Back in the 1960s, Senator George Aiken of Vermont offered two American presidents a plan for dealing with the Vietnam War: declare victory and go home. Roundly ignored at the time, it’s a plan worth considering again today for a war in Afghanistan and Pakistan now in its tenth year.
The SEAL who killed bin Laden, justified or not, may have deprived the world of a font of information about terrorism.
The enthusiastic flag-waving. The gaudy red, white, and blue jumpsuits, the booming chants of “USA, USA, USA.” The huge crowd of jubilant young people gathered outside the White House, celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death. Is it right to celebrate the death of an individual, even one as abhorrent as bin Laden?
President Obama would have achieved more concrete results internationally by taking out Netanyahu politically than by eliminating Bin Laden physically.
Why the haste to kill Osama bin Laden when we might better have been served by his capture?
The grievances expressed in bin Laden’s manifestoes, such as U.S. military presence in the Middle East and support for Israel, will be enough to replenish the ranks of Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups as long as the United States continues to pursue those policies.
Soon after the United States went to war against the Taliban in pursuit of Osama in October 2001, I penned a widely published analysis that at the time provoked controversy. However, it anticipated the course of the titanic struggle between a global power and a determined fanatic over the next decade.
We have, once again, played right into Osama bin Laden’s hands. This might seem like an odd assertion, since the al-Qaeda mastermind is finally dead at the hands of U.S. Special Forces, most heads of state have voiced their congratulations, and practically the entire U.S. citizenry is unified in celebration. But Osama bin Laden always understood that the weak use the weapons of the powerful against them, such as U.S. airplanes against U.S. skyscrapers.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to dispute that jihadists see a window of opportunity in the Libyan civil war.
According to a recent WikiLeaks dump, if harm came to bin Laden, the West would be subjected to a “nuclear hellstorm.”