"Soon after President-elect Obama enters office, military efforts against al-Qaeda in the Pakistan/Afghanistan border area will be stepped up. As the withdrawal of troops from Iraq starts, significant resources will be reassigned to hunt for bin Laden.
On the Afghanistan side, major efforts to reduce the available support to bin Laden will be made, with U.S troops establishing a presence along the border. On the Afghanistan side, extreme pressure will be placed on Pakistan to allow similar, joint U.S/Pakistan missions. Air and satellite reconnaissance will also be stepped up.
By 2011, there will have been one more significant terrorist act on European soil, although several smaller plots will have been uncovered and successfully thwarted. Osama bin Laden will be finally located and killed by Predator drone or similar action around October 2011, assisted by Special Forces on the ground. No attempt to capture bin Laden alive will be made."
There are numerous points to be be debated, but ultimately, do you believe:
President Obama will succeed in eliminating the U.S.A’s No. 1 enemy, and if so, when, how and to what effect?
As long as we let him live, but that opinion is based on an assumption that his deputies have a price. Which they, as well as all of us, if we get down to it, do.
You’re saying you think his deputies would give him up for a sufficiently large reward? I doubt it. How much would someone have to pay you to get you to betray your country? I imagine they’re at least that loyal to bin Laden.
Plus, giving a bunch of money to a bin Laden deputy doesn’t seem like a wise investment for America to be making.
Osama doesn’t really matter anymore, except for the prestige the U.S. would regain from capturing him. It’s not like he can really command much of anything while in hiding. He might even be dead, and that’s the thing: no one knows because he has little actual power anymore.
Certainly though, no shady characters should be payed large sums of money for turning him in. U.S. aid was the way most of these guys got into power in the first place. It’s not like Osama was wearing a neon sign saying, “I’m going to cause 9/11” when the U.S. gave the Taliban weapons and money to fight the Soviets.
We have no idea at all what authority he is able to exercise. Reverting to a pre-electronic command and control system does not stop him from exercising strategic control. Humanity managed to wage war before Marconi.
We also have no evidence whatsoever he is dead.
And given the nature of the North-West Frontier ‘in hiding’ is probably quite salubrious. He’s not cowering in a cave.
Govenments love the ‘al-Qaida’ joker card. They play it whenever any terrorist event happens. Why get rid of your most useful tool ?
The govenments, the media and the population all understand the implications of the phrase and there is always some self serving twat to give its use an air of legitimacy Like this:
"Dominic Armstrong of Aegis Defence Services, a London-based security firm, said: <snip> “…These attacks look very much to be the work of Islamists, and not Muslims of the more traditional Indian sectarian type, but of a more sinister international flavour, with distinct hallmarks of al-Qaida, although probably at subsidiary/affiliate level”.
These are ‘sinister international’ terrorists - the ones who want Americans to wear the veil !
Dominic Armstrong has a vested interest in making this look as threataning as possible. The media want to make as scary as story as possible - so they seek out Dominic and get to report about an ‘al-Qaida style attack’. It really doesnt matter whether Bin Laden is dead or alive at this point.
While we have no evidence that he’s dead, we also have no evidence that he’s alive. Seems to me that if he were alive, he’d be taunting us on a fairly regular basis, with videos or newscasts or something. The absence of evidence that he’s alive (when he WANTS publicity) is pretty indicative that he’s dead.
Why do you think he wants publicity? I’m thinking it’s a pretty damn sure bet none of these people think like we do. We’ve had video’s from him referencing current events (current at the time it surfaced in 2007) so we know he wasn’t killed at Bora Bora.
If he was dead I think his death as a martyr would be used as a recruitment tool and pretense for savagery.
But who knows how they think. He could be dead but at this point it is just wishful thinking.
I’d appreciate it if the OP would explain the premise a bit further. Are we assuming that bin Laden himself continues to actually come up with or facilitate (in any practical sense) any terrorist actions? Are we assuming that Islamist terrorism would suddenly dry up if he were captured or killed?
Hey, I’m all for bringing to justice someone who presumably was responsible for one of the most successful terrorist actions of all time, but from a practical standpoint, I’m a bit unclear on what concrete ends another few hundred million dollars spent on trying to catch him would accomplish.
At this point killing him will have no practical effect on terrorism (beyond maybe making it worse with the inspiration for martyrdom). But let’s do it anyway for justice.
But you point out the problem with Bush’s approach to terror. You don’t eliminate malaria by swatting mosqiuitoes, you do it by draining the swamp. And by ‘swamp’ I mean the sea of grievances, real and imagined that have to be addressed or compromised with so we can isolate the hard core from their support.
That is why we are losing in Afghanistan. We can kill as many Taliban as we like, there are always more recruits. And we keep aiding and abetting this with our careless approach to civilian lives. There’s no point in killing a dozen terrorists if in doing so you slaughter a bunch of innocents. That just, particularly in a tribal vengeance society, creates more.
And the repeated bombing of wedding parties is just so far beyond stupid it is criminal.
