Obama kills Osama on Mission Accomplished Day

Ten years, two wars, and tens of thousands dead--it was all worth it, right?  Symbolic deaths of mad men like Osama are worth something, but the price paid was way too high. Criminally too high. So excuse me for not getting on the party bus.

Now what?  Does anything actually change?

Comments

[amba]

They got his hard drive -- far more important, in my opinion, and substantive rather than symbolic.

[Jack Whelan]

I guess the point is that whatever advantages come to us from this action are dwarfed by the cost. It was all so fundamentally unnecessary. The war on terrorism is fundamentally a police/special ops kind of thing, and this kind of action should have been done in the first place without all the invasions. Now it's just too little too late, symbolically or otherwise.

This post was prompted by the stories of people singing "We are the Champions" at Ground Zero. It reinforces in world perception that we are a country of moral morons and that terrorists like Osama succeed to the degree that they bring out what is worst in us rather than what is most noble.

And the idea that somehow, at this late date, after all that has happened, all the crimes this nation has committed, that we can now claim that justice has been done is only true in some primitive, vengeful, jingoistic sense. It's good that he's dead and that they have all the info. My hat is off to the brave SEALS who pulled off the operation. But please let's be done with the celebrating.

[RealHowardBeale]

Jack,

Relating to the morality/ethics of taking out Bin Laden, I recall a long-ago post here in which you said something akin to this:

If you felt the need to kill a madman/mass murderer, you would do it but then accept the consequences, much like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

If I'm mistaken in my portrayal and recollection, please forgive me. Secondly, I'd like to see the link instead of plowing through eight (!) years of archives.

Thanks in advance for a link if you can conveniently provide it,

Gratefully,

Matt Zemek