[Colonel Kangaroo]

In the future "punitive expedition" should be the term on the minds of our bipartisan elite instead of concepts such as "nation building" and "coalition of the willing".

[Lou L]

In retrospect, the 9-11 strikes were strategically successful. If the US did nothing, we’d slow the rate of spending , but look ineffective and weak in our response. Attack the middle east, at a near invisible target, and we spend a large fortune and waste significant resources doing so.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Osama bin Laden's goal to bankrupt America is working

If he had the goals of greatly increasing the size of the federal government, increasing domestic surveillance of innocent citizens to bizarre levels and making airline travel incredibly obnoxious, those are all working too.

[freekitty]

You would think Osama’s cousin is Obama.

[puppypusher]

Bin Ladin failed.Our own government is doing what BinLadin only dreamed about.

[mission9]

Hmmm. American bankruptcy Osama’s Plan???? Was it his plan for Greece, Portugal, Italy, and the Euro too?

In the US, Trillions of dollars of debt were added by the housing collapse, courtesy of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and derivative brokers. Even without this insult to injury, America was going to go bankrupt because of out of control entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,welfare, food stamps, housing subsidies, transportation subsidies, student loans.

The 789 billion bail out of the banks was more than ALL of the wars that the US has ever fought.

Compared to the price of massive government failures, the ENTIRE war on terror is just a cheap carnival side show.

It would be nice to have a convenient scapegoat like Osama, but the truth is still, an out of control government is imploding, not that the WOT is bankrupting us.

[Iron Munro]

Osama bin Laden's goal to bankrupt America is working

That's because he has Obama Bin Lyin' to carry on his work.

[devolve]

[The Working Man]

Americans should be really agitated about this, but they are either ignorant or apathetic.

---

This is an incredibly true statement. I have a slightly different take on this. I have for sometime now been thinking about how nations inevitably end. And are reborn into a either a better or worse nation than what they started out with.

In our case I see two nearly equal groups with a vast apathetic portion of the population in between. One group wishes to tear down the nation and rebuild it into a form of Utopia. The other group wants it to remain the same or better yet go back in time to a Better America.

What I believe and yes, FEAR, is that the group that wants to go back to a better time will eventually throw up their hands in disgust and work actively to destroy the nation from within hoping that they will be the victors and the nation will be rebuilt anew into a facsimile of what once was.

In any case the vast apathetic portion of the populace will be the biggest losers. Why? Because the comforts and cradle to grave welfare they now receive and covet will by necessity be removed from them. On one side by the necessity that it cannot be afforded any longer and by the the side in repudiation of the policies that brought that welfare state into existence.

Mark my words BAD times are a-coming.

[wrencher]

Nation Building and coalitions are a modern failure, yet another failed policy one can blame on (as others posted) apatheic, television addicted Americans dulled by decades of affluence. It’s coming to an end.

Solving Muslim’s problems are not our concern, we only need to make them understand to leave us out of it. Nuke Islam’s top holy locations and it will all be ended quite cheaply. No more Haj, Allah as extinct as Thor. Before WW2 the USA knew that to win wars it was necessary to kill the enemy until they tired of dying, and control them by force for however many generations it took to make them understand.

You cannot nation build ignorant Muslims into anything, they are primitives, mired in the Dark Ages.