On May 2nd, television cameras broadcast around the worldimages of jubilant crowds at ‘Ground Zero’ in New York, in front of the WhiteHouse and across the United States celebrating the killing of the figurativeleader of Al Qaeda in Abbottabad, Pakistan. While many Americans may view thedeath of Osama bin Laden as an emotionally cathartic ‘closing of the accounts’,the reality is far less clear. With the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, bin Ladengoaded America into invading Afghanistan, where a decade on US marines stillwallow in a grinding game of attrition against an enemy they cannot seem tokill, all the while hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’money daily. Riding on the coattails of the Afghan war, the Bush administrationinvaded Iraq, which provided Al Qaeda the platform it needed to ignite aninferno of sectarian hatred and killing, and recruit thousands of new adherentsto the anti-American jihad. Besides the hundreds
