The raid that killed him lasted just 40 minutes. …
Only U.S. personnel were involved in the raid, and Obama’s decision to launch it wasn’t shared with any other country, including Pakistan, whose most powerful intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, has long been suspected by U.S. officials of maintaining links to extremist groups close to al Qaida.
- from McClatchy’s “Bin Laden raid years in the making, minutes in execution”
Contrast the 40 minutes of the raid with America’s longest-ever war, nearly ten years in Afghanistan. Note that U.S. forces didn’t kill bin Laden in Afghanistan; they killed him in Pakistan.
There’s bipartisan dogma that goes like this: We had no choice but to invade Afghanistan after 9/11.
The next time terrorists strike I hope we will notice that we always have a choice. We can choose to remember that invading a country turns out to be an especially clumsy way to catch or kill fugitives. We can choose patience. We can choose restraint. We can choose the quiet ruthlessness of stealth and preparation. We can choose “the raid that killed him lasted just 40 minutes” over stalemate and nation-building and “I don’t know where he is.”
You can’t even watch half of Restrepo in 40 minutes.
