Osama Bin Laden
 

Great news today.
At last some closure for Americans.
We must expect terrorist retaliation, I suppose, but it's the necessary price we have to pay.
Congratulations to our American friends.

Seconded here.

Aw come on, it's just a ruse. Everybody knows our president is the real Bin Laden. :mad:

Thanks David and John.

Thanks, David and John.

Yes, thanks David.

And it's not just Americans, though admittedly the greatest public toll has been on this country. He also brought immense shame to an entire religion, and surely set back any positive perceptions (among many Caucasians, at least) of the Arabic races. While such generalizations are abhorrent, they do exist, and they likely wouldn't have existed to such a degree had Bin Laden not done all he had done.

I'm so disappointed to see all the stories about conspiracy theories etc. floating around the internet. It really should be a time for rejoicing for a day or two before we all carry on with the next phase of our lives.

I think rejoicing is the wrong word.

Nemo

Very mixed feelings here, living as I do in a very military town. Along with the understandable relief of the families of servicemen and -women, families of 9/11 victims, etc., I'm hearing lots of unseemly hate-filled chest-thumping and taunting from the very same people who spew such hate-filled, violent rhetoric against all opponents, political and military. Shudder.

But then, I was the only kid who was appalled when all those nice Munchkins sang "Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead" in The Wizard of Oz, too...

Now, I'm no fan of Islamist terrorism, but I can't understand rejoicing at this. Whatever the worth of killing Osama bin Laden, the world has not just been made a 'safer place', as I read somewhere. If anything, the opposite is true, and that is not something to rejoice. Al Qaeda exists: you can't shoot the (figure)head to kill the ghoul.

Most of what I read or hear on the news suggests that this is widely being seen in America as a revenge killing, which is very dark stuff indeed. It is also very human, of course.

I don't expect this comment to go down well here, and I don't mind that.

So, terrorist retaliation (i.e. potential mass murder) is a 'necessary price' for our killing Bin Laden? I'm just dealing with the logic as it is presented. It is a very high price to pay. I hope nobody you love is caught up in paying this necessary price.

I'm with you on this one, Rory.

At least three different friends have quoted this passage in today's context:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

First of all, thank you David and John for the expressions of empathy and solidarity. I know that every man’s death diminishes me, but I feel (rightly or wrongly) that some deaths diminish me less than others, and I’m inclined to believe that the world is a better place with this guy dead than it was with him alive. Still, the American dancing in the streets on this occasion strikes me as no less inhumane than, say, the Palestinian dancing in the streets back in September, 2001. I’ll see the world as a better place when George W. Bush, Benedict XVI, Vladimir Putin, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, and several other malign shakers and movers finally breathe their last, but I hope I’ll have the decency not to gloat and cavort on those occasions. Mortality is the one thing I know I have in common with everybody I hate, and I always hope that awareness of that shared vulnerability is going to mitigate the toxicity of my hatred at least a little bit.

It’s certainly likely that the number of people who die in retaliatory actions will be greater than the number of imaginary virgins bin Laden is currently not schtupping, but we can hope that his death has prevented more killings than it will provoke. That is, we can hope that the commandos who raided his Pakistan compound achieved something more than a mere act of revenge.

I have an easy time not seeing how King's words, which I honor, apply in this circumstance. No joy, though...a lot of sadness, actually. I'm not thinking about any price that needs to be paid for anything, but I appreciate David's sentiment.

King's words either apply in every circumstance, or they do not apply at all. You can't pick and choose.

Thanks, Maryann.

Nemo

Well, ...I'm not rejoicing. And, I'm sorry, Nemo, but I do honor King's words. My feeling is that what was done in this case had to be done. Do I contradict myself? (shrug) OK.

There is no joy in Mudville. But thanks, David.

Rick

Wasn't getting Osama bin Laden, "Dead or Alive" [GWB], the sole original war aim in Afghanistan? Rightly or wrongly.

Does this mean the "war" is over?

Probably not.

His being killed changes very little in real terms. But things are changing. What seems to be happening in a lot of Arab/Muslim countries is that people are waking up to who the real enemies are--in many cases their own leaders.

On can't help wondering whether al Qaeda hasn't had its day. But like a lot of other people I'm fairly sure they won't let this event pass without retaliation.

I'm glad to see that a rather offensive, childish poem on this subject was removed from the Met forum. That kind of stuff is most unhelpful.

Philip

My feelings are, as Julie described hers, mixed. I was filled with very confused emotions when Obama spoke last night. It brought back everything about the event of 2001 and everything that has transpired since. But mostly it brought back the event. I'd much rather see Osama behind bars. But there are compelling arguments for why this was not an option or a possibility. There is a lot I don't understand, but bringing Bin Lanen's line to an end....

If I don't exactly rejoice in the thought of O b L being killed, I need to say that it isn't because of any distancing from the events of 11/9/01. Leaving aside those for whom the result was personal tragedy, I imagine the images are as seared into the minds of the average Brit just as much as the average U.S. citizen.

I remember where I was when the news was announced. I was in a secure psychiatric hospital in Newcastle. As a professional, rather than a patient, I hasten to add. There is some kind of irony there. But I bet pretty much anyone here in the U.K. could locate themselves in that moment with the same accuracy.

Philip

I honor and respect the guenuine reactions others have to this event -- especially those directly affected by the 911 attacks and the ensuing ten years of warfare -- but I personally find no necessity, joy, or closure in it whatsoever. It comes to me as another piece of ugliness in an ineascapably huge pile of ugliness.

David R.

Downtown 1. It came to an abrupt stop at 137th St. The announcer informed us that service was suspended due to "the World Trade Center incident." It wasn't until I reached the street level that I had an inkling what had happened, as the wind was blowing into Brooklyn rather than Upper Manhattan. Within hours, the radio was baying for blood. Within a half hour of the second tower collapsing, one had to have a political reaction--and my own had me vilified on many occasions in a city that was under de facto military occupation. Ronald Reagan was the first man I hated without knowing personally, but from then on, I hated that cynical, warmongering f%&k Bush even more. Which I wouldn't have thought possible.

I must say I think the King quote is a bit shaky. Rhetoric often is, poetry never. He equates Light with Love and Darkness with Hate, which is all very well but it doesn't carry across, does it? Light drives out Darkness but does Darkness drive out Light? Presumably not. Love drives out Hate but does Hate drive out Love? Demonstrably it does.

King, presumably, hated racism, but didn't hate this racist and that racist. You hate the sin but love the sinner. But you can't HAVE a sin if you don't have a sinner.

Let me list a number of people I would, at any time, have rejoiced in the deaths of.

1. Adolf Hitler
2. Joseph Stalin
3. Pol Pot
4. The Yorkshire Ripper
5. Ian Brady and his woman sidekick whose name escapes me

Had all these people been strangled in their cradles the world would have been a measurably better place. Americans will have their own favourite serial killers.

Bin Laden was a very bad man. Wasn't he?

Those of you still feeling sorry for Been Lousy should know that there are reports stating that he and or his guards were grabbing women in the household to use as shields.

I'll save my rejoicing for the wake in honor of the person I loved. Sober and sorrowful reflection, and variety of cynical political notions, are the most I can muster at this man's death.

David R.

Skip, please point to any words in this thread that show anyone is "feeling sorry" for Bin Laden.

John,

I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I don't think your comment is fully logical. Had we been able to get into a time machine and strangle Bin Laden in his cradle you wouldhave a point. As it is, his death is likely to lead to more killing (as even David Anthony suggests in his post at the head of this thread). Yes, Bin Laden was 'a very bad man'. But I feel sorry for anyone who pays what David Anthony feels is a 'necessary price' (i.e. their life in 'terrorist retaliation') for his killing. And I think the view that it is a price worth paying is utterly dispicable, when one thinks about it.

I'm not saying I wish he'd survived, but I can't rejoice in his killing either. Almost ten years ago this was the aim of the 'war'. The aim has been met. The war is anything but over, and it never will be over.


Skip,

It is possible to loathe Bin Laden as much as anyone else without wrapping oneself in the stars and stripes and yelling 'Hell yeah! We got him!'. Your attitude - and the pervasiveness of an attitude like yours amongst certain large swathes of your country's population - is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Again, this post might not go down well here - but it isn't designed to.

As an Australian, I'm glad the Americans managed to kill him. I believe 10 Australians died in that NYC attack and many more in Bali a year after. There's no flag-waving about this around here--that's not really in the national character--but more a quiet, reflective sense that this is part of something bigger and something quite unknowable.
Those people I've spoken to feel genuinely happy for Americans today. Much has been said and written about the cheering crowds, etc, but I think people are entitled to the release of some emotions today. The cheering and hyperbole will pass.

(I stood on top of the South Tower in 1990, and it was wonderful.)

Good for you, Chris, but what part of Oz do you live in? It must be where all the quiet, reflective ones are. All the quiet, reflective Brits live in Bournemouth, I'm told. Round here we're brash and vulgar. The Sun, our newspaper of choice, had the headline this morning BIN BAGGED. A bin bag is what our rubbish goes out in.

Certain pundits are making much of the fact that some of the intelligence that made the raid possible (i.e., the identity of the courier who was eventually tracked to the compound) was apparently the result of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. I do not think this excuses our torture of those prisoners. I still cling to the idea (however naive) that my country is better than that; that if we set aside our ideals of human rights and dignity while stooping to such despicable behavior, there's a very real danger of mislaying those ideals permanently; and that torture's lasting damage to our country's collective conscience outweighs whatever benefits might be derived from it. Yes, I know I frequently reject the American attitude of moral superiority as juvenile and arrogant, but I don't consider this a matter of moral superiority or self-righteousness; it's a matter of morality and righteousness, period. Certain things are irredeemably evil, no matter who does them or what their so-called justification may be. That torture bothers me far more than the recent assassination.

Even the assassination bothers me, though, as I hope it does most people, especially when it is presented as "justice". I think the necessary elimination of a threat is one thing, but saying that our own very human and emotional idea of justice "has been served" is quite another. If justice truly resides with those who have the power to administer violence, then justice itself shifts when power shifts. How is that philosophy substantially different from the old "might is right" axiom, the divine right of kings, etc? If one argues that the Lord of Justice allowed the Americans to have that power in this case--deputized them, as it were--then one has to examine why the terrorists were allowed the power to commit their own violent acts. Were those examples of divine justice, too? At the time, some like Pat Roberts claimed they were. Ick. To put it mildly, that's not a theology to which I can muster the stomach to subscribe. (Aside from my general uneasiness when people seem to be taking the Lord's holy name in vain by hanging it on their pet political agendas.) Personally, I prefer to avoid talk of justice and just focus on pragmatism.

So. I reluctantly agree about the necessary evil of killing Osama bin Laden, as well as the necessary evil of taking additional lives in so doing. But I reserve the right to be simultaneously sorry that we lacked the imagination and resources to eliminate this threat any other way.

I was very, very happy to hear that bin Laden's youngest wife was NOT killed in the raid and was apparently NOT used as a human shield:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/0...56720820110502

And I vehemently disagree with those who say--not here, but elsewhere--that, as his wife, she could not have been an innocent bystander. From my (admittedly uninformed) point of view, it doesn't seem unreasonable to conjecture that this was probably a match arranged by the young woman's father, for the honor and political advantage it would have brought him to forge such a tie with such a powerful figure...and I wonder how much freedom she had afterward, living in hiding with him so as to be constantly available for the great man's enjoyment. What kind of education/indoctrination might one require from an early age in order to find marriage to this old goat appealing? Granted, she may have, perhaps given her other vocational options (hmmm, let me ponder those for a while), but I don't dare presume that she is the equivalent of Eva Braun.

Anyway, I'm glad that one less life seems to have been taken. Although I'm still sad for the other woman who was, indeed, killed in the raid.

I don't mind that he's dead, I just wish he was gone. This is a man who truly got under our skin. As long as we are in Afghanistan with both feet, Bin Laden will be having his way. As long as we harbor those who ordered torture in our name in defiance of international treaties we once upheld, he will have succeeded in diminishing us. We have thrown away much that we once held dear because of our unreasoning panic: for a terrorist -- one who seeks to cause change through fear -- isn't this a victory? We are 300,000,000 people. He killed 3,000, and changed us utterly.

Ed

"If justice truly resides with those who have the power to administer violence, then justice itself shifts when power shifts." And there'll always be a hundred fools dancing in the streets, puffed up for all the wrong reasons. When it's the others, it's obscene; when it's ourselves, it's justice. Thus the general malaise becomes infinite violence.

Thanks, Julie.

Nemo

Skip--

Such blatant mischaracterizations--hell, lies--about the positions people less jingoistic than you have taken are part of what makes many of us loath to rejoice. America became a meaner, more authoritarian place in which expressing any criticism of such a grossly absurd concept as the "War on Terror" led to accusations of "being with the terrorists." Declaring war against a political tactic is like it would have been had the U.S. declared war on bombs after Pearl Harbor. We had years and years of fearmongering and warmongering around a core mission that was sufficiently nebulous to provide a great deal of cover for the eighty-year clusterf#&k that was the Bush Administration--with a great deal of Democratic support.

You have utterly misrepresented me, Skip, and I demand an apology. You don't get to smear people as terrorist sympathizers here. This isn't Fox News.

Yes, Julie. Thank you. And, please, no apologies for not being able to shut up (per your reason for editing~,:^) It was good to read what you've written.

Ed--right you are.

Let's not get into the demanding of apologies, please. It's a red-hot topic, there'll be red-hot opinions expressed, and people who won't like them. I've been watching this thread in dismay since it started. I knew there had to be one, and that it would cause grief. I'm simply not going to let this thread turn into a mud-sling. I apologise in advance if it would offend people, but if we can't return to calm discussion I will close the thread. No doubt that will fire up the same people who got so cross last time I did that, but I don't want to spend the rest of the day on the edge of my seat in case someone says something inflammatory. The angry ones will be welcome to pour burning oil over me in Eratosphericals, and I'll be happy to leave you to it.

Please bear in mind, I'm the man who has to read every post in the conversation boards, just in case......

Adam--

While I can understand and indeed sympathize with your desire to remain above the fray and even-handed, as usual, the smearing is coming from a single source. I do not retract my demand for an apology. False, public accusations of sympathy for terrorists have come too glibly in recent years, and they can do great damage if not countered and refuted. Indeed, most people on this thread--all but one by my lights--have refrained from such smear tactics. The exception is usually the exception.

For goodness' sake, folks -- the man was a terrorist who orchestrated the deaths of thousands of Americans and countless thousands of others besides. Death is what he deserved. Indeed, a quick death was probably far too kind.

There is nothing political about it. He was a mass murderer who was determined to inflict his distorted extremist way of life on our own. There is no way he could be placated, and he had (and still has) a large, dedicated following who were (and likely still are) willing and able to inflict terror on more and more people.

When we talk about the deaths of Mussollini, Stalin, Hitler, or even McVeigh, Bundy or other mass murderers, we don't typically show any remorse for their killings, because we know that they committed great human atrocities, and more to the point, we know that those human atrocities would have continued if those people had lived.

For some human beings, there is no chance of reform. Bin Laden is one of them. I certainly rejoice, rejoice, rejoice that this mass murderer is dead.

Unfortunately, in our current political climate, everything has to be scrutinized and politicized. Personally, I don't care who killed Bin Laden, whether it was Bush, Obama, a soldier or one of Bin Laden's own people. The important point in all of this is that he is dead.

Let the exception be the exception, Quincy. There is no moral high ground here, just an exchange of views which will change nothing.
I have to be away from my computer for a while now, but I hope everyone can just get on with their civilized commenting on the news. Please.

No one is positing remorse for the killing, Shaun. I sense only a reluctance to rejoice in the continuing spiral of violence that is such a large part of human history. I'd suggest a careful re-reading of many of the thoughtful responses on this thread to see if you can't discover some of that nuance that is lacking from your own last post. To pretend that it is all too simple is just that: too simple. It has nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Scrutinizing is no trendy sin, it is what thoughtful human beings have always done.

Adam, if any of us truly believed that the exchange of views never ever changed anything, why would we be here, talking, writing...?

Nemo

Oh, don't worry Nemo. I'm up to date on my remedial reading classes. I speak English good.

And yes, it IS as simple as all that. It always has been. There are some human beings who do not deserve their lives. Bin Laden was one of them. Removing him from our planet is a good thing. Any thoughtful human being would know that there was no other way.

Nemo, sometimes we talk and write simply because we're breathing and thinking and have thoughts that seem to differ from the ones others are expressing. Or because we want to crystallize what we do think. I believe that's often how GT functions.

What I read here may help to shape or support thoughts I already have, but it's unlikely to change their direction completely. That's the sense I give to Adam's observation about lack of change.