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At the risk of sounding callous, this was totally survivable.
If all Osama Bin Laden had to show for his actions is a displaced (temporarily or otherwise) Taliban and a bullet in his face it wouldn't have gone down as badly. It might even have been accepted as the cost of having an empire.
The damage domestically was due to the neocons deciding to overdraw on the opportunity he gave them in Iraq by lying.
I'd take this seriously if it was a response to a hurricane. Given human adversaries who can respond to your math I think it's not a good idea to tell shoplifters so long as they stay under $X they're good.
It might be more expensive and "pointless" in a sensible world but you're just going to have to ruin some lives here.
They may, however, be motivated by weakness. Osama saw the US pull out of Somalia in one of its fits of humanitarianism over a relatively small human cost. This is not the sort of message you want to send to a person like that and the organization he leads.
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