Opinion Forum

A Victory in the War on Terror

May 2nd, 2011

Finally, after more than a decade of hunting him, Osama bin Laden has been killed by U.S. forces. As the leader who directed the attack on America on September 11, 2001 he was responsible for the deaths of almost 3,000 people, mostly Americans but also citizens of many other countries.

That attack, the worst in history on U.S. soil, also scored a much more insidious victory against America. It forced us into an era of fear in our own country, where daily we live with the results of al-Qaeda and other Muslim extremist attacks against us. Every time an American is subjected to a humiliating physical search at an airport or elsewhere, terrorism wins another small victory. Every time an individual Muslim goes on a killing spree shouting “Allahu Akbar,” more people die and the sense of fear in our land increases.

We won a major victory when we killed bin Laden. However, we need to win more victories if we are ever to emerge from the age of acute terrorism. Those victories include finding and killing Ayman al-Zawahiri, a threat more ominous today than bin Laden himself. As more leaders of islamic terrorism emerge, we must find and kill them, too. And along the way, every lesser terrorist we can find must be dispatched to bask in the glory of Allah.

The operation to find and kill bin Laden is a good example of what we should be doing in prosecuting the War on Terror. We don’t need seemingly everlasting wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and we don’t need to risk the rise of new centers of islamic extremism in places like Libya, Egypt and other countries where there have been recent uprisings. Leave those dictators and their people to their own solutions, for interventions where we don’t know the potential outcomes are pure folly.

Get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Stop participating in the Libyan civil war. We don’t need to expend blood and treasure in places like that — places which, in the end, are irredeemable. Through intelligence, special operations actions, and the application of power from off-shore we can find, fix, and kill those who have attacked us or who plan to. That’s a far more effective way to fight terrorism at much less cost in dead and wounded soldiers and national treasure.

Lest we spend any time worrying about violations of national sovereignty involved in this kind of policy, consider that any country that harbors those who threaten the U.S. must understand that we will attack such threats in ways and at times of our choice. That will make the point that countries are better off not accommodating terrorists on their soil; as for their internal problems, they can deal with them on their own.

Liberals and conservatives alike in America, with more or less gusto, are cheering the demise of Osama bin Laden. But that’s today; as time goes on, those Americans who sympathize with the Muslim world and hate Israel will be heard from. They’ll decry our attacking on Pakistani territory, claim that bin Laden was executed rather than dying in a firefight, and criticize the decision to dispose of his remains at sea. That’s fine — we know who they are, and we’ll continue to ignore them and defend ourselves as necessary.

Given the nature of special operations, I doubt that we’ll ever know who pulled the trigger on bin Laden; for that matter, we probably won’t know the identities of any of the Americans involved. That’s as it should be because of the serious threat that would exist against them and their families. No doubt the New York Times or other media parasites will gleefully publish their names and other classified details of the operation if they get the chance. If they do, shame on them.

My suspicion is that it was never intended for bin Laden to emerge from this attack alive. Whether he died fighting or was killed after the fight was over, the result is positive. The last thing we needed was a live Osama at Guantanamo, defended by American liberals and the subject of terrorist demands for his release.

Lastly, I hope his burial at sea was no more dignified than being thrown from a helicopter in a weighted canvas bag. I doubt that even the fish and the crabs will want him.

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: islamist, Muslim, Osama bin Laden, special operations, terrorism, terrorist
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

3 Responses to “A Victory in the War on Terror”

Tom Carter | May 2nd, 2011 at 11:57 am

Speaking of the issue of sovereignty, according to Politico:

Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s killing was mixed in the Arab world, including in Pakistan, where former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf said that the United States should not have executed a mission within his country’s borders.

“America coming to our territory and taking action is a violation of our sovereignty,” Musharraf told CNN-IBN. “Handling and execution of the operation [by US forces] is not correct. The Pakistani government should have been kept in the loop.”

Tough. Harbor terrorists on your territory, and we’ll take them out. That should be a consistent U.S. policy, and every nation should understand it.

Dan Miller | May 2nd, 2011 at 3:34 pm

President Obama and his whole crew must be tried instanter for war crimes.

Osama should have been gassed (harmlessly) on the basis of a properly supported and issued warrant, put into a deep sleep with the advance permission of Pakistan (judicially approved, of course, at all appellate levels) and transported to New York City for trial in a civilian court. There, he would have had all of the constitutional protections available to those other poor souls driven by abject poverty and by our wicked ways to inflict well deserved harm on the United States and her excessively rich parasites. That’s what we do for those poor Pirates of Somalia when we catch them. Osama is little different and President Obama is guilty of violating his human rights in the most egregious manner possible. Ditto those who suffered collateral damage. What must Attorney General Holder think? Was he even consulted? Why has the Civil Rights Division not been heard from yet?

It’s just not fair! Where are the Libruls? The sound of silence can be deafening. Or maybe it’s simply masked by the predictions that President Obama just won the 2012 election.

Tom Carter | May 2nd, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Don’t worry, the “libruls” will recover in a few days and revert to their normal views — killing him deprived him of his rights, which weren’t read to him before he was whacked; if we found him even partly through “enhanced interrogation” of KSM, that was wrong and we shouldn’t have used the information as a matter of principle; there is not such thing as the War on Terror anyway because this is just normal criminal activity; and Muslims are peace-loving people who are driven to terrorism by the horrible Israelis.

On a more serious note, let’s give Obama credit when it’s due. He rejected a safer course of bombing the compound because we probably wouldn’t have been able to confirm that we got OBL, plus non-combatants would inevitably have been killed, giving the Pakistanis and Muslims in general another propaganda coup. Instead he went for the assault by special operations forces, despite the fact that the chances of an embarrassing failure were much higher. Got to give him credit for gutsy leadership on this one.