KILLING BIN LADEN IN 1998 WOULD NOT HAVE STOPPED 9/11

BERGER WAS RIGHT: I'm on Berger's side when it comes to saying "no" to attacking bin Laden. Consider the times. The attack on the pharmaceutical lab in the Sudan was considered a war crime by left writers like Hitchens and many Republicans too, the sorry escapade at Mogadishu executed at great cost failed while the gory details of our poor equipment, piss poor intel, and inadequate troops were covered up by the liberal press. Had the real truth come out Clinton could have been destroyed. When you combine that with Clinton's penchant for running the country by focus group opinion, it meant that anything other than a "sure thing" with no collateral damage was too risky to undertake. Clinton had done no groundwork to prepare us for terrorism, bin Ladin, or Muslim extremism; even the killing of bin Laden would have met with outrage from our Left and the EU cowards.
Consider too that we were in the middle of a totally drunken party in the stock market with people who knew nothing about anything day trading from their homes in a market that seemed to go straight up. Nobody wanted to be bothered. Clinton was throwing a party and everyone was invited, the host doesn't leave the bash of the decade so he can go out and kill somebody. It was "the economy, stupid" in full flower.

Had I been in Berger's shoes I would have done the same. I think it is delusional to believe that 9/11 wouldn't have happened had bin Ladin been killed. We now know that he had little to do with the day to day planning of it, that he financed it with very little money, and by 1998 the plan was well underway. I submit that the killing of bin Laden would have made us even more complacent, if that is possible, and made them dedicate themselves even more firmly. 9/11 would have happend with or without the demise of bin Laden.