Romney on Osama

So here is Mitt Romney on the need to capture Osama bin Laden

... the country would be safer by only "a small percentage" and would see "a very insignificant increase in safety" if al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was caught because another terrorist would rise to power. "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," Romney said. Instead, he said he supports a broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement.

First let me say that this does seem to capture conservative thinking very well. This is why I believe that conservatives should never be let anywhere near national security or defense. They really do believe that capturing Osama bin Laden is, to paraphrase, not worth the money, but getting rid of Saddam Hussein is worth the lives, money and sacrifices that have been, and will continue to be, made in Iraq. That is a proposition so absurd, so lacking in sense, so unsupported by experience and evidence as to stagger the imagination. No one holding to such ridiculous beliefs should have any responsibility for the national defense.

An effective system of national defense depends critically upon achieving two goals.

1. Anyone who actually has, or is in the immediate process of trying to, harm the people, or property under the protection of, the United States of America will be swiftly and effectively stopped and, as needed, destroyed.
2. All others will be left unmolested.

To provide the security that this nation deserves requires that both of these requirements be met. To provide security for this nation, we needed, long ago now, to have captured and destroyed Osama bin Laden to demonstrate that item 1 applies. Our continued failure to do so is both a humiliating failure on the part of the United States to defend our honor, our people and our property and the largest failure of our national security in recent memory.