Did Osama Bin Laden win?

Did Osama Bin Laden win?

  • Total voters
    13
Status
Not open for further replies.
Charlie Don't Surf

Charlie Don't Surf

This article makes a compelling case for 'yes', that I believe.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/05/killing_bin_laden

Mr Balko observes that America's reaction to Mr bin Laden's monstrous piece de resistance on September 11th, 2001 "fundamentally altered who we are" in ways that should make us pause at least a moment before raising our tiny America flags:
  • We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
  • We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
  • In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
  • We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
  • The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are implicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
  • The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
  • Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)
  • The current president has also claimed the power to execute U.S. citizens, off the battlefield, without a trial, and to prevent anyone from knowing about it after the fact.
  • The Congress approved, the president signed, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a broadly written law making it a crime to advocate for any organization the government deems sympathetic to terrorism. This includes challenging the “terrorist” designation in the first place.
  • Flying in America now means enduring a humiliating and hassling ritual that does little if anything to actually make flying any safer. Every time the government fails to catch an attempt at terrorism, it punishes the public for its failure by adding to the ritual.
  • American Muslims, a heartening story of success and assimilation, are now harassed and denigrated for merely trying to build houses of worship.
  • Without a warrant, the government can search and seize indefinitely the laptops and other personal electronic devices of anyone entering the country.
  • The Department of Homeland Security now gives terrorism-fighting grants for local police departments across the country to purchase military equipment, such as armored personnel carriers, which is then used against U.S. citizens, mostly to serve drug warrants.
If all this doesn't make Osama bin Laden history's most successful terrorist, I can't imagine what would. If only his sickening legacy had died with him.
Click to expand...
More at the actual article.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

I agree with Radley 100% this time. Bin Laden got us to shred our own Constitutional rights in our fear of ambiguously defined concepts. No question he won. But now we can recover now, hopefully, even if it will be slow going.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are implicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
Click to expand...
Connecting drug use to terrorism is the only true thing that came out of all the Homeland security crap. Just look South of the Border.
 
C

Chibibar

I believe that Bin Laden did won after the 9/11.
Sure he is dead, but the terror message that he wants to pass to the U.S. did work. The U.S. has changed A LOT since 9/11
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

Mr Balko observes that America's reaction to Mr bin Laden's monstrous piece de resistance on September 11th, 2001 "fundamentally altered who we are" in ways that should make us pause at least a moment before raising our tiny America flags:

  • We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
  • We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
  • In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
  • We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
  • The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are implicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
  • The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
  • Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)
  • The current president has also claimed the power to execute U.S. citizens, off the battlefield, without a trial, and to prevent anyone from knowing about it after the fact.
  • The Congress approved, the president signed, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a broadly written law making it a crime to advocate for any organization the government deems sympathetic to terrorism. This includes challenging the “terrorist” designation in the first place.
  • Flying in America now means enduring a humiliating and hassling ritual that does little if anything to actually make flying any safer. Every time the government fails to catch an attempt at terrorism, it punishes the public for its failure by adding to the ritual.
  • American Muslims, a heartening story of success and assimilation, are now harassed and denigrated for merely trying to build houses of worship.
  • Without a warrant, the government can search and seize indefinitely the laptops and other personal electronic devices of anyone entering the country.
  • The Department of Homeland Security now gives terrorism-fighting grants for local police departments across the country to purchase military equipment, such as armored personnel carriers, which is then used against U.S. citizens, mostly to serve drug warrants.
If all this doesn't make Osama bin Laden history's most successful terrorist, I can't imagine what would. If only his sickening legacy had died with him.
Click to expand...
So anything on that list that's actually something new they started doing after 9/11?

And no, doing it to a new group of people doesn't count.
 
C

Chibibar

The airport thing is new after 9/11.

I use to remember to be able to actually MEET my parents at the gate and maybe even eating at the airport. Such options doesn't happen anymore after 9/11
I use to be able to carry a bottle of water, now I can't but I CAN purchase a 4$ bottle of water which I can purchase outside for 1$
The scatter body scanner
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

@Li3n said:
So anything on that list that's actually something new they started doing after 9/11?
Click to expand...
Quite a lot of it.

-the due process stuff is mostly new, especially in how it's now "legal" thanks to the Patriot Act
-Camp X-Ray wasn't around before 9/11
-anti-drug ads in the 80s and 90s were about street crime and bad home life
-the government made what used to be illegal wiretapping legal through the Pat Act and FISA
-being able to execute US citizens off a battlefield without trial or ability to redress
-it being a crime to advocate on the behalf of organizations deemed "terrorist" by the government, including challenging the moniker
-the airport thing which Chibi mentioned
-indefinite seizure of property, which was a Patriot Act addition
-that we have a Homeland Security department at all
-the ease with which any police department can now tool up for "terrorism" as paid for by DHS.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Seizure of property dates back to the US Civil War. It was a huge deal in the South during the 80's and 90's. If you were stopped on a traffic violation, and had large amounts of cash in the car... it now belonged to the jurisdiction that stopped you.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

sixpackshaker said:
Seizure of property dates back to the US Civil War. It was a huge deal in the South during the 80's and 90's. If you were stopped on a traffic violation, and had large amounts of cash in the car... it now belonged to the jurisdiction that stopped you.
Click to expand...
Seizure of property in the context of when you enter the country and have not committed any violations was not allowed in the 80s and 90s.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
If bin-laden's goals were to cause an international war where there were only losers then yes, he won. If they were to make us change the fundamental nature of our country then he didn't, and he never could.

The actions post 9/11 do not define who we are. What defines us is our ability to self-reflect and look at our choices and question if they were right. US history is filled with failures of judgement far worse than anything that happened in the last decade. We started illegal wars and ruthlessly deposed or even assassinated the rightful leaders of foreign countries. We dropped atomic bombs on non-military targets. For most of the 20th century we poisoned or infected minorities and prisoners to see what would happen to them, and before then we held that the color of a man's skin was what gave him the freedom we hold dear. We called out for our people to spy on their colleagues, friends, and family and encouraged them to cry red. We poured chemicals into the rivers until they caught on fire.

We have more shaming points in our history than Lindsey Lohan.

But these did not signal the death of our country. Because over time we realized that we had erred and we corrected our mistakes. We were able to do this because we are not an autocracy or even a plutocracy, and over time the actions of our government follow the will of the people. Authoritarian or aristocratic governments will always fail because they lack the necessary feedback from the populace to correct their mistakes.

This is something that Bin Laden could never beat, and I doubt he even understood it as he was raised in a plutocracy. He believed, as many do, that America's strength was it's military and it's soul was our individualistic freedom, and he could turn our strength against our soul. The reality is that our strength and our soul are the same, and that is our ability to adapt and correct through democratic process and self-awareness. Our military strength and our individualistic rights are results of that, not the sources.

Parts of the current states of affairs really only represent the modern era. Airports SHOULD have heightened security. The Barny Pfife PD will no longer suffice, and they NEED increased equipment and training. The excecution leaves something to be desired, but the status-quo was untennable.

Other parts represent questionable answers to new questions. What defines an attacking force when dealing with well organized highly funded international criminals (Al-Qaeda or more importantly the Mexican Cartles)? Should they be treated as enemy combatants, and warrant a military response, or internation criminals, and warrant a police response? And from this we have to ask where we draw the line on acceptable detention methods.

Clearly we have made many horrible choices as well. The detention and torture of innocent civilians without any oversight or our era of intolerance towards American Muslims will be added to the list of national historical shames, but they will also be used in our self-reflection as a way to improve ourselves in the future.

What makes a country or even a person great is the desire, willingness, and ability to improve for the sake of ourselves as well as others.
 
Covar

Covar

worth noting the targets of both atomic bombs were not just civilian cities. Hiroshima was actually chosen as the first target because it had the least amount of Allied POWs. Also worth noting that the scope of the weapons power was underestimated by everyone. Nagasaki was hit because the timeline we gave for surrender was too short for the Japanese to even figure out why all communication in and out of Hiroshima suddenly stopped.
 
Necronic

Necronic

Staff member
True that. Was wondering whether or not to include that one, because arguments go both ways, but I think most would agree that the methodology was psychological in nature and required the bombing of civilians.
 
MindDetective

MindDetective

Who is keeping score? I think saying bin Laden "won" is using biased, loaded language. He influenced our lives and the way we think in a very negative way. It would be ridiculous to say otherwise. It is also ridiculous to say he won.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

The Pan-Arab-Muslim World Caliphate did not happen. He's not the new king of Saudi Arabia. So I take it he did not reach his goals.

He did not expect the US to invade Afghanistan. Then when all the radical Muslims started pouring into Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan... that meant the trouble makers were not home to make life hard on their own nations.
 
Krisken

Krisken

Ooohh, are we doing this here now that the other thread got locked? We should definitely invite everyone back to this one for drinks and pretzels.
 
Cajungal

Cajungal

Staff member
Weird how peacefully we're discussing foodstuffs all of a sudden. Are pretzels the one food that people aren't willing to go to war over? Is it the anti-steak?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top