Political reflections

It's hard to believe that bin Laden is dead. I feel strange about it. I guess "somber relief," as described in this article, is the best way to describe it. It doesn't bring back the thousands of innocent lives that were lost on his account, but maybe it brings some kind of closure. Maybe it means that the deaths of thousands of soldiers in the resulting war were not in vain. It's hard for me to rejoice at someone's murder, though, even if it's the murder of someone that evil. I keep thinking "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." I'm nervous about what comes next. We've been chasing this...fear for so long, and taking out the figurehead will not make it go away. Hopefully, it will make it harder for them to organize and gain a following. Maybe it will serve as a lesson to other terrorists that America will prevail. Do I feel patriotic? Eh, once I reflect on how we got here, not particularly. This was supposed to be our goal 9 1/2 years ago, but it seems like we took a few too many detours, lost a few too many additional lives, and spent too much money on military attacks, at our own expense. I hope this is the end of an era, though.

I was patriotic after 9/11. It was great to see Americans pull together and help each other. I even liked George W. Bush and appreciated his resolve, right up until we went to Iraq. For me, it was all downhill from there. Yes, I'm glad Saddam is gone, but in many ways I think our attack on Iraq hurt us more than it helped us. I think it even recruited more people to the terrorists' cause. We got rid of the only "stability" the Iraqis knew and left many of them without jobs and basic necessities, but still expected them to welcome us as liberators. It seemed like we went in without an exit strategy. Remember how Rumsfeld predicted it would take "six days, six weeks, I doubt six months?" How did they get it so terribly wrong? The reasons for going to Iraq still do not sit well with me. I still think we decided to go there because of unfinished business from the previous Bush administration, and I've never heard a strong case against that theory. Our efforts were misguided, to say the least, and our original intention (kill bin Laden, the real person behind the 9/11 attacks) got lost in the shuffle until we gained a fresh perspective from new people. What's done is done, though.

The affect Osama's death will have on terrorist groups and people the world over remains to be seen, but he has definitely been the face of terrorism for the past decade. Removing him is a good start--and hopefully, at least a fatal blow to al Qaeda. I heard on NPR that confirming affiliation with bin Laden had been vital to recruitment. Already, the push for democracy in Egypt and other middle eastern countries is promising, and they're doing it without our direct "help." Some people are always going to hate us, though. I guess this whole thing (starting with Bush) sends the message that we will do what it takes to defeat them.

My greatest short-term hope at the moment, though, is that this will encourage both democrats and republicans to actually work together. Republicans have spent this whole time trying to make Obama out to be un-American (literally) and weak on terrorism, and here his administration is the one executing their original plan. Didn't a democratic administration handle this the same way they hoped a competent republican administration would have? How do they explain this away? Can you imagine how much credit they would give the president if he happened to be republican? (Am I asking too many rhetorical questions, and are they all rhetorical?) Some of them are already attributing it to Bush, anyway. Never mind that he sent us on a wild goose chase first and left before tying up the loose ends--or that bin Laden might have been in that complex in Pakistan for 5 years while we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that the tips came from his courier and not tortured prisoners.

Note that when I refer to the presidents themselves, though, I am mostly referring to their administration. I am very aware that it was a team effort and that we had excellent intelligence and troops, but Obama called the final shots and took a HUGE risk, probably in the same way that Bush took a risk with the intelligence and sent us to war. The difference is, this plan was thorough and smart enough to work. We don't blame the military when a bad plan doesn't work (like Iraq), so it's a double standard to give them all the credit when a good plan does work (like Osama). Can't we even give this administration credit for that? I don't understand. If the only thing we had to do was ask Special Forces to take care of bin Laden, Bush should have done it nine years ago, or at least at some point during the seven years he was in charge after 9/11.

All I know is that conservatives will have to come up with a different spin on why Obama is such a terrible President. The whole "weak on terrorists/lacking patriotism" rhetoric won't quite work anymore. Hasn't fear-mongering and attacking Obama been their main platform? I remember right after Obama was elected, my super conservative friend told me that bin Laden came out with a video congratulating Obama (of course, it was hearsay from her dad). I never found that video, and believe me, I looked for it. (That was the first and last time we talked about politics, especially since she said liberals were dumber than conservatives--present company excluded, of course. I actually tend to believe our differences lie in our priorities and motivations.)

I am not as gung ho about Obama as I used to be, but I still believe in many of his ideals. On some level, some of those ideals are alive in all of us. It's hard to break through the....well, politics, and do something about it, especially when half of the group is already determined to reject everything you propose. I think he truly has the country's best interests in mind, though, even though I don't agree with everything that he does. In fact, I would even say W. himself had mostly good intentions, but his cronies were bumbling, self-interested idiots (who were smart marketers, I'll give them that). Maybe all of this will make us pause and remember that we must set aside our differences to achieve a common goal. Pouting when we don't get our way and refusing to work together only keep us in a counter-productive gridlock. Osama is a modern-day Hitler, not Obama--or anyone else in American politics, for that matter. Some of us (Americans) got too caught up in our own imaginary bullshit and fear of the unknown. Now I'm waiting to see what's next and hoping that it ultimately fosters more peace than war across the globe.