Party Poopers and the Curse of Legacies.
Am I glad that Osama Bin Laden is dead?
Well, let’s put it this way: I’m glad he’s not free to inspire another little Muslim boy to strap a suicide vest around himself and attempt to blow people up. I’m glad he’s not planning the next large terrorist attack.
I would have preferred it if he’d been captured alive and put on trial. But I think it’s naive to think that was ever going to happen. For one thing, Navy Seals and Special Forces aren’t really known for their live captures (not that I’m criticizing them. I think they did their job and my hat off to them). But secondly, it didn’t really suit anyone to have him put on trial. After all, the prosecution would be asked to show how the extraordinary renditioning of hundreds and the illegal and indefinite incarceration, and torture of combatants at Guantanamo Bay led to his apprehension. More likely they’d just proclaim all that information out of bounds in ‘the interest of national security’. It would be messy. This is neater.
I would have preferred not to have to witness crowds of people gathering in Times Square and in front of the Whitehouse braying out their national anthem and singing ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ and generally comporting themselves with savage schadenfreude. It looked a lot like the impromptu celebrations that took place in Muslim countries when the Twin Towers fell. And I wanted to be able to expect something a little more serious and civilized from Americans. But hey, people are people, right? All over the world.
The Guardian has behaved itself and issued a very good and interesting Obituary for Osama Bin Laden. And I have to ask myself – was it worth it? After all, the 9/11 attack was the impetus for the Iraq war, not just the invasion of Afghanistan. So, over 7,000 coalition soldiers, 100,000 Iraqis and at least 20,000 Afghans are dead.
It’s worth remembering that the last casualty in this war, before the capture of Bin Laden, was the nameless, innocent Pakistani woman some devoutly religious man used as a human shield when the Special Forces came through the door shooting.
Well, c’est la vie. We don’t care about nameless Pakistani women any more than they do in Pakistan, where tribal elders sentence them to be gang-raped for something their brother did.
So, what will be this man’s legacy?
In my mind, it will be that in leading Al Qaeda in a jihad against the Western world, he effectively distracted many young Muslims from fighting the appalling tyranny taking place in their own countries. After all, having a common demonized enemy has always been an effective way to shift the population’s attention off trouble brewing at home.
His actions legitimized countless brutal and corrupt leaders all over the Arab world, because the US saw them as strong men who could stand up to those dreaded and tenacious fundamentalists Muslim movements all over the Middle east who were all, we are assured, in cahoots with him.
Personally, I think Al Qaeda’s day was over the moment that Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and demanded the ousting of Mubarak. From Morocco to Tunisia, from Syria to Yemen and Bahrain, the Islamic world is starting to look inward for a cure to what ails it. I don’t think they have much time to hate us now. They’ve found the local culprits of their misery and are taking their complaints to the streets.
I think his legacy is going to be that his war against the West was a sham. That it perpetuated and entrenched everything he said he despised. His terrorism had the opposite effect to what was intended.
And that’s a pathetic legacy, richly deserved.
There is no honor in celebrating the death of another.
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No, I agree. There isn’t.
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Why would you want that vermin dignified with a trial? Do we put sewer rats or cockroach’s on trial before exterminating them?
As for the crowds – I too would prefer they behaved and though differently rather than being so easily manipulated by the Obama Regime into celebrating Obama admission of defeat.
Yes, defeat. This – assuming it’s even true, though that’s likely – is too well-timed to be anything but part of Obama’s 2012 campaign. It’s the perfect setup for “declaring victory” and slinking out of the area, thereby giving it all back to the Taliban who had sidelined Osama years ago.
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I’m going to quote your own words back to you: “Do we put sewer rats or cockroach’s on trial before exterminating them?”
This is uncannily similar to something Hitler said about Jews, Gypsies and Gays. And that is exactly why we DO want to put people on trial. Because we AREN’T butchers. Because we BELIEVE in the rule of law and the moral authority of our societies. Well, at least I do.
Not so sure about you.
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Yes, I believe in the moral authority of America. We have the moral authority and duty to exterminate those mockeries of Man’s form and speech who would gleefully destroy human civilization and replace it with their Caliphate.
We have the same authority and duty to exterminate humans have been corrupted by these creatures and now support them in any manner whatsoever.
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What pains me most about your comment is that Democrats in the US use lunatics like you to represent the Republican party.
Whereas I know different. You’re plainly out of your fucking mind. And people like you do a terrible disservice to a country that was so nobly founded on rational and deeply humanitarian documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
YOU clearly have no respect for ANY of those documents and are incapable of grasping the philosophy that lay behind them. You have no respect of law. You have the uncanny ability of a sociopath to lump ‘others’ together in a group and call them vermin.
You’re not an American. You’re an embarrassment to America. You’re obviously channeling the dead souls of a couple of concentration camp commandants, the entire Serbian paramilitary and several machete-wielding Rwandan Hutus.
I do hope you are locked up somewhere.
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While I am relieved that Osama bin Laden will no longer be able to mastermind acts of terror, I too feel it is incredibly inappropriate to dance & chant in the streets. We (the western world) decry the broadcasting of such behavior by people identified as Muslims after terrorist attacks, and yet there we were, behaving the same way.
And I am certainly not naive enough to believe his death means the end of al-Qaeda or terrorism. It took 9-1/2 years to find and get to him. There are certainly others who can step in and continue to coerce young men & young women to continue the jihad.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. As always, you make me think more deeply about issues.
Robin Michelle
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Thank goodness there’s a corner of sanity in the world. I might have known that it would have been here.
It’s not “The end of the war on Terror” nor is it “Mission Accomplished”. Nothing external could or can do that. Sooner or later change has to come from within the organisation or movement, because we’re talking about people’s mindset. This was true in Malaya as it was true in Ireland. Note that in neither case has the use of violence and terror completely stopped, because there’s always that pesky tail of the distribution that contains people prepared to use those tools. But in both cases the rule of Law and Civilisation returned in general.
What this man’s death could do is to further induce conditions suitable to that, given that he’s not pouring poison into young men’s minds. Of course, there are still others who will – and I’m sure are doing that.
I feel slightly ambivalent about what’s happened, because it appears that OBL was tried, convicted and sentenced beforehand. I somehow doubt that we’ll see the court proceedings.
On the other hand, I’m not overly concerned because the man had convicted himself many times over. If you declare war on a country, you’d best be prepared for that country to strike back, and the legal-moral niceties will sometimes take a back seat.
Is it time to rejoice? Well, no. It’s not over, and things will likely get worse in the short term. But also yes, because it is a victory. Am I an unbiased observer? Of COURSE not. I’m a product of my upbringing, environment and teaching – a Westerner, and one of the people this man professed to hate. He inspired the killing of many, many people all over the world, and in the London 7/7 bombings in my country directly. I will lose no sleep over his death.
But he was old and frail and would likely have died in a relatively short time in any case. As I said above, as RG has said in her original post, change will come because the Islamic world is already looking inward at the oppression it’s own leaders are piling upon them. I believe it is our job to let them do so, to not interfere directly, and to offer education & moral support to those who want it.
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Remittance Girl for President. ( Thank you, RG, for standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law.)
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Er, I was born out of country, enjoy a good spanking and write smut. I don’t think I’m a viable candidate
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The order given by the President of the United States was an order for a hit. Chicago style politics taken to the highest level. Knowing something of the training involved and a knowledge of training standards 20 years ago I know if they were ordered to to take OBL alive they would have taken him alive.
What disturbs me most about this shame of a raid was the lost of intelligence and the debriefings of all terrors involved. Intelligence is the name of the game and with the lost of OBL an invaluable intelligence source was cut off.
He have someone as President who doesn’t understand how war is carried out just as the one preceding him didn’t understand it either
AS for the demos after his death just the uneducated letting off steam much as they do at sporting events. I am surprised that cars weren’t over turned and burned much like when the home team wins a championship.
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