Did bin Laden Win?
Short answer: yes.
These reflections are prompted by this piece by Ezra Klein.
I've long thought that OBL basically won the moment that Bush decided to go into Iraq. The won-lost dichotomy doesn't really fit well here. OBL had to realize that attacking the U.S. was basically a suicide mission--for himself as well as the guys flying the planes. He never expected to win--not in the sense of, say, bringing down the U.S. and/or surviving. As soon as the first plane hit the first tower, he had to know that he was a dead man.
However, OBL succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He judo'ed the hell out of the U.S., and he lived longer than any reasonable person would ever have predicted. Without Bush's and Cheney's massive, irrational ploy to use 9/11 to pursue their disastrous, unrelated Iraq adventure, 9/11 would have been merely a disaster. Bush and Cheney, however, managed to turn it into a huge, smoking train wreck of a catastrophe. Their Iraq insanity cost more lives and generated far, far more injuries (many of them grievous) than 9/11. It also cost more money--the economic cost of 9/11 is estimated at close to $2 trillion, whereas the total cost of the Iraq invasion might very well be at around $3 trillion.
Imagine a kamikaze pilot in WWII. He aims to crash his plane into, say, a cruiser. He knows he won't survive, and he knows that act alone will not defeat the U.S. But he goes on his mission, and hopes that maybe--just maybe--he can take out the cruiser. That's a hell of a lot for one person to accomplish. He hits the cruiser...and somehow he's thrown clear of the explosion. But then he watches from the water as the rest of the task force reacts so irrationally that the impact of his attack is amplified beyond his wildest hopes. The leader of the task force has secretly harbored hopes of attacking an unrelated target, and he uses the attack as an excuse. This attack is not merely irrelevant to the war effort, but actually significantly undermines it. In the course of it, an aircraft carrier is sunk. Furthermore, the force turns away from its original target, which is reinforced in their absence, and now much more difficult to attack. The pilot himself--once right in the sights of the ships he attacked--is allowed to slip away, and live for ten years--ten years more than he had any right to live--before, after a massive expenditure of time and energy. Did the pilot win? Well, his attack provoked completely irrational action on the part of his target, and it ended up hurting itself far more severely than he could have ever reasonably hoped. It might be odd to say that he won--but he accomplished more than any reasonable person could ever have predicted.
Perhaps it's odd to say that OBL won--but he set up conditions that enabled Bush and Cheney to do more harm to the U.S. than he ever could have hoped to do.
Short answer: yes.
These reflections are prompted by this piece by Ezra Klein.
I've long thought that OBL basically won the moment that Bush decided to go into Iraq. The won-lost dichotomy doesn't really fit well here. OBL had to realize that attacking the U.S. was basically a suicide mission--for himself as well as the guys flying the planes. He never expected to win--not in the sense of, say, bringing down the U.S. and/or surviving. As soon as the first plane hit the first tower, he had to know that he was a dead man.
However, OBL succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He judo'ed the hell out of the U.S., and he lived longer than any reasonable person would ever have predicted. Without Bush's and Cheney's massive, irrational ploy to use 9/11 to pursue their disastrous, unrelated Iraq adventure, 9/11 would have been merely a disaster. Bush and Cheney, however, managed to turn it into a huge, smoking train wreck of a catastrophe. Their Iraq insanity cost more lives and generated far, far more injuries (many of them grievous) than 9/11. It also cost more money--the economic cost of 9/11 is estimated at close to $2 trillion, whereas the total cost of the Iraq invasion might very well be at around $3 trillion.
Imagine a kamikaze pilot in WWII. He aims to crash his plane into, say, a cruiser. He knows he won't survive, and he knows that act alone will not defeat the U.S. But he goes on his mission, and hopes that maybe--just maybe--he can take out the cruiser. That's a hell of a lot for one person to accomplish. He hits the cruiser...and somehow he's thrown clear of the explosion. But then he watches from the water as the rest of the task force reacts so irrationally that the impact of his attack is amplified beyond his wildest hopes. The leader of the task force has secretly harbored hopes of attacking an unrelated target, and he uses the attack as an excuse. This attack is not merely irrelevant to the war effort, but actually significantly undermines it. In the course of it, an aircraft carrier is sunk. Furthermore, the force turns away from its original target, which is reinforced in their absence, and now much more difficult to attack. The pilot himself--once right in the sights of the ships he attacked--is allowed to slip away, and live for ten years--ten years more than he had any right to live--before, after a massive expenditure of time and energy. Did the pilot win? Well, his attack provoked completely irrational action on the part of his target, and it ended up hurting itself far more severely than he could have ever reasonably hoped. It might be odd to say that he won--but he accomplished more than any reasonable person could ever have predicted.
Perhaps it's odd to say that OBL won--but he set up conditions that enabled Bush and Cheney to do more harm to the U.S. than he ever could have hoped to do.
posted by Winston Smith at
2:45 PM
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