Like the rest of America, I cheered at the news of the killing of Osama bin Laden. I was thrilled. It made my night — and the next day too. One of the most vile, evil villains of modern history had been eliminated. If you weren’t celebrating, there is a chip missing from your DNA.
But don’t fall for the trap. Don’t be distracted and forget the truth about government. As Ronald Reagan once said, “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.” Government fails miserably at virtually everything it does, year after year, day after day, hour after hour. Government is brutal. Government violates our rights. Government steals your money and property. Government steals your liberty. Government tries its best to control your thinking, and your life. Government wastes billions every day, trillions over time — OF YOUR MONEY.
But most of all, government loves to use sleight of hand to distract you. They manage to do one thing right, and then they try to use it to make us forget all their incompetence and the misery they’ve inflicted on us. Sorry, but occasionally even a blind squirrel finds an acorn. Should one successful accomplishment make the citizens forget the multitude of failures, theft and rights violations of government? This commentary is just a reminder to my fellow Americans to not let them fool you or distract you — government at its best is a necessary evil, and that hasn’t changed.
Often even when government succeeds, it manages to fail miserably. Exhibit A is the killing of Osama bin Laden. Great job. Hoo-rah! God Bless Navy Seal Team 6. They have my eternal thanks for keeping my four children safe at night. They executed a successful plan by executing Osama. But don’t let that good point distract you from the failures of government. It took the U.S. government 10 years, two gigantic wars and over one trillion dollars to find one 6’4” terrorist whose face was known by every human being in the world and who was hiding in plain sight in the middle of a country supposedly run by our allies. Congratulations, you just won the award for “disaster of the decade.”
Yes, the final episode of this soap opera gets an A+ for showing Osama what “New York attitude” is all about. Osama now sleeps with the fishes. The final episode of “Who Shot Osama” may have gotten record ratings and applause, but the long-running TV series should have been cancelled a decade ago. This entire episode proves government is an incompetent, inefficient, dismal flop. If Uncle Sam was a CEO, the shareholders would have fired him nine years and a few hundred billion dollars ago over this embarrassment. Then they’d have sued him for fraud and incompetence, and demanded all his salary back for ruining and bankrupting a perfectly good company.
You know what this whole episode really proves? Privatize as much of the government as possible, so it stops wasting our taxpayer money. If we had outsourced the job of finding and killing Osama to Ross Perot, Donald Trump, Bill Gates or Richard Branson, allowed them to them put together their own private team of bounty hunters and offered them $250,000,000 as a reward, they would have gotten the job done in a week or two. And the U.S. taxpayers would have saved hundreds of billions of dollars.
Osama would have been sleeping with the fishes back in 1998 after the embassy bombings, or in 2000 after the U.S.S. Cole bombing. 9/11 would never have happened in the first place. Instead we wasted ten years, trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives on two costly wars and one decade-long incompetent search for Osama. Government is slow, lumbering and incompetent — always reacting late, always one step behind.
And how about the CIA? They are taking a victory lap after Osama’s death. Why? Our brilliant government listened to an incompetent CIA tell us that Iraq had WMDs and Osama had kidney disease. It turns out there were no WMDs and Osama had no kidney disease. Actually, he had three young wives and a prescription for Pakistan’s version of Viagra. Great job, CIA. If the CIA was a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump would say, “You’re fired.”
As one of America’s leading limited government advocates, I sincerely hope we’ve all learned a lesson. A simple one. Next time, hire Perot, Trump, Gates or Branson to get the job done. It’s time for government to get small, and get out of the way. God bless capitalism, entrepreneurship and the private sector. Hoo-rah!
Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee. He now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee. He is the best-selling author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts.” His web site: www.ROOTforAmerica.com.
