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| Terror Networks |
| Bin Laden Lost Because He Was Wrong |
| 2011-05-07 |
| The United States has no purpose. That is perhaps its greatest achievement. America's founding document, its Declaration of Independence, allows that a state exists only to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's it. There's a curious lack of ambition in those words. The United States was not founded for the greater glory of anything, or as the necessary outcome of history, but for the freedom to collect figurines, to join a clogging troupe, to take a road trip. Yet these words, which carry no ideology whatsoever, are the ones that keep winning. This is the lesson of the past 10 years, and one Osama bin Laden, a man animated by a grandiose vision of restoring a 7th century Muslim empire, never grasped. The most successful organizing principle the world has ever known is a simple guarantee that we can buy and do things that have no point greater than the satisfaction of our own happiness. On Twitter on May 2 a Bahraini named Mubarak Mattar, in a translation from the Arabic by Global Voices, wrote, "With all our differences with al Qaeda, we are proud of the death of a Muslim man who was able to shake the world at a time all the Arab armies united couldn't do that. ... You are the only one who said 'No' in an era where the Arabs said 'Yes.' " In a spectacular, bloody way, Osama bin Laden said, simply, "no." This is not the philosophy of a new prophet in a clash of civilizations; it's the word of a nihilist. We feared the compelling power of his ideology, but what actually resonated was his raised fist. That's why it gives him too much to call him a monster. Remember him as a thug and murderer, but also as a self-obsessed diva with a gift for timing and spectacle. Bin Laden was a trust-funder who took up performance art. A 2010 International Monetary Fund report on economies in the Middle East and North Africa separated out the region's oil importers: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia. These countries all have total unemployment and youth unemployment far above global averages. To change any of this, writes the IMF, together they will need to create some 18.5 million full-time jobs by 2020. The report blames bloated public sectors, restrictive regulation, and education that fails to match training to jobs; it reads as if it had been written to validate Mohamed Bouazizi's despair. Bin Laden had no answer for it. That doomed him long before the Navy SEALs arrived at his compound. What I'd like to be able to say to myself, 10 years younger, is that Osama bin Laden will lose because nobody actually wants to live in a cave. Even bin Laden didn't want to live in a cave. As Bloomberg News reported, in Abbottabad he sent runners out for equal amounts of Coke and Pepsi, for Nestlé milk and the good-quality shampoos. The societies that make these things do not turn up their noses at the consumer and his whims, the needs that lack any justification larger than the personal. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #4 Bin Laden thought the U.S. was weak. I wonder what he thought in the final seconds when the Seals came through his bedroom door. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2011-05-07 16:47 |
| #3 Most Islamic states are basket cases living off international aid! Perhaps you could show them how to mass-produce exclamation points. It seems there's a market for them. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2011-05-07 11:16 |
| #2 These countries all have total unemployment and youth unemployment far above global averages. To change any of this, writes the IMF, together they will need to create some 18.5 million full-time jobs by 2020. The report blames bloated public sectors, restrictive regulation, and education that fails to match training to jobs; To me, this sounds like Obama's plan for the US, no? |
| Posted by: AlanC 2011-05-07 08:00 |
| #1 The economic model of an Islamic state guarantees failure! Without the oil how rich would the Saudis be? Most Islamic states are basket cases living off international aid! |
| Posted by: Angeretle Snore6772 2011-05-07 06:43 |