Possible implications of the death of Bin Laden

[Neonanocyborgasm]

So the first Bin Laden thread has become long and unwieldy, and now I think people are talking about Iraq or something.

So let's use this thread to discuss some of the things that might happen next.

How does this impact the mission in Afghanistan? Does it provide political cover for politicians who want to send troops home, or is it more likely to cause pols to double down in support?

How might this impact the 2012 American reelection? Have Republicans lost the ability to go after Obama on defense? Does this hurt any particular candidate more than others?

What about Yemen, and the greater War on Terror? Does this change anything? Is Al-Quida seriously crippled, or is this no big deal?

It strikes a huge blow for Al-Qaeda, which had long been on the retreat, ever more so during the "Arab Spring" that is currently going on. Although Al-Qaeda could continue to function with Al-Zawahiri in charge instead, it has lost its symbolic leader, and this may mean fewer recruits and less willingness for daring operations.

The Afghan mission may not see immediate results. The war there is with the Taliban, not Al-Qaeda. But it may strike a morale blow in general. If anything, it will embolden those who wish to escalate the effort there, as now they can prove that efforts are effective.

For Obama, this vastly heightens his re-election campaign efforts. He comes into it with high approval from the start, while simultaneously discrediting the birthers by his recent show of his long form birth certificate. Recent polls suggest the birthers make up a sizable minority of Republicans, suggesting that if they convert out of their birtherism, they may become Democrats.

Yemen is currently experiencing an upheaval, and that may strengthen Al-Qaeda's presence there for a time. Perhaps this is where America's focus should be on now.

 

[MobBoss]

Recent polls suggest the birthers make up a sizable minority of Republicans, suggesting that if they convert out of their birtherism, they may become Democrats.

I'm sorry, but that really made me laugh. I just dont see birthers, who really, REALLY, dont like Obama for more than just his birth certificate, come a complete 180 and end up being voting democrats.

Funniest thing I have read all week.

 

[GoodGame]

How does this impact the mission in Afghanistan? Does it provide political cover for politicians who want to send troops home, or is it more likely to cause pols to double down in support?

I think that's the number one question. It's foreign policy, and probably not something the administration is going to let out of the bag, since the end of Osama probably doesn't completely change the situation in Afghanistan.

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I'm sorry, but that really made me laugh. I just dont see birthers, who really, REALLY, dont like Obama for more than just his birth certificate, come a complete 180 and end up being voting democrats.

Funniest thing I have read all week.

Stranger things have happened. I admit it's unlikely, as birthers are just racists, but I wouldn't put it past some people who are so stupid to be so easily swayed.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I'm sorry, but that really made me laugh. I just dont see birthers, who really, REALLY, dont like Obama for more than just his birth certificate, come a complete 180 and end up being voting democrats.

Funniest thing I have read all week.

Iam thinking they have OSAMA confused with OBAMA.

 

[CivCube]

Republican goal #1: Make sure Bush gets all the credit.

Goal #2: Keep tangenting away from Osama by focusing on seemingly related topics. They're already talking about torture as how we got our intel. If the media gets on that wagon, they'll switch to something further down the line. Every week, they'll play telephone until the issue no longer resembles itself. I'm guessing capturing Osama's body will go from "Did torture help?" to "Torture is the only source of info." to "It's immoral to not torture bad guys."

They did the exact same thing with health care (death panels) and the economy (making it about repealing taxes instead of streamlining the budget). Make it extremist enough that you're owning the topic.

 

[MobBoss]

Well, being a republican, my initial comment was that Obama does deserve the bulk of the credit. But lets face facts. Even in Obama's press release last night, he mentioned that the actions that brought us to find Obama now, started 10 years ago, and have been ongoing ceaselessly since 9/11 itself. That means that GWB does indeed deserve some of the credit for the actions that he took to set the stage for all of this.

And this wasnt Obama or Bush solely making this happen, but thousands of people working together, republican/democrat/independents all. Fwiw, I wish Obama had addressed that just a bit more and a few less 'I's' and 'me's' in his speech.

 

[mangxema]

Well, they've gotten a lot of intel from this raid. It will be interesting to see if they find anything useful.

 

[onedreamer]

Their potential retaliations failing would have a huge impact on group morale and membership. Right now the boot is on their foot to prove to the world that they can work just as effectively without Bin Laden than with. If they can be hampered enough, then in the eyes of many potential members and sympathisers, this would have been disproved, effectively leading to immobilization of Al-Q. Although, of course, it could go the other way, and they could succesfully retaliate, which would prove in the eyes of those potential members and sympathisers that they can in fact opperate just as effectively as they had done with Bin Laden.

You need to revise the definition of terrorism. Terrorists don't need to be successful at something in order to be terrorists. As long as they can recruit young people willing to commit suicide and kill a lot of people that haven't done anything bad on them directly, Al Qaeda will not die. Assassinating Bin Laden that way will only feed to Al Qaeda ranks and visibility. Don't you see the whole world already in alarm because of "possible" retaliations? Everyone is concerned and there isn't even an "official" threat to discuss about. This is what terrorism is about.

 

[onedreamer]

Well, being a republican, my initial comment was that Obama does deserve the bulk of the credit. But lets face facts. Even in Obama's press release last night, he mentioned that the actions that brought us to find Obama now, started 10 years ago, and have been ongoing ceaselessly since 9/11 itself. That means that GWB does indeed deserve some of the credit for the actions that he took to set the stage for all of this.

And this wasnt Obama or Bush solely making this happen, but thousands of people working together, republican/democrat/independents all. Fwiw, I wish Obama had addressed that just a bit more and a few less 'I's' and 'me's' in his speech.

Do you think a President of the US would have rather said "We have done nothing for 9 years, but in the last months we started looking for Bin Laden"? And did we need Obama's press release to know that GW Bush said in 2001 that all the responsibles for that terrorist attack would have paid should it take forever to do it? He even said it again while commenting the death of Bin Laden and the fact that the "War on Terror" isn't over.

I must say I'm really amazed how Americans think any credit is due to Obama. He even failed his speach IMO. Justice has not been made for the relatives of the victims, they are still suffering, and Bin Laden isn't going to regret anything of what he did. The SEALs had the order to kill him, I wonder who gave it?

 

[Mise]

This is one of the few things that can't possibly hurt Obama politically.

 

[GoodGame]

This is one of the few things that can't possibly hurt Obama politically.

Everything can hurt anyone politically if you have opponents who aren't afraid to take inconsistent stances and comment loudly on it. Though the hurt might be fairly insignificant in the polls.

I bet a penny that some wannabe candidate will say we should have extradited.

 

[downtown]

For Obama, this vastly heightens his re-election campaign efforts. He comes into it with high approval from the start, while simultaneously discrediting the birthers by his recent show of his long form birth certificate. Recent polls suggest the birthers make up a sizable minority of Republicans, suggesting that if they convert out of their birtherism, they may become Democrats.

Yeah, haha, Mobboss is right. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest that birther-leaning republicans would support Obama if they believed in the birth certificate. Those are the hardest of the hard core Anti-Obamites.

 

[Bamspeedy]

This will help Obama politically, but how much remains to be seen.

Bush Sr. had 89% approval rating after kicking Saddam out of Kuwait but ended up losing the next election.

 

[Dachs]

Well, one of my professors failed to finish grading final papers because of the media frenzy. Probably the implication that matters most for me.

 

[downtown]

Obama will get credit for this, but should he? Would things have gone any better or worse under anyone else?

Well, I think that depends on who the anybody else is I guess, but I imagine Obama's decision making process was pretty different from how Bush used to solve problems.

For example, here is a quote from 2007 about McCain and Huckabee

"Sen. John McCain condemned Mike Huckabee Monday for saying that, as president, he would strike at terrorists inside Pakistan's borders with or without permission from the country's leadership... Sen. Barack Obama made similar comments about Pakistan in August, which McCain criticized at the time as irresponsible, as did several of Obama's Democratic rivals."

I personally dont think so. He only won by 7 points last time, and that was with the GOP having the GWB albatross hanging around their neck along with the Palin VP travesty.

That means if only 4 out of 100 people had voted for McCain instead, McCain would have won. Thats pretty slim.

Well, it doesn't actually mean that at all. It depends entirely on the state.

Current predictions where Obama is put against legitimate GOP candidates like Romney or Huckabee have Obama losing by a good margin. If the economy and jobs situation doesnt get noticably better by then, I dont think he will be re-elected, even with the feather of getting OBL while in office.

I think that depends on what you consider a good margin. There hasn't been any nationwide blowout polling from either of them, although Romney does have a pretty comfortable lead in New Hampshire.

Obama can lose most of the "new" states he won in 2008 and still win. I imagine they're going to try and keep a lockdown on the west.

Remember, we got Saddam Hussein while the GOP held the office....I dont think anyone would argue that it helped McCain much.

Yeah, that's a good point. I suspect this will have a bigger impact though, given that 1)OBL is a bigger deal than Saddam
2) Obama has a bigger perceived national security weakness than Bush.

I'll agree with you though, that if Obama can't convince people to follow his economic plan, and things don't change, the head of OBL isn't going to save him.

BTW, according to WaPo, the initial approval bounce gives Obama a number ~56%. I don't think thats sustainable, but keeping it above 48, 49 is good for his chances.

 

[JollyRoger]

the only real milage he gets from it is with independents -

Which is the mileage that counts in the general election. It will interesting to see how the GOP nominee sheds the Tea Party dress when finally courting the independents.

 

[BasketCase]

Ooh. Idea.

Regardless of the implications of Osama's death specifically, the trove of hard intel found at the site will set Al Qaeda back several years. All the contacts and moles and lines of communication revealed to the U.S. by this intel? Al Qaeda now has to black all that out. Hideouts must be abandoned, bases moved, couriers recycled. Plus they'll be staring at each other intently for a while as they try to find out if there were any internal leaks.....

So, yes. Al Qaeda has been badly hurt.

Flying off on a tangent: this is why governments don't tell the public what the hell they're doing. Obama knew where Osama was for eight months, and he sure as hell didn't tell us about it. Because if he did, Osama would have found out. Assange has gotta be kicking himself in the ass right now for missing this one and not getting the chance to leak it.

 

[Verbose]

Seems to depend entirely on how well connencted to things going on OBL still was.

The bet right now seems to be on him being semi-retired, having taken up Figureheading pretty much full time. The "al-Q in Maghreb" and the "al-Q in Iraq" and the other franchises in other parts of the Muslim world wouldn't seem to be in any way dependent on OBL.

The other bet circulating right now seems to be that what has really bumped the al-Q back are the wave of public prostests in the Arab world. Al-Q was always elitist, dreaming about ordering the masses about. Excpet the "Arab street" has never really shared their (barmy) vision of politcs and society, and now this Arab street finds it can take to its feet al-Q or no al-Q.

That last bit means organisations like that might have been on the ropes and going out of fashion even before the US managed to find OBL. But since there would be a bit of simultaneity in this, if radical Islamist terrorist organisations start fading now, maybe we can expect Americans to claim it was them what did it?

 

[MobBoss]

Do you think a President of the US would have rather said "We have done nothing for 9 years, but in the last months we started looking for Bin Laden"? And did we need Obama's press release to know that GW Bush said in 2001 that all the responsibles for that terrorist attack would have paid should it take forever to do it? He even said it again while commenting the death of Bin Laden and the fact that the "War on Terror" isn't over.

I must say I'm really amazed how Americans think any credit is due to Obama. He even failed his speach IMO. Justice has not been made for the relatives of the victims, they are still suffering, and Bin Laden isn't going to regret anything of what he did. The SEALs had the order to kill him, I wonder who gave it?

Of course the 'war on terror' isnt over, but there cant be any doubt that we are indeed winning it.

I dont mind Obama getting credit for his role in decision making. He deserves it. My only point in saying what I did was that I wish I had heard a few more 'we's' and 'us' type of comments instead of 'I' and 'me'. In other words, it sounded almost more like a campaign speech than a victory speech.

Well, it doesn't actually mean that at all. It depends entirely on the state.

Well, if you want to split hairs even that fine, then its even less than 4 in 100, but as you say, depending upon the specific state.