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With bin Laden dead, what's next? What's changed? Short-term, the U.S. must brace for the...
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Monday, May 2, 2011, 6:15 PM ETWith bin Laden dead, what's next? What's changed? Short-term, the U.S. must brace for the possibility of retaliation, and oil markets could see increased volatility. Long-term, the U.S. must decide whether to "press the advantage" in the Mideast or begin to pull back. For Obama, the political glow could last until Nov. 2012, but much can happen in 18 months.
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To all terrorist:
Give it up terrorism or face the same fate as Bin Laden.
I always have suspicion of the ISI because it was verified that they helped and trained Taliban fighters.....
It is very clear that the ISI was protecting Bin Laden, the fact that he had only three to four armed men with him clearly leads to this conclusion....
It is appearing that our "allies" in the middle east are not as secure as we thought and for good reason. Real friends are hard to come by, as we say. We have to earn respect and our policies have a lot of respect to earn.
Having said that, we have to keep the hard line but earn respect by keeping our noses out of their business and playing for keeps with their future welfare in ours and their best interests.
Other wise we are back to square one with terrorism being the status quo.
Obama will get some love for this, along with the other people who have been working on this forever, as he was involved and paying attention which was nice but now he has to figure out what next or people will wonder if he is a one-hit wonder.
American wins big as terrorists have to know that if you are on a hit list the search will grind on every day until you are dead or captured. Or getting water boarded in Gitmo. If nothing else they might start looking at their career choices as the glamour is wearing off.
It's a feel good, but getting terrorism under control means bringing social change to countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, creating jobs in those countries there so people don't have to join terror cells, improving trade etc. and of course cutting of the supply of money to the terrorists.
They feel like useless things and a waste of money - but IMO it would be cheaper than war and the only real solution.
If I was a tribal leader in those countries why would I want jobs for people and upward mobility? I want people under my control and doing my bidding and I will give them favors. And the women forget about it. They have no chance.
Our western commercial view and values cannot be overlaid on these countries at least not without force or extreme bribery. And it would take forever.
I say just have a strike force ready to go and if anyone like Osama pops up mouthing off and declares war on the US then give him what he is looking for. That is a lot cheaper than changing belief systems that have been around for centuries. When they are ready to change they will change.
Great post, but I must add that there has to be some overt form of 'gratitude' attached to this. Politics is not known for altruism. It has to be a win/win.
If it was an amount of money that was affordable I would say go for it but I believe it is beyond our capacity. Keep in mind the people who want change have all left and are living someplace else. What is left is the people who are entrenched.
Changing their minds is very difficult. However if we invest let's not bury it in the military budget.
Osama himself had several thosand followers, there are all kinds of Madrasas around the world teaching teenagers that anyone who doesn't believe or act in a certain manner should be "gotten rid of". How do you even identify everyone with such beliefs? Let alone find out if they are going to act on it and then deal with them?
Thomas the amount of money developed economies would have to invest in helping improve some infrastructure in some of these countries would be 1 hundredth of what a war costs us
It costs say $50K US to build a school in Pakistan * 1000 schools = 50 million USD.
To compare: 1 Tomahawk cruise missile costs 1.4 million before even accounting for the any additional cost of delivering a payload like the ships/ planes / crew / fuel / maintenance and training.
in there are two practicaly options -
a) Don't do anything and let them be - good or bad, we don't care unless they try to get on to US soil and cause damage.
b) Invest in development of their infrastructure and economy so they have better options, GDP growth and growing trade with US (we benefit too).
I'm not saying that we have to take approach b - approach a might be equally cost effective. But Bombing, killing and destroying infrastructure does us as a country little long term good.
There are also 7 Billion people in the world so what are the chances that some of them will hate us no matter what? We just have to live with some of this irrational hatred and not give them reason to hate us unnecessarily and take out the really bad ones.
We should be throwing a flag on the institutionalized hate organizations and the Madrasas are pretty high on that list. Funded with money from Saudi Arabia and pointed at us. Notice none of the Saudi royal family is going to those schools or strapping on bombs?
It costs the US a lot more to build anything because we have our military doing the work and they require bases, security and gunships. If we want to do these things then we need to get them under a different organization or do more funding and less of the work.
Whatever the case we are overspending right now and we need results for less money.
You've just described the CIA...
Dec 8 2009
"What will people say when we are gaining 100k+ jobs every month this time next year about Obama's policies?"
And now you say. "So, now you can make your investment choices with that "certainty" in mind."
And you say?
And I say, You don't have a leg to stand on. Shut the f... up.
Alternatives are not that attractive
Read your quote and then respond to the "official data". Remember your quote was in 2009 so we have to look at 2010 data. Also your 2011 data is questionable to say the least. We are not all lemmings.
As I said shut the f.. up
Also, my quote was in DECEMBER 2009.
If you don't trust the BLS, look at Gallup which just surveys people. It's economic indicators have been more positive than the government's for quite awhile now, especially on the job creation front.
www.gallup.com/poll/12...
And recently, ADP's payroll data has been more positive than BLS numbers as well.
But I know, everyone is in on the conspiracy. Of course.
Well done, Mr. President.
==================
Well indeed
To do this job done, he had to side step every vow he had gave to each Terry during and before 2008.
And while doing this, he never came into public dressed in military uniform unlike his predecessor in chief
Praised is deserved
One thing I like about Obama is that he is very well focused man. In recent presidential history he is one of the best president. Sending the US navy seals next to Pakistani army and get Osam need lot of courage. I hope he gets elected again.
You lefties are pure phonies.
BTW obama resisted all intelligence techniques that have brought results and Congressman King announced today that the bin laden kill was fruit of waterboarding. when does obama thank the waterboarders? when does he thank Bush?
And you should no better than making left/right generalizations. You are a libertarion for christs sake. I have been a democrat and and a now a libertarian and I would not volunteer for that mission. But does that mean no democrat would? Come on?
Oh, and he didn't get OBL.
Bush 43 is the first president in history to cut revenue and start a major war. During this period, our major economic competitor added about $3 trillion to their balance sheet, for about a $7 trillion dollar swing between us and them. If this is republican fiscal management in our national interest, we don't need any more of their medicine.
Bush was a disgrace to the uniform.
I thought the entire objection to torture was that it attempted to bring about a fate worse than death. So in that sense, yes, KIA is a better and more humane fate that years spent in some undisclosed CIA cell.
Bush was socially conservative but a wild ass spender. In that sense he was liberal. The left should love him and Obama does because he has kept the defense spending rolling.
However the "next threat" to the US is our government and their policies. Our policies and their disregard for other cultures and their needs is our problem. We reap what we sow.
Sure there are evil people and extremists but they have their reasons.
Pull out of the middle east, stop manipulating their governments and we will see the problems with the extremists end.
Remember Saddam was "our boy" for a long time.
Saying the President is just a figurehead is like saying that the CEO of JPM is just a figurehead. If that is true - please give me Jamie Dimon's job :)
I give Obama high marks for having the gonads to authorize the SEAL Team to do their job since they weren't suppose to perform any operations in Pakistan.
The US needs to take a long hard look at the Pakistani Leadership and Military and find out just who had been protecting OBL these past couple of years.
They have been supporting these groups for over 30 years now - so it is a bit funny that we were relying on them to "help" us find the terrorists. Yes they caught a few token guys - but the real deal was right under their nose all this time.
Glad to see this covert op just take care of the problem, even though I realize that if some other country was to fly a chopper into US in order to kill someone they didn't like - we'd probably call it terrorism or at least make a big deal out of it.
Obama Didn't ignore any of the intelligence, acted on the options and Osama was caught. Strong, true leadership. America is lucky to have such an intelligent president.
Whereas Obama is a very practical man. Under his administration US got respect around the world. During Bush's administration when I traveled outside the US, I was afraid to tell I was American.
You make me laugh. I am sure when you travelled in your liberal left wing circles of course they did not like Bush but they definitely wanted the US to make sure terrorists did not get to them personally and overrun their country. They wanted to talk disparangily about the guy but please make sure nobody hurts us. I can tell you conservatives around the world thought he was doing the best he could and that is a circle you probably have never even seen. Frankly there are a lot of idiots around the world just like here in the US and listening to them as if they have some great insight is a mistake. Most of them live in countries that used to think they ran the world and with the US leading the way there is a bit of jeaolusy
Obama is thought around the world to be a lot of talk and high level statements and then no action. This OBL killing was his most real action he has ever taken and it was risky so he will get some street cred for it. We will see where he goes next.
If anything people will want a dismantling of things like the Patriot Act and so forth and won't have the patience for that sort of thing any longer.
Show me the body -- other wise I ain't falling for it again.
Better yet, I want to see his birth certificate...:)
I look forward to seeing what the new Obama hater adjective will be.