Roach: Bin Laden Brought the Best out of America
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
At long last Osama bin Laden has been eliminated as a threat to U.S. freedom. If you were watching TV late Sunday evening an announcement came over the airwaves that President Obama would be delivering an important message to the American public. I immediately thought about "Independence Day" and an alien invasion, but the news was inexorably better – the man who threatened national security more than any other person on the planet for the past 15+ years had been eliminated.
I was watching my Phillies take on the New York Mets and even before the President’s comments there were rumblings throughout the crowd. Those rumblings grew to chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.” I flipped around to a news station and saw the unbelievable headline “Osama bin Laden: Dead”.
Osama tried to destroy the American spirit, instead he inspired it
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTOsama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, believed this about us Americans:
America is a great power possessed of tremendous military might and a wide-ranging economy, but all this is built on an unstable foundation which can be targeted, with special attention to its obvious weak spots. If America is hit in one hundredth of these weak spots, God willing, it will stumble, wither away and relinquish world leadership. [emphasis added]
His aim was to destroy our psyche and to kill with a thousand paper cuts as it were. He believed attacks such as the one in New York City almost 10 years ago would cripple us. However, it had the opposite effect. We didn’t have less resolve after 9/11 but increased resolution to root out terror. Some would argue we went overboard with this notion, but without question on September 12, 2001 Americans were united in our determination to find and destroy whoever was responsible for the attack on our greatest city. It took 10 years, hundreds of operatives, a few defense secretaries, two presidents, and countless number of mocking videos by bin Laden but here we are victorious.
Despite our differences over abortion, gay marriage, budget tenets, the sales tax, entitlement programs, immigration, unions, and everything in between those who seek to terrorize us should do so at their peril. We are committed to fighting for the freedoms we enjoy and will not hesitate to strike anyone who would actively challenge our ideals.
Are we innocent to any wrong doing? Not at all. We are an imperfect people, living in an imperfect land, striving towards a perfect democratic ideal. An experiment that for the last 230+ years has taken the castoffs of the world and turned them into the world leader.
Terrorism will not destroy us, but it will bring out the best in us.
What‘s our next target in the War on Terror?
First, I hate the phrase “war on terror.” Who is terror and is bin Laden’s death the signal that terror is going to surrender? Answer: I don’t know and probably not. Bin Laden’s death is beneficial to Americans for two reasons:
• Bin Laden’s death brings closure to the terrible events on 9/11
• Terrorist lose a capable and well funded commander in their pursuit to crumble the fabric of American society.
Don’t think that with bin Laden out of the picture, we can return to pre-9/11 international comfort. No, as a country we’ve made too many enemies and been blamed for too many atrocities to think that by this man’s death the war on terror is over. This isn’t “mission accomplished” so much as we’ve gained a strategic advantage and send a message to the next bin Laden that we will not go quietly into the night.
Bin Laden hoped to destroy that resolve, but in the end felt its sting. How’s that for an unstable foundation?
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