Osama Bin Laden is dead

Clinton was very flowery in her statements toward Pakistan. It appears that we are being routed the long, hard one from Pakistan. Will be interesting to see how this falls.

...and they have nukes.

Quote:

...and they have nukes.

Yes it look like we might need to take them away from them.

It would be not wanting the government to fall and these nukes to fall into the hand of the Taliban which would account for the USA trying to pretend like Pakistan had nothing to do with Osama's death.

Who crash plan loads of people into buildings

I wouldnt have notified the indigenous assets either. They cannot be trusted no matter what. Theyve demonstrated this at least 2 times before.

I think you're on to something. When I heard about the "palace"-type housing and its close proximity to military bases, it looks like Pakistan knowingly protected OBL from us.

...and they have nukes.

Lying to the American people will not help Pakistan any.

Gee, US spy satellites have been going over the whole globe with a fine tooth comb for years. They know you have a beauty mark on your butt, Lash, and you think they could have missed this humongous compound

The Osama we knew
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Tue May 03 2011, 00:53 hrs

In death, as in life, Osama bin Laden will be over-interpreted. His crimes are easily described. He masterminded an extraordinary network that was responsible for some audaciously murderous acts of terror. There is no adequate moral framework in which to comprehend his death. There will perhaps be some closure for the families who suffered immeasurably by what he unleashed. But whether the terms of justice or revenge measure up to the sheer convulsions he unleashed is an open question.
Osama became a force, far in excess of the violence he unleashed, fundamentally transforming our world. Ideologically, he created an extraordinary churning in the Muslim world: a potent combination of inner-directed resentment, violent fervour and anti-imperialism. He fought his own reactionary milieu with an unprecedented fanaticism. He challenged the established order and produced a crisis of authority inside Islam. When the entire world was putting its weight and force of arms behind reactionary regimes like Saudi Arabia, he created his own geopolitical convulsions. In an age that prized the nation state, he spawned a violent global movement. He became everything: an agent, an idea, an ideology, a pretext. These ideological effects, as far-reaching as they were, will not endure. The Americans may have killed bin Laden. But the ideology he unleashed will die if the democratic revolutions in the Arab world succeed in full measure. His greatest ideological nightmare, modernity, has an uncanny way of reasserting itself.

But his enduring effect is more subtle. He redefined the way in which we think of power in the modern world. A small group using violence and artfully manipulating the media could create disproportionate effects on a scale unimaginable. He was never going to defeat the power of liberalism ideologically. But he managed to transform liberal practice for the worst. Freedom in liberal states now comes against a backdrop of surveillance, militarisation, suspicion and human rights compromises. This legacy will take a long time to undo, if ever.

What will be the consequences of his death? The immediate consequence is a much-needed boost for President Obama. It will come as a much-needed palliative for American pride that was being relentlessly dented in all quarters. And the first rule of international politics is that psychological effects are more far-reaching than any assessment of interests. The politics behind Osama has always been even more shadowy than his movements were. There is still no reckoning of the forces that supported him and used him. Just the circumstances of his death, barely 800 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy, should leave no one in any doubt that he was, all these years, being politically used and protected by the ISI in Pakistan. The US has, for more than a decade, been either unbelievably gullible or ominously cynical in relation to Pakistan. In a curious way, Osama’s death only deepens the mystery of US and Pakistani conduct; it does not resolve it.

But future events turn on two questions. If the ISI was using him in life, what are their calculations about his death? Did he die because his protectors now found his death convenient? Or did he die despite his protectors? The US will have to play this narrative very delicately. The one thing you know about the ISI establishment is that it is very good at playing heads we win, tails you lose. If this operation is seen in any way as a humiliation for the ISI, it will get its back. Nothing is more dangerous than the core Pakistani establishment licking its wounds. And the one thing Osama has taught us is this: there is no force more lethal than the sense of being wounded. If the ISI was in on it, it will extract its pound of flesh.

How his death is represented is going to be crucial in determining future politics. Some argue that his death exposed Pakistan’s complicity; others that it demonstrates their cooperation with the West. But whether Pakistan was duplicitous or cooperative will probably not matter much. It will remain indispensable for the US for two reasons. First, if this allows the US to claim victory and hasten a withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan will remain important even in a post-withdrawal scenario. Second, Osama’s death will not do away with the most important pretext for heavy US adjustment towards Pakistan: the blackmail that nuclear weapons may fall into the wrong hands. Unless the US calls Pakistan’s bluff on this proposition, its hands remain tied.

The second question is this: what impact will Osama’s death have on radical militant groups and movements, both inside and outside Pakistan? The short answer is: probably very little. Many of the terrorist groups have been sustained by the support of some state or the other. Those geo-political considerations that lead the states to support some groups are not likely to diminish. Or rather they will diminish only for other larger considerations. In the case of Pakistan the core question still remains: Osama or no Osama, does the support of terror groups still constitute a core of the Pakistani state’s strategic orientation towards both Afghanistan and India? Second, radical politics, such as it exists, is shaped by larger social and political forces. To what extent does al-Qaeda remain an important inspiration? All accounts seem to suggest, not very much. But Osama’s death is probably going to allow for a little bit of ideological clearing. Instead of an ideological construction of a single war on terror, we will now place different groups more firmly in their geopolitical and social settings. It will be harder to personify all terrorism behind a single face.

The regime in Pakistan still has to handle two delicate political issues. The point about large terror networks, like civil wars, is this. Once structures of violence have been put in place they don’t simply disappear. Some will doubtless try acts of revenge to polarise politics further. But the second question is the degree of political blow-back inside Pakistan. I think it is fair to say that there is probably not much popular support for Osama at this point; the chances of a popular backlash are remote. But if the sense grows that Pakistan is being humiliated in the aftermath of this attack, then the psychological dynamics of politics could change. This is where the politics of representation will be important.

Osama may be gone. His tactics made him impossible to deal with in political terms. Whether his death will leave us politically wiser is an open question.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi

But his enduring effect is more subtle. He redefined the way in which we think of power in the modern world. A small group using violence and artfully manipulating the media could create disproportionate effects on a scale unimaginable. He was never going to defeat the power of liberalism ideologically. But he managed to transform liberal practice for the worst. Freedom in liberal states now comes against a backdrop of surveillance, militarisation, suspicion and human rights compromises. This legacy will take a long time to undo, if ever.

Just the circumstances of his death, barely 800 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy, should leave no one in any doubt that he was, all these years, being politically used and protected by the ISI in Pakistan. The US has, for more than a decade, been either unbelievably gullible or ominously cynical in relation to Pakistan. In a curious way, Osama’s death only deepens the mystery of US and Pakistani conduct; it does not resolve it.

but surprisingly friendly to the USA.