How Was Osama bin Laden Eliminated? I Don’t Care!

by Thomas Wellborn

At this point, I frankly don’t care how Osama bin Laden was taken out. After two horrific wars waged in the wrong countries at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, I’m thankful to have a president who had what it takes to actually get done what Bush claimed he’d set out to do over a decade ago.

The Bush Administration essentially allowed bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora into Pakistan in 2001. All indicators point to Pakistan and/or Pakistani ISI hiding him there while Bush destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan (based on concocted intel) for eight years, basically giving bin Laden what he was hoping for all along – economic collapse. The Obama administration launched an operation that eliminated bin Laden without collapsing entire nations at great expense and massive loss of life.

We are looking at a “lesser of two evils” mission here. Much lesser. I’ve been outspoken against many of Obama’s policies while supporting others. My loathing of Bush doesn’t come from love of Clinton or Obama, or any specific political ideology for that matter – it comes from a history of massive, systemic failure at every level, starting long before 9/11 and continuing into today. George W. Bush decimated world markets and destroyed an incalculable number of lives. The final nail in bin Laden’s coffin may not have been legal or ethical, but it is a blessing in comparison to eight years of literal hell on Earth.

The Obama mission was “typical” nasty wartime politics. Covert operations are rarely “legal,” and usually despised by anti-war supporters, constitutionalists and the like. More and more will come out about this mission in time, but we’ll never know everything – we never do – and because of that, the status quo amalgamation of conspiracy theory, conjecture and truth will be written into history books. In my humble opinion, Pakistan’s claim that it didn’t know the location of bin Laden at any given time is the biggest affront to our intelligence since the actual failure of 9/11 itself.

Pragmatically, bin Laden is small fry in the logical grand scheme of radical Islam, but his elimination should be considered a massive psychological victory for the free world and a degrading defeat for al Qaeda. The man’s actual worth and significance as a threat was obviously minimal, but consider his power similar to that of the British Royal Family – they have no real authority in policy-making, but their political influence is difficult to parallel. The war on “terror” itself is a joke because nobody can militarily fight an ideology.

For now, I’ll celebrate with my country for the purpose of morale, but I am always suspect and will always question.

Oh, and on the subject of those who are actually doubting his death, I do think if he’d died during the Bush era, the entire Bush Administration would have gloriously grandstanded on it – unless, of course, they chose to keep it secret in order to perpetuate wars; but let’s leave conspiracy theories to the Alex Jones ilk.

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