzing about President Clinton’s tart responses to FOX News reporter Chris Wallace’s questions about why Clinton didn’t do more to capture Bin Laden after the original World Trade Center attack. I agree with Clinton, to a degree. The right wing holds Clinton to a higher standard than they seem to hold President Bush, who also did nothing to arrest bin Laden during the first nine months of his administration.
But the sad fact is that bin Laden studied the behavior of the United States for the past fifty years and concluded that the United States didn’t have the stomach to maintain a long-term attack on Islamofascism that woduld be needed to destroy his movement.
Since the end of World War II, our official policy hasn’t been to defeat our enemies, but contain them and to maintain a status quo. We didn’t defeat North Korea or North Vietnam. We just sat back, occasionally tossed some soldier’s lives at a problem, then declared victory and walked away, mission accomplished or not.
President Carter was paralyzed by the hostage crisis. President Reagan did nothing to retaliate against Iran after the hostages were freed. The first President Bush rolled all over the Iraqi military, then declared victory and left with Sadaam still in power. President Clinton let Somali Warlords kick our asses.
Our response for decades has been to lob a few smart bombs and declare justice has been done.
President Bush seems to want to break that mold, and there’s a sizeable portion of the American people who absolutely hate his guts because of it. An argument can be made that he invaded the wrong country (although we need never apologize for bringing down Sadaam), but I believe we could have gone after Iran or Syria and Bush’s harshest critics would instead be claiming that Bush should have gone after Iraq because of all those unaccounted for weapons of mass destruction.
So, I’d have to conclude that Osama bin Laden had America pretty well figured out.
[tags]Osama bin Laden death,typhoid,Clinton,Bush[/tags]
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Bill,
When are folks like you going to get off the “haven’t been hit on American soil again” as a benchmark when it comes to terrorism?
How is it a barometer of success when we have only been hit TWICE by foreign terrorists on American soil?
(WTC in 1993 and then the attacks in 2001).
Yes, it is wonderful the continental US has been free of such attacks, but world wide the acts of terrorism have went up dramatically.
Hell, our country can’t even decipher that “terrorism” is a tactic and in some ways we have let the those who use terror to roll us like a passed out wino. (Locking away an American citizen without counsel or allowing him to see transcripts of his own interrogations by deeming them “secret”, creating an unrealistic frightened populace and allowing our government to get away with so many restrictive measures and so on).
Really, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of James Fallows’ article “Declaring Victory” in the new Atlantic magazine, and then spoon out some money for his book, “Blind into Baghdad”.
Al Qaeda hasn’t needed to attack America again. American politicians have been happily falling all over themselves eroding the Constitution and eroding the military.
It is like one of those Tom & Jerry cartoons where Jerry, the mouse, starts a fight between Tom, the dog, and himself. During the scrum, Jerry slips out an just watches the other two go at it, then walks off.
Mahkno,
What you describe is in the article “Declaring Victory” by Fallows and he further illustrates from those he has talked to, many aspects of the US reaction to 9/11 was predicted and expected by bin Laden.
It’s a really good article.
Leave Gomer alone. He’s having a bad year.
Eh?
Why should Al Qaeda and like-minded groups take the time & trouble to plot an attack on America when we’ve provided a ready supply of U.S. soldiers and American contractors to blow up in Iraq & Afghanistan? Hell, despite their official propaganda decrying us as occupiers, the leaders of these groups are probably secretly hoping that we stay. Our tactics put their recruiting and financing efforts into overdrive!
I suppose I’m just spouting propaganda put out by those pinko liberals in the 16 national security agencies responsible for the recent National Intelligence Assessment. Damn CIA hippies! Let’s waterboard ‘em!