Osama Bin Laden is dead. US forces shot and killed the leader of Al-Qaeda yesterday in a highly secure compound just 35 miles north of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The boy of Bin Laden was secured and identified him using a sample of his brain tissue – before being buried at sea in accordance with Muslim traditions. President Obama addressed the nation last night to say, “We can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda’s terror: justice has been done” So what happens now?
Setting aside the morale boosting effects that the death of Bin Laden will have on US forces and the consoling effects that the death will have on people who lost loved ones – and the political effects for President Obama – does taking out Bin Laden really change anything in our “War on Terror”? Does it at least validate our efforts in the last decade? Our nation is vastly different than we were ten years ago when we set out to get Bin Laden – and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find one person who would argue it has been change for the better. And as a result, there are more men, women, and children that want to kill America than before we started. And despite the trillions spent in our War on Terror and the news we been made – we can’t honestly claim we are any safer today.
Yeah, we got Bin Laden – a criminal is dead – but looking at the list of problems our country is STILL facing at this hour because we decided to react to a crime with a war – he was the least of our worries. It’s time to end our wars.
