Osama bin
Forgotten
Remember
him?President Bush has said "I truly am not that concerned about him .... I just don't spend that much time on him." He actually said this about a man who ostensibly killed 3000 Americans. Of course, this was probably just a ploy to try and minimize the ongoing embarrassment of not being able to get bin Laden, but still .... quite a thing to say about someone supposedly responsible for the worst criminal act in US history, not to mention the two wars we're currently fighting because of him.
However indifferent Bush claims to be about bin Laden, I for one would like to get him. I shared some thoughts on how to do this with a few friends shortly after the 9/11 attacks:
"Assuming OBL actually is the closest thing to a living perpetrator we are going to get then we should make what case we can against him before the UN and then properly issue a warrant and have a go at getting him. Assuming he's not holed up somewhere down a back alley in Karachi or Lahore (which is where I would be if I were him), with time and ideally a minimum of fuss it should hopefully prove possible to eventually track him down and then at most a few hundred helicoptered and air refueled special forces types should be able to corner him and, after the very brief but nonetheless sincere formality of attempted capture, laser designate him and have F-18s bomb him to spaghetti."
If we had followed the above plan, bin Ladin might well be in prison right now, or more likely dead. In any event the plan could not possibly have failed as spectacularly as Bush's murderous pin the tail on the donkey "shock and awe" approach has.
I would further note my above speculation that bin Laden was in Karachi or Lahore. I didn't pull those cities out of a hat. Major al-Qaida figures have subsequently been captured in them. As I wrote shortly after 9/11:
"Still, if this guy is as smart as he's made out to be and since he had the initial play it seems to me he would have thought enough moves ahead to know we would come after him and so make a point of not being where we expected him to be, and if I wanted to lose myself somewhere in that part of the world then down deep in thickest Karachi is where I would go. If that's where he is we might as well have left our jets and satellites at home. Probably the best hope of tracking him down would be to quietly talk to the right people and keep upping the reward."
Regrettably, Bush instead chose a path which has killed thousands, wasted billions, and turned Osama bin laden into a hero throughout the Middle East.
And just to tack it on, here's the rest of my post 9/11 plan from back when:
"Then our valiant warriors should tidy up as they wait for the helicopters to come retrieve them and fly them the hell out of whatever desolate (place) they are in, and then we should have some big 'ole expensive secret computer somewhere calculate just how much money and time and how many lives and crashed airplanes and demolished buildings it will take before we kill every pissed off Moslem in the world, and then George and the boys should have a big 'ole conference in a big 'ole map room somewhere with glowing screens and stuff and decide just how much more of this we really want to do and exactly why, and then modify our foreign policy accordingly. This new policy could be marketed as "Arabiafication" or "regional autonimizing" or maybe "following our principles for a change and as an added bonus getting our big fat sweaty pink western infidel military butts the hell out of a bunch of (despotic) countries so their wild eyed Quran thumping fanatics don't come over to our country and screw it up as bad as theirs". You should share this plan with your congressman, as he may not have thought of it yet."
addendum:
(CNN, 8/22/06)- The United States unleashed an onslaught on Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban, but bin Laden slipped away. By most accounts, it's because the United States did not have enough boots on the ground, not enough U.S. soldiers to pin him down and block off escape routes in December 2001.
"In the first two or three days of December, I would write a message back to Washington recommending the insertion of U.S. forces on the ground," Gary Berntsen, the leader of a secret CIA unit pursuing bin Laden at the time, told CNN. "I was looking for 600 to 800 Rangers, roughly a battalion. They never came."
... Let me go cut and paste this again- "at
most a few hundred helicoptered and air refueled special forces types should
be able to corner him and .... bomb him to spaghetti."
Didn't happen.
Could have.
Didn't.
