The Seven Most Important Things to consider know that Bin Laden has Received the Hot Lead of Justice

Good riddance. Now that Osama Bin Laden's gone, he's all over the news again. In the flurry of talking heads, twits making tweets, and written words, here are the seven most important things to consider now that Bin Laden has met his fate:


The "Biden" Doctrine has succeeded where the Bush Doctrine has failed.

"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.[emphasis mine]. George W. Bush's policy of overthrowing governments--by pre-emption if necessary--to stop terrorism should be viewed as a complete failure. It could be weeks or months before we know how much the Pakistani government knew of Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts, but it seems incredibly dubious that the Pakistani government made any good faith effort to capture the man. Does that mean we should have overthrown the Pakistani government as well, only to let Bin Laden escape yet again?

Bottom Line: Joe Biden's vision of a narrow, focused attack on counter-terrorism is more effective at bringing specific terrorists to justice than trying unilaterally attacking countries to spark a wave of democracy and therefore, stem terrorism.

This should accelerate the splintering of Al-Qaeda.

The Obama administration should not downplay the strategic significance of one man. Fred Kaplan and Daniel Byman over at Slate.com probably have the best analysis based on actual facts of what will happen without the star power of Bin Laden. In the long run, Al-Qaeda's recruiting will likely suffer with the loss of its figurehead, and affiliate groups in Somalia and Yemen are likely to be wary of each other, perhaps creating a power struggle with Al-Qaeda's main branch in Pakistan. Which brings us to point number three:

Justice has been served, but the most effective way to reduce/eliminate the terror threat requires non-military solutions.

For what these polls are worth, Al-Qaeda does not register a majority level of support in any country. Richard Clarke hits the nail on the head with his analysis in Monday's New York Times. Clarke describes the difficult situation in countries like Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, where governments are unpopular due to catastrophically high levels of unemployment:


"Moderate, tolerant and even some secular groups exist, but they often do not have a comprehensive alternative vision, know how to communicate it or have the organizational skills to promote it. American and European experts can assist them in building politically viable organizations, but to succeed these new groups must be homegrown and tap into the Arab and Islamic traditions that speak to many Muslim youth.
"Moreover, without investment to create jobs, new governments in these countries will fail under the weight of youth unemployment. Unless corruption is replaced with efficiency, investment will either not materialize or be wasted"

Osama Bin Laden was Hitler without an army: a man of evil without conscience who had the ability to deceive otherwise decent human beings into doing horrible things. Hitler became popular because he was right when he said that the Treaty of Versailles unfairly punished Germany after World War I. After World War II, the United States and Britain resolved not to make the same mistake again, and would allow their defeated foe to rebuild. Preventing another Osama Bin Laden requires diplomacy and a commitment to global economic prosperity. In other words, we can't just give $1.3 Billion annually to someone like Hosni Muburak. We need to make sure that economic aid goes directly to the people, and not some dictator who turns a blind eye to high unemployment and citizens who become terrorists. Speaking of dubious allies:

With friends like Pakistan, who needs enemies?


The U.S. State Department needs to be more selective when determining who is really "a valuable ally" of the United States. Osama Bin Laden was living in a large mansion with 12 foot high walls not far from Pakistan's military training facility. Neighbors noticed that the building did not have telephone service and that the occupants burned their trash. This did not arouse the suspicion of the Pakistani military? Whether Pakistan was blissfully unaware of Bin Laden's presence or knowingly sheltered him remains to be discovered.

So what do we do with Pakistan? Do we overthrow this government as well? Or should we continue with the diplomacy that Richard Clarke encourages? If we are going to win the hearts and minds of the opposition, we should engage in diplomacy first.

Our continued presence in Afghanistan is continually harder to justify.

The moral justification for overthrowing the Taliban was because they harbored Al-Qaeda, giving them a "home base" to plot terrorist attacks. So does Yemen. So does Somalia. If we need to do so, our Navy SEALs can track down and kill a high-profile terrorist in hot pursuit, regardless of what government the country has.

Taking that into consideration, the question of supporting the Karzai government deserves more scrutiny than ever before. Is he unpopular because the Taliban hate freedom, or because he probably lost the last election? As our current situation stands right now, the United States will have a continued military presence in Afghanistan until 2014, at which point a withdrawal might take place--or be re-evaluated based on conditions on the ground.

That time for re-evaluation is now. President Obama should listen to members of both political parties, in calling for an exit strategy, rather than the increasingly delusional Joe Lieberman. The U.S. government puts itself at risk by supporting regimes like Muburak. We need smarter diplomacy and fewer wars without clearly defined goals in order to truly fight Islamic extremism.

Now is also a good time to restore the rule of law.

"Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?" tweeted the twit Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa).

Spare me. Science tells us that Torture doesn't work. Steve King doesn't believe in science, but fortunately, the Obama administration does. The FBI didn't torture underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab. They even read him his Miranda Rights. The FBI did, however, bring in Umar's relatives, and from that tactic the FBI was able to extract all the information they needed.

Steve King may not believe in science, but the rest of us do. We don't have all the details yet, but it seems dubious that information leading to Obama's capture came through torture, or because those questioned were held as "illegal combatants" as opposed to Prisoners of War. Legal scholar Dahlia Lithwick says that such claims are unfalsifiable, but I disagree. Holding Enemy Prisoners of War does not mean that such individuals could not be interrogated, it only requires that they be treated humanely. And guess what? Humane treatment yields results. Donald Rumsfeld's tactics yielded the Abu Ghraib. I think it's safe to say which tactic resulted in Bin Laden's death. Which brings us to our final point:

If we're going to thank a former president for eliminating Bin Laden from the face of the Earth, it's John F. Kennedy, not George W. Bush.

Either George Bush's statement of not caring about Bin Laden's whereabouts and subsequent invasion of Iraq was a clever ploy to make it seem like he wasn't interested in bringing him to justice, or he really didn't care all that much about bringing him to justice.  And remember when John McCain criticized Obama for wanting attack terrorist targets in Pakistan without help from the Pakistani government? It was President Obama who made finding and killing Bin Laden a top priorty, and relied on the Navy SEALs to do the job with remarkable efficiency.

For that, we should thank President Kennedy. This Navy veteran and war hero understood the need for a small group of elite forces trained in unconventional warfare and established the SEALs in 1962. Sunday's raid did what predator drones, cruise missiles, or cluster bombs could not. To everyone who has ever been a member of the Navy SEAL program: Thank you.

That's all for now. Undoubtedly, these topics will arise in the future. Hopefully, our leaders will take the right path.