I think this is an interesting perspective, and one that I'm initially inclined to agree with. But then I get to thinking: what if it's simply wrong? It's an optimistic perspective, where if we simply act rationally and correctly enough, eventually people "come around" and decide that the West is OK. What if they would have hated us either way? What if they never "came around"?The only way we were ever going to win the War on Terror was to win a long, slow, political battle, in which we proved bin Laden wrong, where we allowed people in the Middle East to assess us as a nation and decide we didn't deserve to be mass-murdered. To use another cliché, we needed to win hearts and minds. We had to make lunatics like bin Laden pariahs among their own people, which in turn would make genuine terrorists easier to catch with the aid of genuinely sympathetic local populations.
In any conflict, be it small or large, dialogue should be the first step. Try to get the countries involved to understand that the terrorists were wrong to do what they did. Show goodwill. This is the first step to cooperation with those countries to get the terrorists. Indeed, the people may never come around, but an attempt to resolve the conflict without the use of force would have been made. After 11 September 2001, the US started an investigation to look who was responsible. After that everything moved really fast and 7 October the first bombs fell in Afghanistan in a joint operation with the British army. That is less than a month. No sign of talks with the local authorities. Instead of trying to bring the criminals to justice, the US took justice in it's own hands. And to make it worse, the US didn't fight a clean war. The US uses torture and instead of trying the main antagonists in court, they were shot dead. Long story short, the US acted like a bully instead of trying to talk things out first. This makes the Middle East see the US as a bully instead of a rational country.
Let's start with saying there are many things I don't agree with in the American war on terror. The US takes rights away from their own citizens, takes to morally objectionable acts to find one guy, killing many people in the process, attack Iraq on false grounds and when they found Osama, they shot him dead. This behavior is just wrong. Then comes "Zero Dark Thirty". A movie which sells this quest to find Osama as "The greatest manhunt in history". My only possible reaction is quite simple: Propaganda. I feel like this movie is an attempt to fix that which was broken during the war, but it won't. It failed when it was announced. It failed miserably when it was announced as a nominee for the Oscars. So, I'll have to agree with the author of the article. This movie is indeed Osama's last and supreme victory over the US. And the worst part? The US has done this to itself. All Osama did was hide in a house somewhere in the middle east.
"There are places where cops are not hated, Captain. But in those places you wouldn't be a cop."| I think that this has more relevance to American foreign policy than anything else in the article.
That a movie was made out of the manhunt at all was what I expected this article to be about. When it wasn't, I was confused. Doesn't that bear out his point (which is stated straightforwardly in the title) so much more eloquently? (I have not seen the movie; nor will I. But I did read every word of the article.)