I have to admit, I didn't react to the news of bin Laden's death very much when I heard it. I was in the midst of preparing for an important exam the very next day, and it wasn't significant enough to me to derail my focus on that. I've had plenty of time to think about it since then, and also plenty of time to absorb some of the constant coverage about it. My mood was and remains somewhat satisfied at bottom yet also subdued. Death is not something I feel like rejoicing over in general, and there are real risks involving possible terrorist retaliation and a strained relationship with Pakistan, so I think it prudent to focus on moving forward.
I am not writing to share my mood, however. I want to reflect on an opinion I heard last night which was new to me and struck me as insightful, if also a bit hard to swallow. Rachel Maddow opened her show last night with a segment on bin Laden through the lens of economics. She gave a bio that focused on his wealthy upbringing, summarized statements he made before and after attacks about wanting to cripple the American economy, and presented a lot of colorful charts outlining economic damages our country has suffered since 9/11. The main point of all this was borrowed from a piece written eariler that day by Ezra Klein (which I have since also read). The thesis in both of these presentations is that from the very beginning, one of bin Laden's goals was to drive America into debt it could not repay, and that in a number of ways, both direct and indirect, he was successful.
Such a reminder of the terrorist mastermind's success, especially success that we're still dealing with today, is quite sobering. I do not think that his success was complete, and I do think in the long term America will recover, but the question is: how? Will we deal with the financial crisis he at least exacerbated by remaining true to our values and proving that liberty prevails in the end? Or will we compromise in the name of emergency and expediency and have as a result a needier populace and a weaker republic?
I can picture the classic fiscal conservative taking these ideas and running with them, saying that this proves how important the debt crisis is, and how we must be willing to sacrifice anything to defeat this last scar of terror. This is precisely what scares me about all of this. If we sacrifice programs like Medicare and Social Security in order to quell this menace, that is a loss, not a win. When a city is under attack, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, and innocent children don't become casualties of war until the enemy has already breached the wall and has free run of everything.
Now we can see how insidious the plan of terror is. More than money, more than human lives, Osama bin Laden was always targeting our values, the beating heart of our nation. The attack of 9/11 opened cracks in the wall of our ideology, allowing opposing thoughts in. For the sake of security, prominence, and prosperity in the world we are tempted to abandon principles that make America what it is. From giving up some of our rights to privacy for the sake of counter-terror intelligence to sacrificing safety net programs in order to finance expensive wars, the demands of our response to terror have eroded the values our country stands for.
Bin Laden is not the source of all of these problems. Indeed, we may have encountered them even if he had never left his horse stables to become a militant. However, his passing gives us opportunity to reflect on this legacy: He understood the weak points in our system and our national psyche, and he blew a hole in them which we will still be patching long after his death. Let's be careful how we heal, so that we can emerge a stronger and better nation, and in so doing have our true victory over Osama bin Laden.
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