Bin Laden's Dead: Good Job, CIA! Now, Let's Get Out of Afghanistan

[SecularMotion]

Put aside, for the time being, the fact that the United States—with a $80 billion-a-year intelligence system, a $600-billion-plus military budget and a vast law enforcement apparatus—couldn’t find and kill Osama bin Laden for more than fifteen years, including ten years since 9/11. It’s wonderful that he’s dead, killed by a US Special Forces team that spent a mere forty minutes on the ground in a military city just thirty-five miles outside Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

In the hours and days to come, many of the questions swirling around the events will be answered. Where did the intelligence come from, as long ago as last August, that put the United States on bin Laden’s trail after so long? What role did Pakistan play? Was there any effort to capture bin Laden, or was this simply an assassination team sent in to eliminate him?

There’s little doubt that this is a world-changing event, even though it’s easy to exaggerate the role of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. For years, especially during the Bush administration, the United States inflated Al Qaeda to the level of an existential threat, even though the organization has been shattered since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, with a membership in the hundreds. Even President Obama, who has prudently refused to describe US counterterrorism efforts as a “war on terror,” has himself placed too much importance now and then on Al Qaeda’s role, including in justifying the expansion of the war in Afghanistan. Still, bin Laden’s elimination means that the symbolic leader of Al Qaeda–style terrorism worldwide, and the inspiration for follower and copycat groups in Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, North Africa and elsewhere, is gone.

Along with the victory celebration, manifested concretely in the spontaneous street festival outside the White House at midnight, there’s another reaction building across the country: Now we can come home. The war in Afghanistan, which long ago lost any sane rationale, no longer has even a pretext: even if the Taliban take over—a highly unlikely prospect, even were the United States to pack up and leave—there simply won’t be any Al Qaeda to provide shelter to. If President Obama needs any more reason to order an accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan in July, the killing of bin Laden provides a perfect opportunity to declare victory and end the war.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/160311/bin-ladens-dead-good-job-cia-now-lets-get-out-afghanistan

[aquart]

1. OUT NOW!

[truth2power]

2. The author isn't paying attention. We won't be getting out of Afghanistan

because it never was about OBL.

I don't know why so many people are thinking anything is going to change.

[TheWraith]

3. Oh really? And what was it about?

I shudder to wonder what you're going to say.

[truth2power]

4. Natural gas pipelines. Oil (Iraq). Rare minerals. Whatever else

we can grab in terms of natural resources.

Not like you haven't heard this, wraith.

[classysassy]

5. A created martyr

The killing of Bin Laden instead of a trial before the world court,did we create a martyr?How can we justify our actions when we have among us men that are just as evil as Bin Laden yet we protect them?It seem to me that we have given more fuel for the terrorist to do harm to innocent people around the world when we protect our very own terrorist.Those bunker buster of the Bush era,the first evil Bush that killed thousand of innocent civilians can not be justified,yet we call the people that protest that in justice.When will the American people realize we are being used to justify something the founding fathers did not intend to happen.