10 May 2011
The Lessons from a Mission Accomplished
Why has the killing of Osama Bin Laden accomplished our mission in Afghanistan? As Leslie Gelb says in his OpEd article in the May 9, 2011, Wall Street Journal, America’s beef was over the Taliban’s hosting of Al Qaeda. Bin Laden’s riches were what enabled them to do so. Now that he’s gone, it is very unlikely that anyone with the extremist views of a Bin Laden will command the wealth needed to mount as difficult and expensive a plot as 9/11.
We have learned a couple of lessons, though. Even if we nearly bankrupt ourselves, we cannot easily displace a despicable regime, particularly one that legitimately governs a remote corner of the world. Patience, economic development and information exchange will do that.
The second lesson is that we can never again ignore threatening plots no matter how remote the corner of the world in which they are cooked. That is the flip side of the same advances in information technology that promise the eventual worldwide emergence of equitable popular government. The ultimate danger for America is again blissfully to conduct ourselves as if globalization only has benefits—it also makes neighbors of our enemies.
Why has the killing of Osama Bin Laden accomplished our mission in Afghanistan? As Leslie Gelb says in his OpEd article in the May 9, 2011, Wall Street Journal, America’s beef was over the Taliban’s hosting of Al Qaeda. Bin Laden’s riches were what enabled them to do so. Now that he’s gone, it is very unlikely that anyone with the extremist views of a Bin Laden will command the wealth needed to mount as difficult and expensive a plot as 9/11.
We have learned a couple of lessons, though. Even if we nearly bankrupt ourselves, we cannot easily displace a despicable regime, particularly one that legitimately governs a remote corner of the world. Patience, economic development and information exchange will do that.
The second lesson is that we can never again ignore threatening plots no matter how remote the corner of the world in which they are cooked. That is the flip side of the same advances in information technology that promise the eventual worldwide emergence of equitable popular government. The ultimate danger for America is again blissfully to conduct ourselves as if globalization only has benefits—it also makes neighbors of our enemies.
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