Sunday Night, and the Past Comes Rushing In

[nightdog_barks]

Thunder and lightning here, although I believe it's stopped raining for now.

Multiple news sources reporting Osama bin Laden has been killed by a drone strike outside Islamabad. ETA not a drone strike, but an on-the-ground attack.

Comments

[silverjackal]

It's important news, but not. Ultimately, it doesn't make any difference to the terrorist movement, so I don't know what people are so excited about. Too little, far too late in regard to "we got him", and Al-Qaeda is long since in so many pieces, and it and all the related groups are like the many headed Hydra of mythology. Chop off one head, and from the stump grow two more. The whole world is infected with this madness now, which is something I'm not certain the average North American citizen grasps, as relatively isolated as we are on this continent.

[nightdog_barks]

Jackal, I am smiling because the Hydra is exactly what I thought.

Still. I will not -- I cannot -- deny that I am glad he is dead.

[silverjackal]

In his fanaticism he did great evil, yes? And unchecked, would have done more. Personally, I am glad he is dead. But does it matter ultimately? No, only that his death might inflame his followers to do further acts of violence against innocent people. :( The people who are cheering, they think this solves something, or fixes is, and they have no grasp of the bigger picture.

[nightdog_barks]

:-)

Yes, all of this. ♥

[blackmare]

Pretty much this.

My thought: the only way to make this mean a damn thing for Americans is to use it as an occasion to repeal the "Patriot Act."

[silverjackal]

That would be a good outcome, at least. What amazes me is the people who want Western troops to summarily pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq. This is not possible if they wish to maintain their gains against fanaticism. This should have been thought of before they went in, but there seems to be a very poor grasp of history amongst those who made the decisions.

[danalwyn]

Considering that I'm not sure we're making in headway in Afghanistan as it is, I think this is a point that can be argued. If the entire point of the exercise was to kill bin Laden, then I'm not sure how much more money we need to spend to subsidize the Karzai family. Since we can't seem to get rid of the Karzais, and nobody in the US wants to organize a US coup and kick him out, and since they're squarely in the way of anything we would call "progress", it might be time to either figure out what we're doing, or, more likely, leave.

[silverjackal]

Unfortunately pulling out of Afghanistan isn't the answer either. The fact is, Karzai is where he is because of Western support, and now that he feels secure he's thumbing his nose. That's not a surprise to me, nor the corruption, nor the fact that Western forces have been ground to a standstill. How many foreign nations have had that happen there? All of them, for the entirety of recorded history. But if the United States pulls out now, in less than a decade it will once again be a terrorist stronghold and launching area, and the whole business will have to be repeated.

I wish I could give a better answer. Staying equates to a huge financial commitment and egregious loss of life (because one soldier and/or one innocent civilian are one too many in my estimation). But leaving? Leaving sows the ground for even greater losses in the future.

[danalwyn]

I'm not sure. I can't guarantee that it's not a terrorist stronghold and launching area now. The only reason that it doesn't have much of an international impact is that we're nice and kind and send Americans over there where they are easier to shoot at. I'm not fond of continuing this.

I guess I'm getting depressed about seeing an exit vector that anyone can agree on. Even if everything backslides when we leave, I don't see a plan to make it backslide less in the future. If it's going to backslide now or ten years from now, I'd choose to make it now so we don't have to pay for the interim. About our only options seems to be making sure that the local authorities are so well armed that any attempt to turn it into one nation bogs down in eternal civil war. If that's our only option then better leave now then later.

Either that or drag the Indians into this - and I'm not sure where that leaves all of us.

Needless to say, Afghanistan is no longer one of those things I find myself optimistic on.

[silverjackal]

I was never optimistic on that score, so I don't know what to say, either. Whatever the Western forces took, the minute they pulled back the Taliban was back in. Pull out entirely and it will be like that fable of sowing the dragon's teeth -- from the furrows* will rise armed men, who fight with no regard for their own lives. Left unchecked, such a deadly harvest would quickly reach frightening strength. When I said a decade I was putting out the ultimate margin. My guess would be less -- three years? Five?

A better way would be to find the means to cut the throat of this organization by cutting off their funding, but that the Western powers do not wish to do, because they slice themselves with the same sword (oil, finance, and markets for their weapons).

*Quite by side, this is one of those times where I must lament about the English language. Why is furrow "furrow", when thorough is not "thurrow"? Or vice versa? (I had typed furrow as furrough, first, in my confusion.) English is a far from sensible tongue at times. My apologies for any other mistakes I might have made and didn't catch.