Did killiing Osama Bin Laden matter?

[Unorthodox]

Didn't actually bother to read the thing, just was in my news feed. 


http://www.centralillinoisproud.com/news/five-years-after-bin-laden-raid-did-it-work

[Rusty Edge]

I said "Of course, because he's an example."

Speaking practically rather than ideologically, it's the string of killings of #2 and #3 , the "COOs and CFOs", that make the difference in crippling the organization.

I did read the article, and have concluded they're underscoring the Obama narrative that ISIL is only the JV team. Al Queda is the long term threat.

I disagree. I still think that the long term threat is Middle East US interventionism, because that requires choosing sides, which inevitably leads to allies like The Shah of Iran and Sadam Hussien , which equate us with the bad guys, or undermining and overthrowing such dictators, paving the way for theocracy. It's a lose-lose.

[Buster's Uncle]

Rusty's first line is basically my view.  More later.

[DrazharLn]

I say "Of course", but for a different reason to Rusty.

I think it matters that the US killed Bin Laden, mostly because of how they did it: illegally.

Bin Laden's murder matters because it showed again that America doesn't care for the rule of law, either the principle of putting criminals to trial or the principle of international sovereignty.

I think the US should have captured him, put him to trial and then put him in prison. That would have been a good symbol, even if they had to step on the Pakistani's toes to do it. As it is America bought an expensive symbol that cheered up the folk back home, but appears to have done very little to make the Middle East or the world a safer place.

[Lorizael]

Jessica Chastain is certainly happy we killed Osama.

[DrazharLn]

Wiki says she really didn't like acting that part, so maybe she's not so keen

[Buster's Uncle]

The day that Thing Happened in New York, I said something to Mylochka about the Romans and conquest expeditions versus punitive expeditions - you didn't want to be on the receiving end of the latter, far less than the former, where they'd only kill soldiers in battle, and not rape/enslave the attractive women and burn the place to the ground killing everyone of no slave value.  Though the Romans were diplomatic simpletons by modern standards, they were geniuses of subtlety and patient consistency by the standards of their own, and the basic principals haven't changed that much today, if you take a wide view.

-There IS no morality in statecraft.  Alas, that is the fact of the matter.

For all that getting involved in the Graveyard of Empires was not a great idea, it was that or bomb the place flat, and astonishingly, our government chose the riskier option (that was also more merciful and more respectful of the Afghans, importantly) - our spooks organized the opposition and we propped them up since.  (That it's inevitably going to end badly is almost irrelevant - a strong gesture was made promptly.)  It was necessary to do SOMEthing about Afghanistan, considering.

-You will get no defense whatsoever of the Second Oil Crusade in Iraq from me, however.

It was necessary to do whatever could be done to get Bin Laden after what he did -which is grounds like no other to make the criminals pay, or no one will fear doing anything to you, forever- for all that I said something about they'd shot him in the face a day before it came out that a shot to the forehead killed him, I don't gather that he was captureable, not that I trust the sources.  I rarely talk this way about anything in foreign policy, but some things are get mean or get dead, and this was that.

---

That's really all I have to say on the subject, in short -and I don't feel that strongly about it or anything- but the very first thing I thought this morning when I saw the thread title is that it mattered to me, because it costs us chuft...

[Unorthodox]

-You will get no defense whatsoever of the Second Oil Crusade in Iraq from me, however.

I'll never understand the decisions of stopping the first time in Iraq, much less going back. 

[Buster's Uncle]

It was a complex diplomatic matter -many international agreements to build the coalition and all constraining- the mission was free Kuwait, and we'd freed Kuwait.  I suspect the Saudis who hired the US military as mercenaries didn't want us overthrowing a neighbor, even a very dangerous one, when doing the opposite was what they hired us for.

And yo - I do hold the First Oil Crusade necessary...

[Rusty Edge]

Iraq I-

a) Iraq invaded a fellow member state of the UN.
b) Kuwait was holding $60 billion in T-bill debt, significant back in the day.
c) Sadam was messing with the energy market.
d) Sadam was using chemical weapons against the Kurds.
The UN/coalition mandate was to restore Kuwait.

Why not depose Sadam?

National Security advisor Scrocroft insited at the time it would be a bad idea, because how would you govern Iraq if you did so?   I think he was dead right about that.

In theory you might have been able to divide Iraq into a Kurdish northern country, A Sunni central country and a Shiite southern country.

But coalition/NATO partner Turkey was fighting Kurdish nationalism at home, and wouldn't stand for a Kurdish state.
Coalition partner/war financer Saudi Arabia didn't want Shiite South joining Iran.
Who knew if Sunni Central would survive on it's own?

So, the USA left bad enough alone and encouraged the Iraqii people to overthrow Sadam. The Kurds and Shiites tried, although they weren't coordinating efforts, and the US State department never gave Shwartzkopf a set of terms for a ceasefire, so he didn't ask for the turnover of Iraqii helicopters, or include them in the no-fly zone restrictions. RESULT: Kurdish and Shiite refugee problems.

[Rusty Edge]

I say "Of course", but for a different reason to Rusty.

I think it matters that the US killed Bin Laden, mostly because of how they did it: illegally.

Bin Laden's murder matters because it showed again that America doesn't care for the rule of law, either the principle of putting criminals to trial or the principle of international sovereignty.

I think the US should have captured him, put him to trial and then put him in prison. That would have been a good symbol, even if they had to step on the Pakistani's toes to do it. As it is America bought an expensive symbol that cheered up the folk back home, but appears to have done very little to make the Middle East or the world a safer place.

That's one way of looking at things, and much of the time I would be in complete agreement about something like that.  I'm always going on about whether something is Constitutional. I believe it matters how you do something as much as what or why.  For example,  I don't accept the legitimacy of Guantanamo,  British or International Sovereignty over the USA,  military interventions without declarations of war, the United Nations and the World Court.

But it seems to me and my historical perspective, that anytime somebody attacks and destroyed a barracks full of military personnel, a warship, and two embassies, all flying the county's flag and acting peacefully at the time, a state of war ensues. All of that happened with the approval and direction of Bin Laden/ Al Queda  before 911. I can understand the argument that Bin Laden was a war criminal, but not the criminal model. These things are international incidents, not crimes.

I can't think of one example where something like that happened, and it was resolved with an arrest and trial rather than a war or revolution, but if anybody can, I'll re-evaluate my opinion on the entire matter.

The problem with putting Osama in prison would be a continuing kidnapping/WMD threat/etc. demanding his release, because they tend to see things as a righteous state of Jihad, and Osama as a military prisoner. There could be no peace without the restoration of prisoners. So incarceration hardly seems like an alternative.

[Buster's Uncle]

You know, Hussein wasn't going to wait out in front of his office building with his hands over his head - going on to Baghdad in the nineties would have involved the same crap we went through recently, without even having prepared for it - otherwise, we wreck up the capital and go home, and he crawls out of his bunker nowhere near and resumes business as usual, and we've just killed a lot of extra -noncombatant- people for absolutely nothing...  Going on to Baghdad only accomplishes something if all the right people got killed, absent an occupation, neither of which was going to happen then...

No; the Real George Bush made the right call, there.

[Buster's Uncle]

..I'm a teeny bit astonished to have taken semi-hawkish stances on Bin Laden and Afghanistan, and dove-ish on Iraq, and stirred up heat on neither one...

[Buster's Uncle]

...For that matter, praising the real George Bush at all for anything is not a good way to keep the peace with either the left or the hard right, and I think he wasn't a terrible president in general...

[Lorizael]

Well, pansy pacifist that I am, I don't look favorably on any of our involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq. I understand the apparent need to have Done Something after 9/11, and it's clearly the case that the Taliban were not the best caretakers of the Afghani people, but I don't believe war was the right answer. Throughout history, states have suffered from a "when all you have is a hammer" attitude. I believe there are radically different (non-violent) solutions to our problems that we essentially never practice (making us bad at them, which doesn't help anything). Alas.