Ding Dong Osama's Dead...

So this guy Osama Bin Laden is dead.

This is not going to be an article addressing the theories out there that say that he very well might not be dead because frankly, it isn't important and it isn't important for a variety of reasons.

The death of this man, yes he was a man, just a man not some super villain from a comic book is less than a stepping stone in our ridiculous and pointless "War on Terror." The Al Qaeda network, and it is a vast and developed network, has been operating without strategic input from Bin Laden for a very long time. His passing will likely only do one thing, help inspire new jihadi and extremists based on what will inevitably be his cult of martyrdom.

The only way this could have been avoided besides taking Mcfly's DeLorien back to the 80's and defusing all the careless, wild west harm we caused there would be to have apprehended Bin Laden and then participated in a legal and internationally supported world court hearing.

This is now quite impossible. Paradise open your virgin filled gates for one of your MVPs!



The unrestrained and completely ignorant joy of the Americans frolicking in the streets upon receiving the news of Bin Laden's demise is at best tacky and in reality morally reprehensible.
As Andrew pointed out in "Mission Accomplished", watching these people screaming and hollering put a frown on my face. I had memories of both the bodies of special forces soldiers in Somalia being drug through the streets to raucous applause and jubilant celebration and also the desecration of the bodies of the four U.S. contractors, all former military, in Fallujah. Frankly, I'm convinced that if Bin Laden's body had been available, it would have been hung like a pinata for the enjoyment of the mob.

That kind of behavior goes directly against the sort of Judeo-Christian morals and beliefs so many Americans claim to hold sacred. It's also widely accepted philosophically as immoral. It's stated clearly in Plato's Republic:

“a degree of meanness and womanishness(italics totally my own) in making an enemy of the dead body when the real enemy has flown away and left only his fighting gear behind him”. (book V, 469d).

The shouting and screaming of people that in all likelihood have had no direct connection with the last nearly ten years of war and blood and sorrow or the devastation delivered on 9/11 was an ugly thing to see. It painted a picture of Americans that I would prefer we did not perpetuate in the future. War is not sports and a man being killed, even and enemy is not a "touch down" or a "slam dunk". Behaving in similar ways to these opposing events is unacceptable despite what the horrific and jackal like media want us to think.




As stated above, Osama Bin Laden has been nothing but a figure head and a man on the run for a very long time. What this means is that strategic and tactical operations with Al Qaeda simply will not miss a beat. If nothing else, the death of Bin Laden, as opposed to a trial, will likely result in the galvanization of those forces perhaps even bridging gaps with other extremist groups and allowing for a more aligned movement against Euro-American interests and people in the Middle East and abroad.
It's also possible that this "victory" for us in our ghost war on a concept could be the next step in turning this into a war between civilizations. Euro-America vs. Islam. Islam is not simply a religion, it is a civilization, and like it or not this civilization does not mesh well with ours. This does not mean war is inevitable, but it means that it is likely if ambitious attempts are not made to stop the use of force (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) and turn to real political discourse based on sustainable and long term coalescence. The west needs to stop trying to westernize everyone and simply take care of ourselves while respecting yet maintaining a certain amount of distance from cultures that simply will not mix with our own.

Killing a man that had become a hood ornament changes nothing militarily but it could cause other people to take notice and change socially or politically, perhaps not in ways we might want.





When will America learn that one cannot fight a war against a concept?
Keep in mind, I'm not talking about the military or the politicians. The military is both and institution and a tool, and the individuals in it are cogs in a machine. That's all. The people on capitol hill know very well that we have not been in Iraq or Afghanistan because of terrorism. It's a well known, though often undiscussed fact, that our invasion of Iraq drastically increased the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of dangerous weapons-making technologies to rogue agencies and undesirable states.
We did that and Bush went forward with his war even after being told explicitly that it was a bad idea.

The WAR ON TERROR is nothing more than a propaganda tool in the WAR FOR THE MINDS OF AMERICANS. That's it. Slogans and chants work well when one wants to control a group and indoctrinate people. WAR ON TERROR is everywhere and has been for nearly ten years. The idea isn't even new. Our politicians borrowed it from Ronald "Rivers of blood" Reagan and it yet again has worked it's magic.
Under the guise of this War of Terror we have supported both tacitly and financially horrific atrocities and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the West Bank, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen not to mention Chechnya, the Sudan and Pakistan. We have bombed civilians, terrorized various peoples and have caused unimaginable havoc all in the name of a WAR ON TERROR which in reality has been a war for control and global positioning. It is shameful. This has been a war for your mind, your thoughts and your civil liberties. We have lost.




Obama is a slick character.
He is an intelligent man, and he surely knows that finally taking out the beleaguered and sick Bin Laden really accomplishes very little. However, one thing it does accomplish is making President Obama look good.
He didn't fly onto an aircraft carrier or hang glide into a sports stadium, he gave what he knew would be the correct, straight forward speech. Many people have commented on how "impressed" they were with Obama's speech. Why should anyone be impressed or surprised? The man won the 2008 Marketing campaign of the year award in regards to his election campaign. This guy is a promotional genius and he took this opportunity to score some much needed popularity points with the masses. Fine. Well done. But praising him for making the right moves and pulling off yet another slick under the radar self promotion is like praising me for having my flat clean and my bar well stocked when I finally get those two identical twins, Fumiko and Mayuko, over to my place on a Saturday night. Players know the game and make no mistake, Obama is a player.




I have a confused and diffuse history. I've lived all over the world and for the first 22 years of my life the military was front and center for me. I was aware of international terrorism in a very real way when I was seven years old and my parents told us "don't dress like Americans" when we would go out for dinner in Frankfurt. My father rarely took the same way home or to the office because as we all were taught, that was basic counterintelligence stuff. We had regular bomb drills. Occasionally people got kidnapped. It was normal.
When I walked into my living room in 2001 and saw planes crashing into the twin towers I was the only person I knew at that time that was not surprised. Nor was I touting an "I told you so" type of arrogance because I hadn't told anyone anything. The fact is that it all seemed standard to me. Tragic yet standard. I wasn't surprised by these attacks because the reality, often ignored by Americans, is that we have enemies and we attack them too. We hurt them. This is a fight and when two elements battle, there are losses. I can't even claim being totally unconnected from these attacks as I had a family member in the Pentagon that day. He survived and oddly, I found his reaction to be much the same as mine.
It was simply the next step. Someone had brought the violence to us for a change.

As uncomfortable as that is, we should all prepare for more of it. It's unlikely that our government will cease it's aggression and imperialistic tendencies abroad and there is no reason to assume that factions of the peoples affected by our actions will not bring the fight to us yet again. Be prepared. Nothing is free.