It Still Wasn’t Worth It, and Is More War Coming?
By Anthony Gregory • Sunday May 1, 2011 9:01 PM PDT • 23 Comments
The U.S. has finally killed Osama bin Laden, the press and the administration report. Many will say this vindicates the war on terrorism, but it doesn’t.
The Wall Street Journal says, “The development capped a manhunt of more than a decade for the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that left 3,000 people dead and dramatically altered U.S. foreign policy and the nation’s sense of security.”
“Manhunt”? In fact, the U.S. response to 9/11 has been a minor revolution in American statecraft toward the principles of aggressive war, nationalism and centralized executive power. Hundreds of thousands have died. Trillions have been spent. Key civil liberties have been undermined. And will the war now end? All of it? What domestic impositions and foreign occupations will remain?
Obama is absolutely right about the horrific loss that visited so many people on 9/11, including the unseen communities, families and loved ones touched by the tragedy, and we shouldn’t forget this. But even more neglected are the many who have been devastated by the U.S. government in its wars, before and after 9/11. Al-Qaeda, as Obama notes, has killed scores of Muslims throughout the world. This makes bin Laden a mass murderer of Muslims, the president correctly says. What of the scores of thousands of Muslims killed by the U.S.? What does that make our government?
Notably, Obama describes the operation that killed Osama as involving some degree of precision – at least compared to the drone attacks and all out wars that typify U.S. foreign policy, although the president didn’t say this. Had a very limited operation been all the U.S. was doing for ten years — if this was indeed something resembling a “manhunt” — there would be much less to protest, as well as less of a budget problem.
Now that Osama’s dead, if Obama does bring the troops home and end the ramping up of the national security state at home, he will deserve some credit, although that still doesn’t legitimize everything that’s happened since 9/11 – including, for example, the war with Libya, as divorced from the goal of killing bin Laden as was Bush’s adventure in Iraq. But Obama says the task of defending U.S. security is “not complete.” That would mean more war, I fear. Indeed, Senate hawks are pushing for a war in Syria, and it is unclear that Osama’s death will deter the War Party from calling for more military interventions, all under this rubric of the war on terror. But if the war on terror doesn’t end now that the main villain implicated in 9/11 is dead, does that not bring into question the war on terror’s rationale? For how can it be that this war has been worth it for killing Osama, yet the war must continue now that he’s dead? What in fact will mean the end of the war on terrorism?
Tags: Civil Liberties, Constitution, Imperialism, Iraq, Middle East, Peace, Politics, Power, Presidential Power, The State, War 
The manhunt didn’t begin in 2001. Osama bin Laden was also blamed for the 1993 World Trade Center bomb, as well as the 1998 attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Remember when Clinton “almost” got him with a cruise missile?
Jonathan M. F. Catalán | May 1, 2011 | Reply
The news did nothing for me since I was pretty sure he was already dead.
Frank | May 1, 2011 | Reply
Good point, Jonathan. Although for a few months after 9/11, they seemed to take the manhunt a bit more seriously.
Anthony Gregory | May 1, 2011 | Reply
Whoever wrote this does not understand a goddamn thang!!!!
Keith Trawick | May 1, 2011 | Reply
http://antiwar.com/casualties/
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feQGyc9aYz0&playnext=1&list=PLCBD1D41320694DFF
LC | May 1, 2011 | Reply
The writer equates the death of Bin Laden to the death of terrorism? The writer believes that Americans will be safe because one man is dead? Does the writer not understand that this war is and always has been much bigger then that? The death of Bin Laden will boost our morale while crushing theirs but it will not end the war nor should it. Libya has nothing to do with terrorism, it is our country and NATO helping citizens overthrow a dictator at their request (unlike Iraq, which was complete folly). The war in Afghanistan will continue because his supporters are still there and they cannot be allowed to take over the government of a Nation and legitimize themselves. It seems to me you are against all war whether justified or not. Sometimes war is necessary. It’s ugly, it’s horrific, and it’s not the only option all the time. But what would you have us do? Stand there and take it? Give us a better option, with actual reasons.
Ned Carter | May 2, 2011 | Reply
I should say, I agree with the writer about eroding civil liberties, and the need to reverse that course. It is an abomination that we should surrender liberties for the sake of “feeling” safer.
Ned Carter | May 2, 2011 | Reply
Please read this, I agree, there are questions that remain.
http://thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/asia-mainmenu-33/7325-obama-says-us-killed-osama-but-questions-remain
KS H | May 2, 2011 | Reply
Everyone that is keeping score doesn’t realize that Bin Laden has really won. Part of his terrorism goal was to draw the United States into aggression that would result in very high costs (politically, financially, and human losses.)
So Bin Laden may be dead, but he certainly accomplished much of what he was hoping to do. All because we tried to use a jackhammer rather than a scalpel when pursuing the “war on terror.” In the mean time, we have been self-destructing the same free society we have sought to protect from terrorism.
Lance | May 2, 2011 | Reply
Bin Laden is dead. Are we now going to get the truth on 9/11? Like any roach another more powerful one will replace him.
Bradley A Harris | May 2, 2011 | Reply
“What in fact will mean the end of the war on terrorism?”
Nothing.
What it all means? For you Americans? It means Hollywood. You love your Hollywood. You cannot get over it. And those who are conducting this atrocity know it too well to let it go. They are feeding you your Americanness. Just look at how America from top to bottom is reporting this farce. A 12 year old can muster more imagination that that.
“Osama Bin Ladin was in a military compound of America’s greatest ally in the war on terror for four years, and America had to send in a small company of overdosed with cheers super “trained” American grunts to fetch him and deposit him into the “unknown” sea.”
Pains me to think of a people that can take that and still say “Why?”.
Name (required) | May 2, 2011 | Reply
“War on terror”?
That’s obviously a typo — surely you meant “War OF terror’?
Hunter | May 2, 2011 | Reply
After more than a TRILLION dollars expended on these “wars” against peoples already poor and oppressed, leaving death and destruction for millions, Half Balack Obummer has the audacity to suggest that the crimes of bin Laden were horrible? Yes, but on a much smaller scale and certainly at a far lesser expense. What caused bin Ladens conduct? Obviously, it was precipitated by US foreign policy which supported his militarism and terrorism in Afghanistan. It is Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein, you create the monster then spend your life and resources tracking him. All of this murder and mayhem was and is the result of US foreign policy and its insatiable thirst for oil and power. The end is near, however, as the fiat dollar becomes ever weaker as a result of our insane spending and ever increasing military budget.
citizen 1 | May 3, 2011 | Reply
Reading this post and some of the commentary reminds me of a snippet from a Dylan tune – “He”s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace.”
I see lots of decrying of blodshed by you peacemakers. I find it interesting that some of you talk of “Hebrew imperialists” and hanging someone high. That’s some Freudian slip.
God only knows what peaceful deed you might inflict on me if we were neighbors. I’d be willing to bet if I crossed you in some way you’d poisin my dogs and cats or firebomb me and my wife.
You guys aren’t fooling me. You’re every bit as bloodthirsty as those you write about.
Phil Dillon | May 3, 2011 | Reply
Well said.
If we keep poking at a hornet’s nest we’re bound to get stung.
We originally went into Afghanistan to “get” those responsible for the 9/11 attacks; with Osama bin Laden dead it seems we’ve finally accomplished that mission. It’s high time we get out of that hornet’s nest. If we don’t leave now we may never be presented with such a face-saving opportunity again.
Sancho Liberman | May 3, 2011 | Reply
All those people who are now going about cheering bin Laden’s death and condemning him for the September 11 attacks should remember that in the 1990s bin Laden was the biggest ally of the United States government. Billy Klintoon’s administration was supporting Islamic jihadists in Bosnia and Kosovo who were murdering Serb civilians, including women and children, portraying the Serbs as “evil aggressors” and accusing them of “genocide” and vindicating Bosnian Muslim and Albanian murderers, declaring them to be heroic “freedom fighters”. But when the US itself was attacked by its former ally, the politically correct hacks immediately began denouncing “Islamofascism,” declaring all Muslims to be enemies of “freedom and democracy.” Look how many dead Iraqis and Afghans were sacrificed in revenge of the action of bin Laden, America’s former ally. Before that the US was raining death on the heads of the Serbs for daring to defy them and to stand up for their own country and culture. The United States is the greatest friend of terrorists worldwide! Obama’s bombing escapade in Libya is yet another proof of that.
Arthur Rambler | May 3, 2011 | Reply
Phil Dillon, you are a politically correct totalitarian warmongering hack. These lefty loons who pretend to be “champions of peace” are really bloodthirsty warmongering hounds who use Soviet and Stalinist tactics to smear and demonize anybody who doesn’t toe the party line. They condemn George Bush for his war in Iraq, but they fail to mention that Clinton and Obama are just as big warmongers and murderers as Bush was with their dirty escapades in Yugoslavia and Libya and the continuation of Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It all starts with morons at home like Jesse Jerkson and Al Sharkman preaching hatred for white people. Then they make the next step and preach hatred for “enemies” abroad, bombing them with depleted uranium. Your evil power will be destroyed, just like the Soviet Union and its Communist Party got busted.
Arthur Rambler | May 3, 2011 | Reply
Al Quaeda has already won. They have convinced the USA that going into debts of possibly 20 trillion dollars for the sake of some ephemeral goal was worth it. When the chips fall, and bankruptcy comes, will it still be worth it? American interventions around the world have led to more deaths and displacements of civilians than any other event in the last 25 years. What a tremendous example of democracy to show to the rest of the the world.
JDonald | May 3, 2011 | Reply
Arthur Rambler
Thanks for the kind words. They make my original point quite elegantly.
Phil Dillon | May 4, 2011 | Reply