Bin Laden has been found. Why doesn’t it surprise me that he was living in a luxurious gated community, not a cave? Used to better things, I suspect. Given the history of his involvement with the Afghan-Pakistani-American covert war against the Soviets in the 1980s, it is also unsurprising that he would make his home in the heart of perhaps the most militarized garrison town in Pakistan – a place literally crawling with ISI operatives, no doubt. It is simply inconceivable that at least some elements of the Pakistani military and/or intelligence services were not aware of his presence. (One wonders what the reaction might have been had he been discovered in a highly fortified mansion in a garrison village just outside of Damascus or Teheran.) 

The interpersonal connections between ISI and networks like Al Qaeda were built up over the course of decades. How else could such a notorious terror leader hide in plain sight, except by the same kind of tolerance shown to killers like Jose Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch?

Okay, so… that’s done. Now, when do we accord justice to those guys who used our military to destroy Afghanistan and Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people? I’m not suggesting execution, of course, but a trip to the Hague might discourage copy-cat criminals. I’m just saying.

Then there’s the question of killing Bin Laden’s brainchild, the bottomless Afghan war. Let us face it, getting stuck in Afghanistan is precisely what he wanted us to do. This is not guess work – he said it numerous times. (Rachel Maddow’s recent pieces on this have been pretty solid.) Bin Laden drew satisfaction from the fact that he had helped bleed the Soviet Union dry by supporting the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 1980s. That wasn’t the first empire battered by such an adventure. He was confident that we would destroy ourselves with an open-ended commitment there. (Iraq was just a bonus coup-de-grace we administered to ourselves.)

The fact is, I can already hear Bin Laden cackling from his watery grave as we expend more lives and treasure on the fool’s errand that is the Afghan war, drawing funds from vital health care, education, public works – you name it.  It’s time that enterprise received what he got, before it finishes us.