Ding, dong, Osama's dead!
United States Special Forces infiltrated the mansion in Pakistan that Osama bin Laden was hiding out in and killed him in a firefight, shooting him in the left eye and retrieving his body, ending a nine-and-a-half year operation. Not only has al-Qaeda lost its leader and founder, it gives the United States a badly needed psychological boost while trying to bring order to Afghanistan and struggling to bring an end to the situation in Libya . . . and this operation should make Qaddafi think twice before sticking it out in Tripoli.
The operation began with a tip in August and the tracking of al-Qaeda couriers to the compound where bin Laden was staying. Under the leadership of the Joint Special Operations Command, the Special Forces were ready to move once President Obama and his advisers knew they had their man and gave the order. The operation has been seen as a re-affirmation of American diligence and tenacity. Ironically, the success of the bin Laden killing comes in the wake of the scrubbed Endeavour space shuttle launch (more about that later).
Antiwar activist Robert Greenwald is now circulating a petition to bring the troops in Afghanistan home immediately, now that bin Laden has been killed. I'm inclined to support it. If the war is to make Afghanistan a peaceful, stable, democratic country, then we will fail; we should just concentrate on making it stable, and we don't necessarily need an army to do that. But the war on terror goes on; there will be more attacks, more plots, and more terror operations in the years to come. They just won't be directed by bin Laden out of Afghanistan or Pakistan. We'll need more than a strong military to combat it. But for now, America can bask in the triumph denied by the failure of the similar Desert One operation to free the American hostages in Iran 31 years earlier.
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