So the son of a bitch is dead. Good. Now <\/i>can we get the hell out of Afghanistan and stop having to take our shoes off at the airport? I know the answer to both questions is “probably not,” which for me beggars a third one: what practical good did bin Laden’s death accomplish?<\/p>\n
Don’t get me wrong. I’m as thrilled as anyone that this particular “i” has finally been dotted. It’s been a long time coming. But after all the cheering dies down, what, if anything, has actually changed? Al Qaeda is still out there, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them stage a bunch of retaliatory attacks, possibly even here on American soil; we’re still hemorrhaging resources into a country that’s known as a historical breaker of empires (and our empire is so very close to being broken, isn’t it?); we’re still running the anti-American gulag at Guantanamo (yes, I’ve heard some of the intelligence that got bin Laden came from Gitmo; doesn’t change the fact that the place’s very existence runs counter to all the American values I learned as a kid from Star Trek <\/i>and Schoolhouse Rock<\/i>); the PATRIOT Act is still in effect, making a mockery of our Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted search and seizure; the TSA is still getting its jollies without even buying us dinner first; people still need jobs; the ice caps are still melting; we’re still running out of oil; Hollywood is still creatively bankrupt (although there’s sure to be a movie or three about today’s big story); and the Republicans are still trying to dismantle 75 years of social progress. In short, the 21st Century continues to suck. Hard.<\/p>\n
<\/i>On the other hand, bringing down the monster who is directly responsible for steering our nation into the Bizarro-world dimension we’ve inhabited for the past 10 years has had an undeniably positive effect on the country’s psyche. I noticed on my way into work this morning that a lot of people are walking with a renewed spring in their step, and the prevailing mood seems to be, if not actually happy, than incrementally less miserable than it’s been in a very long time. I find myself thinking of Doolittle’s Tokyo raid<\/a> that accomplished very little tactically speaking, but was a huge morale booster in the dark months after Pearl Harbor. Bin Laden’s execution is perhaps the same sort of event… it didn’t really change a damn thing, as I’ve noted, but everybody’s feeling better because of it. And I must confess, that includes myself. <\/p>\n Of course, it could just be that the days are finally starting to warm up, and the tulips in the downtown sidewalk planter boxes are looking lovely… that always makes me feel a little happier…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So the son of a bitch is dead. Good. Now can we get the hell out of Afghanistan and stop having to take our shoes off at the airport? I know the answer to both questions is “probably not,” which for me beggars a third one: what practical good did bin Laden’s death accomplish? Don’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}