For many, today was a day of soul searching. A day when many asked "I'm happy that we got Bin Laden, but should I feel happy over the fact that someone died?"
For me, the short answer is yes. I see absolutely nothing wrong with rejoicing over Bin Laden's death.
This guy took advantage of the Cold War in the eighties and enlisted the United States as an ally in driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. He then stuck around and made the country a haven and training ground for Islamic extremists.
When the United States established a base in his home country of Saudi Arabia, he then started to launch terrorist plots against the Western world that increased in intensity culminating in the twin towers coming down in 2001.
We had him cornered in Tora Bora but he slipped over the border to Pakistan. We then shifted our mission in Afghanistan to the naive goal of 'nation building' which consisted of paying bribes to Warlords who would re emerge later as 'Taliban' and then re morph into allies again when they wanted our money. We also worked on building girls schools and teaching woman's lib to herdsmen. Policies I'm sure were very effective in a society that uses gang rape on innocent women to punish their male relatives for transgressions against a tribe's honor.
We then went into Iraq largely because by that time, the United States had become a national security state where even the potential threat of attack was enough to mobilize the whole military to seize control of a country. When that inevitably became a three way civil war we again switched our priorities to 'nation building' which consisted of building electric and water plants that the very people we were building them for would then blow up.
After we finally got Saddam, we decided to double down on Afghanistan and start a 'partnership' with the Pakistani government. This partnership consisted mainly of us giving a military dictatorship billions of dollars a year for the privilege of using our own military to kill tribesmen that were also enemies of the military dictatorship. All the while, they were apparently hiding Bin-Laden in the biggest, most conspicuous house of a military town.
So trillions of dollars and several thousand (U.S) casualties later, he's dead and I'm at least glad we got something for our money. Hopefully this will all prove what a waste it is to 'nation build' in a land where people still literally identify with tribes and most of the population is illiterate.
We immediately need to pull back our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan into permanent military basis where we can focus on quick strike missions to kill people that pop up and threaten the United State. That is what a military is for.
Leave the nation building to the people that live there and I think that everyone would be happier. As Alexis de Tocqueville once said "People get the government they deserve."
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