Osamanomics

Osama bin Laden is dead.

I can’t say I wasn’t relieved when I heard the news. While some sense of moral decency prevented me from partying in the street, I welcomed the long overdue symbolic victory in the War of Terror. After all of the money we spent, all of the trauma our troops suffered, all of the innocent deaths, somehow, someway, it was justified.

But ultimately, the long-term implications of bin Laden’s death are limited. We are not significantly closer to truly winning the War on Terror. Our overarching objectives remain nebulous at best and unachievable at worst. Sure, we can employ our vast intelligence network to find and kill the bin Laden’s of the world. A soldier sitting in a bunker in Arizona can use a joystick to blow up a terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan. But how many terrorists must we incinerate before we can declare “Mission Accomplished?” Is victory achievable, or have we entered into a perpetual state of militarized foreign policy?

Our strategy to “win” this poorly defined war seems to be bringing us closer to the latter. With every country invaded, with every civilian killed, with every economy destroyed, we give potential terrorists a compelling reason to hate the United States. Defeating a nearly invisible enemy with no delineated territory and a constant supply of fresh recruits may be impossible within a traditional understanding of military conflict.

Contrast this muddle with the clear objective presented by Osama bin Laden in October of 2004. His stated goal was to use American hubris as a superpower against us to engage us in an expensive and drawn out conflict, the same strategy that contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union after their invasion of Afghanistan. Bin Laden sought to wage an economic war by “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” From this perspective, bin Laden has dealt a devastating blow to the United States.

George Bush’s post-9/11 policies allowed bin Laden to effectively implement his strategy. Including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global War on Terror has already cost the United States up to $4 trillion. Military spending is a major factor in our current deficit woes. And as a result of two wars we can’t afford, Republicans want to reduce investments in our economy in order to “balance the budget.” Because the Bush administration allowed bin Laden to wage a war of “death by a thousand cuts,” we may suffer the death of the American Dream for many and the future prosperity for all through a thousand cuts of a different kind.

In military terms, one way to achieve victory is to prevent the enemy from accomplishing its objectives. Rather than allow bin Laden to contribute to our financial ruin, we should make smart reductions in military spending and prevent our deficit from continuing to balloon. President Obama’s praiseworthy decision to uphold his campaign promise to end the war in Iraq is certainly a start.

No, I’m not another bleeding-heart liberal who wants to weaken America’s national security to attain “world peace.” We do not have to sacrifice military strength to reign in our spending, quite the opposite. Instead of stationing troops all over the world, we should consolidate our forces to focus on more immediate threats. Rather than spending valuable resources developing the most sophisticated fighter jets, we should prioritize creating a military equipped to fight the battles of the 21^st century. We should focus on counter-terrorism, post-conflict reconstruction, and intelligence gathering. With the money we save, we should reinvest domestically to aid our faltering economy and build a stronger America for the future.

Let’s not hand victory to a dead man by giving Osama bin Laden what he wanted.

Let’s do better.