Quote:
Balian: What is Jerusalem worth?
Saladin: Nothing......Everything
-Kingdom of Heaven
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IMO this analogy is equally applicable to ending UBL. The world remains a dangerous place, and we still have Islamist wolves to hunt down, but besides justice, ending UBL, and the circumstances involved resonate on many different levels. Folks might claim he was merely a symbol at this point, how effectively could he lead AQ isolated in a compound with only couriers for contact with the world? However he was
their symbol, face of the Islamists, and AQ, and his extended survival was pitched as evidence of the limits of American power. A myth forcefully shattered by our military the other night.
America's enemies all fall into the same trap, they see our relative affluence and view us us a nation of fickle merchants who lack the resolve for armed conflict. Hitler, Tojo, Saddam, UBL, none of them thought the Americans would fight, or if they did it would be with political restrictions as endured by our troops in Korea, Vietnam, Somalia etc. Perhaps our enemies confused recent events with the lessons of history, something the Japanese learned at Tarawa, succinctly put by Marine E.B. Sledge, "
There is nothing in the world as savage as an 18 year old American boy."
Included in the fallout are also the shattered myths of UBL as some hardcore, evil, genius. He was certainly evil, but he might still be alive if he was hard enough to stay in a remote cave somewhere guarded by his zealots. His choices reinforce notions he was more of an affluent financier and organizer. The compound location makes sense, with the military academy a block away and a large Pakistani military presence in the city, UBL could have got around for so long travelling in jeeps with his guards in Pakistani uniforms. But what genius would build a massive comfortable house 8 times larger than anything else around if you were the most hunted man in the world? Either way it reflects poorly on the Pakistani ISI, either they knew or they are truly that inept. UBL lived long enough to see the Jasmine revolution in the Islamic world, futher proof his ideology was anachronistic, and in the end he went out knowing America got him, ironically given the value Islamists afford women, he hid behind his wife. This was UBL, an evil, murderous, coward.
There is also Obama, the weakest President in US History, a leader our allies and enemies both mock. Yet to be fair, politics aside, if the base story is sound, he should be commended on a gutsy call. He didn't just order a drone strike, he ordered men across a sovereign border in a high risk operation. Imagine if our troops were ambushed, and both the domestic and international ramifications of failure here. Ironically, Carter who Obama is often compared too, also ordered a daring operation, also with helicopter failures, though unsuccessfully.
The culmination of these events is a message broadcast both loud and clear to the world. The American Century has just begun. We are free, powerful, and determined. If it takes regime change in Iraq, so be it, if we have to fight in the hills of Afghanistan, or order a high risk mission to bring UBL to justice for his crimes against our people nearly a decade after the fact, we are resolved to do so. This was the message demonstrated to both friend and foe, by the circumstances of ending UBL.