The Russians have a proverb, “God hurries not, but misses not.” In the case of Osama bin Laden, we may have been in a hurry, but still had to wait ten long years since the day he crushed and incinerated thousands on our soil.
It’s hard to know what the condign punishment is for such a savage act of mass murder. Getting shot in the head by U.S. forces who descend on your compound in an operation of ruthless efficiency and then jettison your corpse into the sea has to be close to the mark, though. As Pres. Barack Obama said, simply and unassailably, “Justice has been done.”
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For all his medieval obscurantism, bin Laden represented a quite contemporary anti-Americanism. He turned up the intensity of critiques of America as a predatory empire popular in precincts of the Left. “It wants to occupy our countries,” bin Laden said when he first declared war on us, “steal our resources, impose agents on us to rule us, and then wants us to agree to all this.” He continued, “Wherever we look, we find the U.S. as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world.”
Although without staying power. He scorned us for exiting Somalia in the 1990s after “minor battles”: “You left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat, and your dead with you.” He saw us as both evil and weak, and proved wrong on both counts.
The raid against his compound had all the hallmarks of an American operation. Even when pursuing our most infamous enemy, we took every care to know we were attacking the right house containing the right people. For us, innocent life means something. Bin Laden’s comrades were reportedly cowards to the end, using a woman as a human shield.
If bin Laden truly believed we’d curl up in a fetal position after September 11, or we’d ever stop hunting him, he profoundly misjudged our national character. Our manhunt for him was relentless and meticulous, building rather than winding down over the years, as we slowly put together the pieces to track down his courier and then him.
The effort stretched across two administrations, with both George W. Bush and Obama making contributions. The much-reviled interrogation program at Guantanamo Bay turned up crucial information, and to his credit, Obama ordered a risky, honest-to-goodness raid of bin Laden’s compound for the sake of definitiveness.
Its success was met with spontaneous celebrations recalling the sense of unity we briefly had after 9/11. President Bush eventually regretted saying he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive.” In the relief and joy at the terror mastermind’s dispatch, though, it seemed Bush had gotten American sentiment about right. There’s enough Jacksonianism left in this country that we can relish some old-fashioned score-settling. As one jubilant handmade sign said outside the White House, “Osama bin gotten.”
As bin Laden had eluded us through the years, we heard less about him from the upper reaches of the U.S. government and more talk of how he was a merely symbolic figure. But symbols matter, especially when the symbol is someone to whom countless terrorists have pledged their loyalty. When the Communists had custody of the Romanovs after the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin favored killing them all lest they become “living banners.” Bin Laden constituted the foremost “living banner” of the jihadist war against America.
We’ll learn more about what the Pakistanis knew in coming days, but it’s suggestive that bin Laden’s conspicuously secure, $1 million compound was so close to a prestigious Pakistani military academy and that we hit it without a heads up to the Pakistan government. If we’ll go after bin Laden without Pakistan’s permission, why not the Quetta headquarters of the Taliban that is fighting an active war against us across the border in Afghanistan?
A superpower should be stalwart with its friends and dangerous to its enemies. We have failed both ends of that test recently. For now, at least, we’ve again proven ourself dangerous to our enemy, indeed.
Hard to say about the Pakistanis. They have arrested and handed over high-profile al Qaeda members in the past, but it is hard to conclude they were unaware of OBL's compound.
And I don't think I've been hearing a lot of, "We didn't know! Honestly!" Perhaps they realize how incredible that would sound.
It will probably be years before we know the details.
Okay...Zawahiri, is it? You're following a tough act that ended very badly. Pick a good hiding spot and get rid of your cell phone.
And now he sleeps with the fishes.
Did anyone else notice the sleep number bed compressor on floor of his bloody bedroom? I wonder what his sleep number was. Whatever it was it came up two nights ago. Did he hear about the comforts of the bed listening to Rush? What’s your sleep number, Oslumber Bed Laden?
I am glad to see OBL gone, but unfortunately he succeeded all too well in fundamentally changing America for the worse. Bush was on track to be a middling, tax-cutting placekeeper but was thrust into a position to abandon bedrock American principles of rule of law and our prohibition on torture. Hopefully, with OBL gone, Obama can begin restoring America to moral sanity.
Well, Rich, nice to know you're not politicizing this:
-- "Although without staying power. He scorned us for exiting Somalia in the 1990s after “minor battles”" --
Funny how you left out the fact that bin Laden had made clear that the first event as a sign of American weakness was Reagan pulling out of Beirut after the 1983 barracks bombing.
So Fox has decided that "enhanced interrogation techniques" led ineluctably to bin Laden's demise.
Too bad Hannity, hard as he tried, couldn't get Tommy Franks to say so.
Here's what we know so far via The New York Times:
"It wasn’t until after 2002, when the agency began rounding up Qaeda operatives — and subjecting them to hours of brutal interrogation sessions in secret overseas prisons — that they finally began filling in the gaps about the foot soldiers, couriers and money men Bin Laden relied on.
"Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure."
But we got nowhere until 2005, when "Operation Cannonball, a bureaucratic reshuffling that placed more C.I.A. case officers on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan," was commenced.
The Times continues:
"With more agents in the field, the C.I.A. finally got the courier’s family name. With that, they turned to one of their greatest investigative tools — the National Security Agency began intercepting telephone calls and e-mail messages between the man’s family and anyone inside Pakistan. From there they got his full name."
In other words, all the enhanced interrogation techniques got us was, "there is a trusted courier."
It was agents on the ground that got us the courier's name, whence we tracked him down, and then bin Laden.
Now, having relentlessly and successfully hunted the world’s most ill-reputed terrorist over a ten-year period, and having almost flawlessly conducted the ultimate operation deep inside a sovereign nation without prior consent and acquiescence from that nation, the prestige of the United States has been significantly augmented. What other nation could conduct such an operation with success without immediate aid from other nations? While the Israelis and the British certainly have formidable spec-ops, their reach is, realistically, limited. Not only did this operation demonstrate the incredible power, reach, and persistence of the United States, it also showed that President Obama is not so averse to risk-taking. There should be no doubts: This mission was extremely risky. Indeed, this operation could very well have had a similar ending to Operation Eagle Claw (attempted hostage rescue in Iran), or to the Battle of Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down in the popular vernacular), yet President Obama was willing to risk the possibility of a similar outcome—which would have significantly damaged his presidency and the prestige of the United States—in order to avoid the uncertainty that would have resulted from a stand-off air-to-ground JDAM attack. I am confident that this is not lost on leaders around the world. While the president and I disagree on a great many issues, my respect for him has grown immensely in the wake of this operation. Despite what some detractors are saying—that any other president would have done the same thing, etc., etc.—I believe it took grit and courage to order the operation, particularly given the alternate endings that were possible, and he could have easily chosen the cleaner, yet less fruitful, option of a stand-off air-to-ground engagement.
Everything this Nation has done over the past few years (I'll include the last years under Bush) has weakened, if not our resolve, our policy toward terrorists.
The original Bush Doctrine was how to fight this evil, yet it has been eroded over time by politics and attrition to the point where we ourselves would no longer withstand that scrutiny.
We have adopted anew the old policy of accepting terrorism as a part of life. We are no longer seeking to eliminate it, but to prevent it's attacks and to lesson it's impact. Fort Hood was not terrorism? The Beltway Sniper? The boy who stole and flew a plane into a Tampa building? The man who flew a plane into an IRS building?
Even those terror attacks that have been thwarted have quickly been mostly forgotten and their perpetrators whisked off to wind through our legal system as opposed to military tribunals.
We are actually allowing a Mosque to be built on ground cleared due to 9-11? We really wanted to hold the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in NYC? Close Gitmo? Ban interrogation methods and prosecute those who obtain info like that which lead to the death of OBL?
Look no further than Libya. Gaddafi surrenders his nuclear program in 2003, now he stands in opposition to the US and international community.
I fear that the killing of OBL may not just provide a sense of closure and justice for the families who have lost a loved one somehow in this War on Terror, but may signal the closure of whatever vigilance and connection remained to 9-11 and global terrorists.
I give a huge Good on ya! To Obama for taking this opportunity when it presented. I fear though, that the lessons on strong American leadership being required in the world and the fact that it is truly an "us-v-them" fight we are engaged in, will not be learned from this and we will continue to compromise and endanger our Nation and her citizenry to attack.
MikeB, I guess we'll just have to console ourselves with the other dividends we derived from things like pouring water over the head of the 9/11 planner. For example, KSM gave up Mr. Suffat, who was al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons program director. Not too shabby, huh?
Friends, Do NOT get distracted by this. Great, our intelligence worked--after 10 years. And it will make Obama look likes he's a fighting man against terrorists.
Don't be deceived or fall asleep. It is necessary to pay attention to the headlines and the sidelines with this crew.
The sidelines is the National Labor Relations Board which is "striking" against Boeing. Let's bring this front and center.
Boeing wants to build a plant in South Carolina and bring manufacturing jobs to the state. They’ve spent billions of dollars to build the facilities and have hired 1,000 workers. But the NLRB filed a lawsuit last month to force Boeing back to Washington state, where workers would be represented by a union!!!
No surprise as According to Ben Sears, Labor Editor for the Communist Party USA‘s Political Affairs magazine, said organized labor will pull out all the stops for Barack Obama in 2012.
@Kevin Collins - You're as boring and tiresome today as you were yesterday. I take it you've received no new talking points from Daily Kos, Fire Dog Lake, DNC, et al?
@Smithers - If you honestly believe that Obama will "restore sanity" - whatever that means - I've got some beachfront property in Nebraska I'd like to sell you.
@MikeW - It's not just that Smithers is stuck on his delusion. He's stuck on a double standard. The one that says it's okay for Obama to do and expand upon what he denounced Bush for doing. I mean, according to the usual left-wing rhetoric we should've established a coalition, received international permission, acted with Pakistani permission, and surrounded the compound and waited until Bin Laden walked out one day. Had Bush launched this raid Code Pink and International ANSWER would be in the streets as shrill as ever.
For all: As Smithers and Kevin Collins illustrate, the American left is devoid of ideas. They are good at mimics, good at parroting what others tell them they should say. But as their posts illustrate, in a decade they've come up with nothing more than the same bellyaching we've heard since the Vietnam-era.
In oncology, we say a therapy is successful if the patient survives for 5 years.
Bin Laden survived 10 years after his magnum opus, and was finally awarded a quick, painless death which it seems to have taken 40 of Western Civilization's most formidable fighting men to deliver to him.
I think it likely he'll come to loom very large in death, too. The aftermath of his 9/11 operation has been enormous in scope, and arguably includes the Democrat electoral sweep in 2008 and all the damage following from that.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man tipped to succeed Osama bin Laden as head of al-Qaida after years as second-in-command, is often described as the terror network's ideologue-in-chief.
Obama needs to hunt down Ayman as ZAWAHIRI, Osama's second in command, capture or kill him and bring his body back for burial at sea same as they buried Osama bin LADEN!
Strike swiftly while the iron is hot for al Qadea's round the world are awaiting orders from ZAWAHIRI!
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