I dunno about Barack and this Bin Laden thing…
George Bush has been giving lip service to getting Bin Laden for the past seven years. The last confirmed sighting of Osama was about five years ago, through the scope of a SEAL shooter who could not get permission to fire quickly enough. Shortly thereafter we bombed the shit out of the cave he walked into and there has been no credible sighting of him since.
Now Obama has taken up a gauntlet that, in retrospect, may be bogus, whether or not intentionally. (It wouldn’t be the only bogeyman that GWB fostered; remember those WMDs?) For sure the Senator couldn’t have gotten elected without saying he was going to do something about Al Qaida. Despite the fact that the real experts say it’s pretty fragmented and useless, it still has the official bogeyman stamp on it, and Osama is its face. Still there is no solid evidence that Osama Bin Laden ever saw the light of day after the bombing, let alone that he is lurking someplace in the Hindu Kush righ now.
I wonder, therefore, if making it so personal and more or less committing to further raids into the Pakistani Tribal Regions at a time when that might not really be in our best interest, isn’t perhaps a bit shortsighted. Marginalizing both Bin Laden and Al Qaida, and working on supporting the Afghani reconstruction to the benefit of its people, then getting out and letting them decide the fate of the country for themselves, would seem the most effective and economical way of dealing with the issue in Southwest Asia. A bit of judicious plotting with the Iranians would serve to keep things settled in Afghanistan, and free our troops up to take care of business elsewhere if necessary. At present, we couldn’t project power into Costa Rica, and they’re on our side.
As someone pointed out elsewhere, by personalizing terrorism — continuing to give it Osama’s bearded face — Barack may be setting himself up for failure in an area in which he has yet to gather much in the way of cred. Bad idea? Time will tell.
Addendum: It seems that Little George is taking care of the matter ahead of time, just in case Barack decided to do something sensible. News is that we projected a missile deep into Pakistan — behind the Tribal Region — just today. Hoo boy…
Pingback: This N That « Creative Endeavors