"If bin Laden is in fact publicly killed, then the US military will find itself standing around with its hands in its pockets, wondering what's supposed to come next"
About this Quote
There’s a sly bite in Sterling’s phrasing: the image of the US military “standing around with its hands in its pockets” punctures the myth of endless mission clarity. He’s not predicting operational confusion so much as narrative collapse. Bin Laden, in this framing, isn’t just a target; he’s a plot device. Remove the villain and the superstructure of justification starts wobbling.
Sterling’s intent is to spotlight how counterterrorism can become a story the state tells itself - a story that organizes budgets, institutions, and public patience around a single, legible antagonist. “Publicly killed” matters. He’s talking about spectacle and closure, the kind that feels definitive on TV. That definitive ending, he implies, is strategically awkward: wars built around an emblematic enemy don’t automatically translate into a coherent “next chapter.” You can’t raid your way into a political settlement.
The subtext is cynicism about goal drift. If the campaign’s meaning is tethered to a person, then victory becomes a vacuum: the machinery remains, the incentives remain, but the headline rationale evaporates. The hands-in-pockets posture also mocks the military’s role as a tool for problems that aren’t fundamentally military.
Contextually, Sterling is writing out of the post-9/11 era’s obsession with decapitation strikes and symbolic wins, when “getting bin Laden” served as a moral IOU that could bankroll years of conflict. He’s warning that killing a symbol doesn’t resolve the conditions that made the symbol useful in the first place.
Sterling’s intent is to spotlight how counterterrorism can become a story the state tells itself - a story that organizes budgets, institutions, and public patience around a single, legible antagonist. “Publicly killed” matters. He’s talking about spectacle and closure, the kind that feels definitive on TV. That definitive ending, he implies, is strategically awkward: wars built around an emblematic enemy don’t automatically translate into a coherent “next chapter.” You can’t raid your way into a political settlement.
The subtext is cynicism about goal drift. If the campaign’s meaning is tethered to a person, then victory becomes a vacuum: the machinery remains, the incentives remain, but the headline rationale evaporates. The hands-in-pockets posture also mocks the military’s role as a tool for problems that aren’t fundamentally military.
Contextually, Sterling is writing out of the post-9/11 era’s obsession with decapitation strikes and symbolic wins, when “getting bin Laden” served as a moral IOU that could bankroll years of conflict. He’s warning that killing a symbol doesn’t resolve the conditions that made the symbol useful in the first place.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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