"bin Laden changed us radically, and for the worse"

[Keith Bee]

Tom Engelhardt writes:

As everybody not blind, deaf, and dumb knows by now, Osama bin Laden has been eliminated. Literally. By Navy Seals. Or as one of a crowd of revelers who appeared in front of the White House Sunday night put it on an impromptu sign riffing on The Wizard of Oz: “Ding, Dong, Bin Laden Is Dead.”

Unfortunately, in every way that matters for Americans, it’s an illusion that Osama bin Laden is dead. In every way that matters, he will fight on, barring a major Obama administration policy shift in Afghanistan, and it’s we who will ensure that he remains on the battlefield that George W. Bush’s administration once so grandiosely labeled the Global War on Terror.

Admittedly, the Arab world had largely left bin Laden in the dust even before he took that bullet to the head. There, the focus was on the Arab Spring, the massive, ongoing, largely nonviolent protests that have shaken the region and its autocrats to their roots. In that part of the world, his death is, as Tony Karon of Time Magazine has written, “little more than a historical footnote,” and his dreams are now essentially meaningless.

Consider it an insult to irony, but the world bin Laden really changed forever wasn’t in the Greater Middle East. It was here. Cheer his death, bury him at sea, don’t release any photos, and he’ll still carry on as a ghost as long as Washington continues to fight its deadly, disastrous wars in his old neighborhood.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175388/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_osama_dead_and_alive/#more

I wish the Hell I could disagree with him, but I can't. And I don't think you can, either.

[villager]

1. that's the tragedy -- most of his strategy paid off, in terms of corroding the USA

...from within. He just set the process in motion, and we keep it going. In bipartisan fashion.

[Keith Bee]

2. Plus the wars which helped wreck our economy

And let's not forget the Constitutional violations.

[Keith Bee]

3. S.I.F.

:evilfrown: