America is still collectively blowing itself in celebration of finally snuffing some seven foot golem in in Pakistan. It's all far from over -- the celebrating that is. The actual war has been over for a long time but expect plenty of noise a year from now about Obama finishing Bush's mission. But somewhere under all these jubilations is a stark and ugly fact no one wants to admit --
He still won.
He's dead, his lieutenants are dead, and his movement is in steep decline as cranky Muslim teenagers turn to jihading against their own opressive governments -- or the nearest US patrol -- but none of that matters.
Because he still fraking won.
It's hard for a culture so immersed in comforting delusions to even see this. People have conveniently forgotten the decade of lost wars, economic failure, and general bad craziness we subjected ourselves to all in the name of slotting this guy. And that's the real kicker -- Osama bin Laden provided the money and the logistics for those 19 true believers to murder three thousand people but every other misery afterwards was our own damn fault. We've more than exceeded 'Sama's body count of our own people just trying to catch his hairy ass.
From any perspective, that's a net win for the bad guy. So what if he's dead now? He already beat us ten years ago.
But, but...we got the bad guy! We had badass Navy Seals go in there and take him out in a blaze of fire and glory! That makes us awesome! Think of it like a video game; if you get the bad guy in the end, all the hours of work and frustration (here metaphors for money and lives) were totally worth it! The lesson to all bad guys out there is, America will destroy itself if it has to, but in the end we WILL get you!
ReplyDelete