the WOT is about telling the world, especially the muslim world, that
if they attack America it will cost them their lives
next ...
On May 2, 7:58 am, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> How much of the War was Necessary to Catch Osama?Posted by Anthony Gregory on May 1, 2011
> Americans are cheering the president for the death of bin Laden. Many will undoubtedly say this reveals the necessity and greatness of the war on terrorism. They will say it was all worth it. But what exactly resulted in the death of Osama, and how much of the web of policies known together as the post-9/11 war on terrorism were actually necessary for finding and killing him?
> The president says it was a surgical effort. After painstakingly gathering intelligence, U.S. forces went into Pakistan, largely avoided civilian casualties, and after a fire fight killed the al Qaeda leader.
> But this is close to the type of policy many Americans called for after 9/11. The thing is, they weren't for the most part considered hawks. Rather, they were on the side of the spectrum urging restraint.
> In the autumn of 2001, the loudest voices for war were calling for military engagement and bombing of a list of Muslim countries. Many called for even more draconian and belligerent policies than were adopted by the Bush administration. As for Bush, he sought congressional approval for a rather large intervention in Afghanistan and then later for an even larger one in Iraq.
> Almost none of this had to do with finding and catching or killing bin Laden. To the contrary, the methods Obama says worked were the very ones advocated by "realists" and others who resisted the hyper-interventionist and neocon policies enacted by Bush and continued by Obama.
> It was the relatively anti-interventionist segment of the population – and a marginal one at that – saying the U.S. should constitutionally authorize the location and killing of bin Laden, whether done by U.S. forces or privateers. Although the methods that, almost a decade after the 9/11 attacks, did purportedly bring Osama to justice were probably more invasive and definitely less constitutional than what many of us called for after 9/11, they do sound like they are relatively minimalist for the U.S. They appear to be the exception, rather than the rule, in post-9/11 policy.
> The U.S. has embarked on two major wars, several bombing expeditions, drone attacks, significant nation-building enterprises of democratization at gunpoint, and measures of belligerence that have push the envelope in terms of the preventative war doctrine, the power of the presidency acting in all the world as its jurisdiction, and international law. Meanwhile, civil liberties and due process rights have gone through the shredder. The executive branch detains people for years that it knows are innocent, and many indefinitely that it knows cannot be properly charged and convicted because their rights were abused. We are spied on and groped at airports. Financially, the cost of post-9/11 policy has been in the trillions of dollars. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of foreigners have died. And almost none of this had anything to do with killing bin Laden.
> And obviously almost none of it has anything to do with killing Osama now that he's dead. So will all the troops come home? Will our rights return? Will the TSA at least take it down a notch?
> I doubt it. Because even the government outright suggests that little of the national security state's growth and the raging wars have had anything to do with catching Osama. Think Libya. Think Iraq. In March of 2002 -- that is, half a year after 9/11 --President Bush said in a press conference:"As I say, we hadn't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, you know, again, I don't know where he is.
> "I'll repeat what I said: I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban."Even nine years ago, President Bush admitted that the war on terrorism had very little to do with catching Osama anyway. Then came Iraq. Then came Obama and his escalation of the war of Afghanistan, the widening of the war in Pakistan, the bombings in Somalia and Yemen, the war in Libya. Now we find out Osama was caught by a small group of U.S. forces that figured out where he was, went in and got him. Why was this not the main strategy since 9/11? Why all these wars, occupations, and huge expansions of government power across the board?
> It is a good time to ask: How much of the war on terror has been unnecessary to get bin Laden and why wasn't that clear the whole time? It is also a good time to ask: How much of the war on terror will continue now that the main villain has gone down?http://johndennisreport.com/war-on-terror/how-much-of-the-war-was-necessary-to-catch-osama
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