The damage they did was a lot deeper than two towers and sveral thousand lives

As time goes on, it appears that the terror war hawks may be right, the War on Terror does represent an existential threat to America in away that the Nazis or Communists never did -- although not in the way that the terror war hawks may mean.

As this recent discussion before the Supreme Court illustrates, certain basic liberties are under assault -- even from those we might hope would know better. Obama administartion lawyers argued that the government could criminalize filing "friend of the court briefs" in support of an oragnization that the government has deemed "terrorist. Even those with dim imaginations should have little trouble imaging the likely consequences of this sort of power.

Bin Laden's attack on New York on 9/11 was a stunning success from his point of view -- and not merely because of the immediate damage and loss of life. No, the real fruits of his strategy ripened later courtesy of our own reactions to his attack. The economic damage alone of our security measures and wars dwarfs the damage done to New York. And even more important over the long term, we did grievous damage to our liberty and our moral authority with torture, our detention policy, the PATRIOT (sic) Act, warrantless wiretapping and the eorion of principl and rule of law needed to enact and implement all of that.

Osama Bin Laden and AlQaeda have done more real, lasting damage to us than Hitler and Tojo did.

Getting Bin Laden

Andrew Sullivan makes an excellent point

Personally, the one thing that sticks in my craw the most about the Bush era was how much he too his eye off the ball by not making sure he "got" Osama.

I am not arguing that getting Osama bin Laden would have solved all our problems, made the Afghan War a success or won the War on Terror. It doesn't matter. Simple justice demands that the man responsible for 9/11 should not die in his sleep of old age. No, that will not do.

Can Obama's Afghan surge net Osama in the bargain? Impossible to say. Clearly the trail is cold. It's possible Bin Laden may already be dead. But Bush let 8 years go by without a serious effort mounted to bring Bin Laden to justice. If Obama succeeds in capturing or killing Bin Laden it would be the final repudiation of Bushism.

Will Obama get Osama?

Probably not directly, a la a Predator strike or the like, but Obama, as is is wont, may be creating the conditions for positive things to happen.

This Daily Kos dairist lays out the case for "Osama being a dead man" here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/17/743628/-Osama-bin-Laden-Is-a-Dead-Man

I won't be the slightest bit surprised if Osama doesn't make it to 2010. When you think of it, the Obama administration has moved at a rapid clip on a lot of things.