Hey, nice jokes there, people!

I think the real and paramount reason "we are trying to catch Bin Laden" is this: American culture always requires a specific "bad guy" to focus public attention on in order to mobilize the general public behind a dubious effort involving wholesale destruction of the civil administration and general infrastructure in a small foreign country, thus permitting takeover of strategic real estate, etc...

Past examples: Manuel Noriega, Muammar Quaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the "bad guy" is guilty of some or all the things the US media accuse him of, sometimes not. It hardly matters. The important thing is, the public needs that bad guy to focus on.

Now I am not suggesting that Bin Laden is a nice fellow, not at all. What I am suggesting is that he's a handy excuse right now for launching a big military effort, and that catching or killing him will not solve longstanding problems out of which he and his followers arose in the first place, but will probably exacerbate them.

But it will make Americans FEEL GOOD, and that's what really matters, right?

From Bin Laden's point of view, what could be a better end than martyrdom at the hands of a superpower? Victory, after all, is simply not possible for his people...only martyrdom...at this point in history.

- LH