Some Last Thoughts on Killing Bin Laden (and Open Thread)

Sorry I've been scarce here lately: in between two busy weekends with the kid, I managed to come down with a nasty cold.  Better now, thanks.

The other day, Ed Kilgore related the two parties' different attitudes towards killing bin Laden to the differences between the two parties' approches to the war on terror, with the Dems being more narrowly focused on al Qaeda, and the GOP's pursuit of a much broader struggle against 'Islamofascism' (or whatever they're calling it these days) everywhere.

While I fundamentally agree with the Democratic approach for what seem like obvious reasons - sure, Hamas or Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood or someone besides al Qaeda might choose to bomb an American target someday, they aren't in any hurry to do so because their focus is elsewhere - it has never made sense to me that this should have any bearing on whether or not we should track bin Laden to the ends of the earth, and capture or kill him if we find his whereabouts, no matter where that turns out to be.

You'd think that even - especially - the Right wouldn't let even their own get away with this sort of nonsense. Whether you see the enemy as al Qaeda, or all radical Islamist movements everywhere, the fact is, bin Laden is the man responsible for killing nearly 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001.

To quote Humphrey Bogart (as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon):

When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's-it's bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere.

It's hard for me to break away from the underlying logic of that statement. If you're the President, you can't go letting people kill your countrymen. They're you're fellow citizens, and you're supposed to do something about it. It's bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every American everywhere. 

If there were ever a next bin Laden, would we want him to believe that if he were able to elude us for a while, the Americans would get distracted, let the trail grow cold, and eventually just let him off the hook altogether?  Fuck, no.  This is why tracking down bin Laden wasn't so much a matter of eliminating a threat, or even of revenge.  It was a grim necessity.  If someone hits us like that, we must be implacable and unbending in our pursuit for as long as it takes, just as a matter of basic statecraft.

It boggles my mind that we're in a world where the left understands this and the right doesn't.  This used to be the sort of shit they were able to claim they understood and the left didn't, that any issues of war and peace implicitly favored them.

They've given up that advantage, and it's hard to see how they can get it back anytime soon.  Which is fine with me.

So what's on your minds?  I think all the threads are implicitly open threads these days, given the infrequency of threads, so don't feel you have to talk about bin Laden.

As for me, it's a spectacularly beautiful afternoon here in the greater DC area.  I'm going to take the kid to a playground.  It's too good a day to pass up.

Comments

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

Thanks for getting a post up. Hope your're feeling better.

Between work travel and then catching up on home stuff it's been a full agenda.

Couldn't agree more on the bin Laden front. It was always amazing to me that Bush could have just walked away from the challenge.

And yes, it is implicit that all threads are open. I am going to try to step it up on the content front, but I need a little work respite to help.

[Paula B]

Sarkozy concedes, socialist wins La France:
Here'sa little of the NYT story. Does any of this sound familiar?

Pierre Marcus, a 59-year-old civil servant, said his vote for Mr. Hollande was motivated by the hope that a Socialist government would take steps to promote economic growth and soften the blow of the crisis on average citizens.

“Five years of Sarkozy dismantled social institutions,” Mr. Marcus said. “I think that Hollande will reverse French politics in terms of employment and social issues.”

Mr. Sarkozy, he said, had “ruled as a monarch” and “increased inequalities in the country.”

Mr. Marcus compared the last five years to the period during the reign of King Louis Philippe in the 19th century.

“The bourgeoisie got much richer, and the peasants and workers lived in extreme misery,” Mr. Marcus said.

Sebastien Modat, 38, who works in marketing, said “Hollande had the power to bring people together.”

“The right was compelled to take up its traditional topics, creating tension among people,” he said. But the main question, he added, “is how we are going to resume growth.”

He voted for Mr. Sarkozy five years ago, but on Sunday he cast a blank ballot, which are not counted. “I hope there will be a change in mentalities and more consensus,” he said.

Mathieu François, 48, an entrepreneur, said he had voted for a centrist candidate in the first round but for Mr. Hollande in the second. He said the trick would be to restart the economy without forgetting the poor and disadvantaged. “Sarkozy had favored the rich and austerity instead,” he said.

[beckya57]

This is why it's important for the Dems to emphasize that one of them got Bin Laden, after Bush let him get away at Tora Bora (because he wanted to launch his unnecessary and insane war against Iraq). The GOP for years has had a mostly-undeserved reputation as being the "daddy" party that the country could turn to when it felt threatened. The Dems were scorned as the "mommy" party that took care of people and was too soft-hearted to deal with the bad guys. Well, what do you know, that's no longer true (if it ever was). I think what this shows is the corruption and rot that lie at the heart of the modern GOP. They've simply forgotten about the most basic reasons government exists, and why it's sometimes needed. Hurricane Katrina and the failure to police the banks are two other salutary examples. When all a political party stands for is to enrich the already rich, the business of running the country and protecting its citizens just doesn't get done.

[Davis X. Machina]

It boggles my mind that we're in a world where the left understands this and the right doesn't.

Not all of the left.

[Sir Charles]

DXM,

I have to admit that it drives me crazy when people on the left lose sleep over the killing of bin Laden. Of course it was a kill mission -- this is not a game.

[nancy]

They're you're fellow citizens, and you're supposed to do something about it. It's bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every American everywhere. . Yes, and it also pretty damned important to ensure the security of foreign nationals and guests, 350 of whom lost their lives that day. That dictum also seems to have fallen out of the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld hawk narrative still being peddled.

And yes. Burial at sea. What the hell else? Thanks for the reminder DXM.

[big bad wolf]

each man's death diminishes me, but it doesn't have to diminish my intelligence

[kathy a.]

very good, bbw.

i've got a lot of problems with killing -- really a lot of problems -- but lost no sleep over this one. he was invited to surrender, as i recall.

shrub only cared about posturing and going after saddam. 9/11 turned out to be his opportunity. look what flowed from all that. add the economic disasters -- not entirely unrelated, since he pushed war and tax cuts both -- and he was a heckuva presnent.

if romney is for anything, and who knows? he will surely be beholden to the people who support belligerent crackdowns at home and abroad, even more tax cuts, less regulation, and hatin' on the wimmin and colored people and ferriners. have we not been there and done that?

[KN]

Plenty to say here...

In my opinion, the Bush regime had no iterest in bringing Bin Laden to justice because he was a very handy boogey man to gin up fear that would allow even more severe encroachments on well, everything.

If anyone here thinks the GOP could never be that cynical and self-serving then I have a gorgeous bridge to sell you in Montana. Comes with beach front property.

The people calling the shots here are small in number, between 30,000 and say 150,000 but no more than that and not because they are all conspiring together but simply because they all have the same self interest and core goals, they want more money.

I suppose there is some credible argument that can be made against killing but on an admittedly not too intellectual level from what I have seen, killing could be construed as slightly over-generous.

What a pathetic situation exists in the US concerning such minor issues. There are some big problems out there that need to be addressed. One side is doing everything in their power to distract and dissemble about those issues. One wonders what their motives might be and for all my musing the only thing I can come up with is an insatiable greed for power and money, which are to some extent equivalent.

There is more than one way to own another human being.

Productivity has increased by something like 20% in the past decade, wages have actually declined.

I'll not take advtage of the open thread.
Other than to say it is hot and humid and
the whisky supply is low.

[oddjob]

I haven't read Kilgore's thoughts, but I'm not sure the right even understands how best to damage "islamofacism" (or whatever). I think Obama has also been far more effective at reducing that sect's appeal in the Islamic world than the right ever was.

I also think that if Obama was actually given free reign to conduct foreign policy regarding Israel in a way that made sense that he would be (& would have been) even more effective than he has been.

It's important to remember that in regards to foreign policy the Republican Party is now in almost complete thrall to neoconservatism, a political philosophy that combines the absolute worst impulses of the right and the left into one ugly noxious brew of the most toxic ineffectiveness.

[oddjob]

It was always amazing to me that Bush could have just walked away from the challenge.

They never gave a flying fuck about Bin Laden. All they wanted to do was use 9/11 as an excuse for invading Iraq, something they'd wanted to do all along, but never talked about during their first campaign.

Deceitful sheisters..........

[Paula B]

Don't forget that the extended Bush and bin Laden families were/are friends, presumably through the oil business. W gave members of that family special treatment during the days immediately following 911 when he had them whisked off shore, while the rest of the country was under tight air restrictions.

I could get citations for this, if necessary.

[Crissa]

DXM, I don't see how pointing out that we should attempt to arrest over killing is particularly 'not getting it'. Nowhere in that article does it say we should've let him go. Or that the operation shouldn't have happened.

[low-tech cyclist]

What surprises me about Bush failing to pursue bin Laden is that the right wing was OK with that. They would call him out over his support for immigration reform, or his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, but not this.

Yes, Bush & Co. had Iraq in their sights from the day they walked into the White House, so it's not surprising that they just used 9/11 as an excuse to take out their real target, Saddam Hussein. But even so, they could have put more into the post-Tora Bora hunt for bin Laden than they did, and they would have, if the wingnuts had insisted on it. They didn't.

Of course, minimizing the importance of tracking down bin Laden also minimized the consequences of letting him slip away at Tora Bora.

And what becky said about the mommy and daddy parties. That meme may not be completely dead, but only because our media's outlook on American politics is frozen in the 1980s.

[kathy a.]

y'all might recall that there was a lot of distraction going on around the time bin laden became not much of a focus for shrub. the building and maintenance of teh "war on terrorism"; the fake presentations about weapons of mass destruction in iraq; then the whole iraq war.

bin laden kept surfacing with these "hey, i'm still alive" videos -- and sure, they got wrapped into the narrative about needing to expand/continue teh war on terrorism. i guess he worked better as part of the narrative than the reason we went to war in the first place.

[oddjob]

Sure it did; his ongoing presence made it possible for the White House to tell the Dept. of Homeland Security to increase the color of warning (typically from "yellow" to "orange", based upon intelligence they couldn't divulge that later turned out to be nothing) just before election day......

[nancy]

Bin Laden's continued uncapturedness made it seem more sensible for the TSA to be fully fixed as permanent and expanding feature in our security apparatus, all the while investing in Michael Chertoff-former-client-connected hardware and infrastructure. That is, infrastructure that has to be maintained and periodically updated or replaced.

Reviewing the chain of events leaves me wondering when the 'hey, there's a lot of money to be made here' bulbs went on. Not to be a cynic or anything...of course.

[KN]

nancy - well yes, I think they went on about 10:15 AM EDT on 09/11/01.
Greed cannot coexist with any kind of empathy.

[oddjob]

I think they went on about 10:15 AM EDT on 09/11/01

Ka-ching!

[low-tech cyclist]

I love the latest bit from Dave Weigel and Kevin Drum about an effort by some wingnuts, including former Bush AG Michael Mukasey, to turn a rather innocuous memo by then-CIA director Leon Panetta into a plan to set Admiral McRaven up as the fall guy if the Abbottabad mission failed. (Mukasey was the supposedly sane and responsible guy who succeeded Alberto Gonzales. I guess you can be a real loon, and you'll still look sane if you have the good fortune to follow Gonzales. Or at least the WaPo will tell its readers you're sane and reasonable. But I digress.)

As Weigel says, "it drives Bush loyalists absolutely insane when they realize Obama gets the credit" for ObL's death, and Kevin agrees: "the idea of Obama getting credit for killing bin Laden just drives conservatives up a tree. At this point, many of them are, apparently, literally willing to believe anything that suggests otherwise."

Which gives me a big grin, of course, but it just goes back to my starting point: it's amazed me from the beginning that the wingnuts let Bush get away with dropping the pursuit of bin Laden.

If it drives them this batty that Obama's getting the credit for sending bin Laden to a watery grave, well, maybe they shouldn't have let Bush off the hook in the first place. They had their chance to pressure their guy to bring bin Laden to justice. They dropped the ball. Their bad.

No wonder they're so upset now.

[oddjob]

I guess you can be a real loon, and you'll still look sane if you have the good fortune to follow Gonzales.

The sad thing is that he was a federal judge before replacing Gonzales.

[KN]

Oddjob @ 9:07 and 9:47 - Yep.

Paula B at 10:13 - I'd be interested in some documentary links/citations. I was actually "in country" at the time, in fact making a regular rendevous with a friend of mine to climb in the Tetons. For the first few days there was no air traffic at all. Then it started up again.

l-t-c: Results don't matter to people who already have imagined their own reality.

I won't answer any more comments, instead here's the thing that sticks in my craw - the way the american people reacted. It was to be blunt pathetic. It remains so today. I cannot understand it. Compared to past trials, this one was an ingrown toenail. Look at what has been eroded from the ediface of constitutional rights as a result of the cowardly response to the dramatic but almost utterly ineffectual efforts of radical terrorists. The correct reaction, the thing we should have done is simply go on with business as usual. Sure make a few changes behind the scenes, like make sure every flight has an air marshall on board who is trained to kill with one hand. Make the cockpit door impregnable to anything that would not destroy the plane. Let pilots carry weapons. Many commercial pilots got their initial experience in the military where they were required to carry weapons.

Instead we allowed the nutjobs to invoke this draconian system which assumes everyone is guilty until proven innocent.
Which has been shown to be flawed. Deeply flawed, because it is looking for a 1 in ten million anomaly.

I would say, what is wrong with us? But I can't include myself, and there are no doubt many others who should not be included because they are not afraid.

I will not even begin to discuss the irony of the very people who condone such absurdities as the TSA complaining about Obama taking away their freedoms.

erehwon