Is this really victory?

As some frolic on the White House lawn to celebrate Osama bin Laden’s death, I have to say I particularly appreciated the large number of YAL members and other liberty people in my Facebook feed this morning. A few of the more noteworthy comments:

“10 years, 2 wars, 919,967 deaths, and $1,188,263,000,000 later, we managed to kill one person. Was it worth it?” — YAL’s Mikayla Hall
“[Killing bin Laden] sent a loud message to the world: Mess with the U.S. and we’ll bankrupt ourselves trying to find a few dozen men. So if you’re the kind of terrorist comfortable with suicide missions and want to bring down the U.S. economy, please come on over and attack us again. As an added bonus, we’ll trample on our own citizens’ civil liberties, humiliate and sexually assault them in airports, and completely ignore our own Constitution, so you’ll have effectively destroyed our freedoms AND our prosperity.” — YAL’s Wes Messamore
“There’s something unsettling about cheering the death of someone…even if they were responsible for unspeakable acts. We should be content with justice but not revel in the spilled blood.” — C4L’s Matt Holdridge
“Only government can fail for 10 years and spend trillions of dollars over budget and still be cheered and celebrated after it finally accomplishes what it originally set out to do.” — YAL’s Jeff Frazee
“AMERICA: 10 years, 2 (well, 3 now) wars, over 1 million deaths, over $1 Trillion in direct costs, over $9 Trillion in indirect costs, all funded by debt, all in the name of revenge to kill one person that the U.S. used to fund. Reasonable people call this failure. Americans, however, throw parties on the White House lawn.” — YAL’s Jared Fuller

I was going to write up my own commentary at greater length, but I really couldn’t top this.

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