Four Months Later

Back in November I wrote down the first unwritten rule of this site, and I suppose by doing so I made it the first written rule of the site, but let's ignore that. The rule is simple: Marko is always right (Yes, I'm Marko, if you're wondering, or even if you're not). I've previously written five rants about the events of September 11 and the aftermath thereof, and I've made certain predictions. In this rant I'm going to look at those predictions and where we stand now.

First, there are the rather obvious predictions I made One Week Later. The Taliban didn't hand over bin Laden, and no one ever expected them to do so. There wasn't a full scale invasion of Afghanistan, the anti-Taliban forces already there did some rather impressive work, albeit with the help of heavy bombing and US special forces. As for the so-called "war on terrorism" that's more of a long term thing. So far so good, IMHO.

More troubling is the fact that bin Laden has not yet been found. Rumours have circulated that he's dead, but I don't believe that any more than you do. I predicted that he'd be gone, and unfortunately it looks like I was right again. When exactly he left is unknown and where he went remains the question of the day.

The whole point is that bin Laden is still out there. A lot of his people are dead, and a lot of them are in captivity, but the big guy is at large (and he really is a big guy, I recently found out that he's six foot five). So while the Taliban has its head under water and the bubbles have all but stopped, and Al-Qaida operations in Afghanistan are in almost as bad condition, the man behind all this is still by most reports alive and well.

The latest scuttlebutt has bin Laden having plastic surgery to alter his appearance. It wouldn't be all that difficult. Shave the beard, lose the turban, fix that nose, do something with the eyebrows, and you've got a whole new supervillain. Add a skin bleach and tighten the cheeks and his own mother would barely recognize him.

Do this mean I have given up hope that Osama bin Laden will be captured? Far from it. A leopard can't change its spots. With a new face or not, he's still the same evil man who plotted to have (and by many reports, deceived into suicide missions) his minions kill thousands of innocent people. He's still the same hatemonger who won't go away until the US pulls out of the Middle East entirely and Israel no longer exists, both of which are things that just aren't going to happen. So while he may be quiet for a while, he's not gone. I strongly suspect that he hasn't learned the lesson that the Taliban has learned so thoroughly — picking a fight with a force far more powerful than you is a bad idea. It's only a matter of time until bin Laden pops up again, and next time we'll get him. Too bad we didn't take him seriously enough to eliminate him sometime before last September.