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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Ambassador Chris Stevens Is Dead; Al-Qaeda Is Alive

Rand Simberg

In our last discussion of Obama campaign myths, I recalled Joe Biden’s campaign bumper sticker that “Bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive.” We dismantled the latter part of it there. Now it’s time to take on the “Bin Laden is dead.”

Now just as GM is literally (as Joe Biden would say, whether it was or not) alive, if on life support, bin Laden is certainly dead, even if the evidence was disposed of, but in both cases, the phrases were code. With regard to the latter, it is code for “we beat al-Qaeda.” But in order to decode it, one must accept the premise that Osama bin Laden was identically equal to al-Qaeda, and that it would not survive his being fed to the fishes. And that is and always was nonsense.

We were not at war with Osama bin Laden. Unlike Hitler, he did not invent the ideology. He merely took an existing one, and implemented it in a way unprecedented in modern times (though it had been in full force for centuries in the past — unfortunately, most people are unaware of history). He is not, and never was, essential to its survival. There was no signing of a surrender on the deck of the Missouri tonight. The troops cannot come home simply because we killed one guy who had been on the run for years.


Obama went to Cairo to proclaim a new era in relations. Lowering the seas and healing the planet was not enough, now we would be friends with Islam. Then Islam would be friends with us.

Yes, a little over three years after the revolution of new Arab relations with the U.S., Barack Obama is being burned in effigy overseas.

How's that working out?

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