Osama bin Laden: Why He Won
by E.J. Graff
The Daily Beast, 15 May 2011
As celebrations over Osama bin Laden's death wind down, a starker reality is emerging: the terrorist bogeyman succeeded in destroying key American values, not to mention our economy and global influence.
At long last, Osama is dead. The U.S. has finally found and killed an enemy commander who was devoted to destroying my country. Although I oppose the death penalty and feel passionately about the rule of law, about this I have no ambivalence: killing bin Laden was entirely justified.
And yet to my surprise, Bin Laden's death left me deeply sad. It has taken me until now to fully understand why: I feel profoundly grieved for my country. Had his death come nine years ago, perhaps I'd feel as relieved and even celebratory as many others. But in the ten years it took to find and kill him, bin Laden won.
Phi Beta Iota: We agree. Even the Arab Spring can be credited after a fashion to the intent of Osama Bin Laden, whose core enemy was the corrupt Saudi regime followed the other Middle Eastern dictators. The US has never been more than the “far enemy” but the US lost both its intelligence and its integrity in Viet-Nam and never regained them; instead, in a frenzy of ideological theatrics, the two-party tyranny and their financial patrons have engaged in a decades long orgy of self-destructive behavior not at all in the public interest.
