More Thoughts About Bin Laden
May. 5th, 2011 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribA few additional thoughts:
1) In a perfect world, Bin Laden would have been captured alive. Since we don't live anywhere near perfect, as the commercial goes, Bin Laden dead and buried in the ocean is more than adequate for me.
Two thoughts from Top Ten Myths About Bin Laden's Death:
2) Bush 43 did not spend his time hunting Bin Laden. In fact, in 2006 he closed down the CIA department charged with finding him.
3) Don Rumbsfeld says we did not get the courier's name via waterboarding. Now, I don't recall saying that torture was never effective at getting information, but I do recall saying that torture was bad for America. Here is evidence that it was unneeded.
On Pakistan's involvement in hiding Bin Laden:
4) Pakistan suffers from the same type of problem as Colombia: the central government is weak and the bad guys are strong. This power imbalance makes Pakistan inherently unreliable. That and the fact that the type of compound Bin Laden was living in was not terribly unusual for the area means that it's possible for him to have been hiding there without government help.
5) On the other hand, Pakistan has interests that differ from America's. The biggest difference is that Pakistan wants a weak Afghanistan, and the Taliban are a tool to get that. The other difference is that the people in northern Pakistan are of the same ethnicity as southern Afghanistan, and these people share common goals and interests. In short, sometimes and for some people, helping America is not in their interests.
1) In a perfect world, Bin Laden would have been captured alive. Since we don't live anywhere near perfect, as the commercial goes, Bin Laden dead and buried in the ocean is more than adequate for me.
Two thoughts from Top Ten Myths About Bin Laden's Death:
2) Bush 43 did not spend his time hunting Bin Laden. In fact, in 2006 he closed down the CIA department charged with finding him.
3) Don Rumbsfeld says we did not get the courier's name via waterboarding. Now, I don't recall saying that torture was never effective at getting information, but I do recall saying that torture was bad for America. Here is evidence that it was unneeded.
On Pakistan's involvement in hiding Bin Laden:
4) Pakistan suffers from the same type of problem as Colombia: the central government is weak and the bad guys are strong. This power imbalance makes Pakistan inherently unreliable. That and the fact that the type of compound Bin Laden was living in was not terribly unusual for the area means that it's possible for him to have been hiding there without government help.
5) On the other hand, Pakistan has interests that differ from America's. The biggest difference is that Pakistan wants a weak Afghanistan, and the Taliban are a tool to get that. The other difference is that the people in northern Pakistan are of the same ethnicity as southern Afghanistan, and these people share common goals and interests. In short, sometimes and for some people, helping America is not in their interests.
