Osama Bin Ladin

Osama Bin Ladin

The name itself conjures images of the boogey man. While I am happy that he has received his 72 virgins I am not sure it makes a shit bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. The United States martyred him TEN YEARS AGO!!! I was sleeping when the news broke last night and learned of his demise when I logged onto Facebook this morning. There were lots of comments about the event, mostly involving his arrival in Hell and comments about pride in our Military and the work they have done. All pretty patriotic stuff, me I am not sure how I feel, mostly anger I think is what I have.

Why anger, I was as surprised by it as you might be. Maybe it was anger at the turmoil that this man threw the world into? While he did that and that is good reason to be angry I don’t think that is it. Maybe the anger is at the senseless deaths of the 2,998 folks who died on September 11th 2001? I am not sure that is it either. Maybe it is the 5,978 Military deaths that have occurred in the wars that were started by his heinous acts, this one makes me really angry but I don’t think that is it either. Maybe it is the $1,188,466,004,284 (over one trillion) the United States has spent on the wars tracking this guy down, this is about a quarter million dollars a minute, for every minute, over the last 10 years. That is a BIG problem for me as I feel that is part of the reason our economy is in the toilet, but I do not think that is the root of my anger either.

No, I think what I am mad about it that fact that it took the most powerful nation on the planet 10 years to catch him. I believe in the beginning that we did not want to catch him. I believe we (as a nation) needed him out there to chase. Without a boogey man out there how would we justify the costs of the wars to the tax payers? The very thing that Dwight David Eisenhower warned us about had come true – the military industrial complex was on its way to becoming self sustaining. There were LOTS of companies and LOTS of people who got very rich from lubing the mechanisms of the worlds most powerful military machine.

I served in the Military for 10 years and got out in 1993. I was not exposed to every capability the military has but I did observe quite a number of impressive capabilities and I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that we did not know where this guy was the whole time. When I can get on Google maps and look at the front door of my house and see it from outer frickin space I will never be convinced the government could not find a 6 + foot Arab who needed regular dialysis. I will never believe it, period.

Chopping the head off of a franchise type organization such as Al-Qaeda will do little to slow terrorism and thinking it will reinforces the naïve nature of our citizenry. We live in our insulated world and do not spend the time to learn or even understand the culture of others, that is one of the problems and why he hated us in the first place. We apply our thinking of the world to it and you know what, the world does not think like us, and we are two wrapped up in ourselves to notice.

I guess I am wondering if we should use his death to celebrate a victory over terrorism, why you might ask? Well let me tell ya why. Do you remember when the towers fell and people in foreign lands danced in the streets and we were pissed. Well here we are, doing the same thing – celebrating the death of another human being by dancing in the street. Granted this was a bad man but we are just as bad a society to a lot of people in the world and us celebrating in the streets has to be compared to “them” dancing in the streets. I saw a the view of folks outside the white house, if you were turn the volume down it looked just like what the terrorists were doing when the towers fell, shameful!! Don’t get me wrong, I am happy he is no longer leading the organization but really how engaged in that leadership do you think he has really been. I think he kicked a snowball down the hill by planning the events of 9/11 and then stood at the top of the hill, laughing about the snowballs crazy assed trip, hollering down occasionally to taunt us.

How big of a difference do you think his death will make, 10 years later. Most folks would not consider it a success when it took 10 years and $1,188,466,004,284 dollars to complete a mission. I am not sure I do. A lot of people died because of him, so I guess I am happy that he is gone, but that is not right. What ever happened to forgiveness? He was unable to forgive us for occupying the holy lands in Saudi Arabia, we seem unable to forgive him for a heinous act of terrorism. Forgiveness is not the same as justice and I am not saying it is, he had to be brought to justice for his actions. He needed to be called on the carpet for his horribly heinous acts. But in our hearts we must forgive those who trespass against us, I have heard that someplace before…….. where was that???

I heard a pundit this morning that his death is the most significant event in defeating Al-Qaeda. WHAT??? Most significant event, not sure I agree with that. I am also not sure that the world is any safer with him gone, do you? I am also trying to correlate his death to the heightened security we have to deal with at the airports. I am sure, it is tied in there somehow, but I just cant get there. Investors are doing well though, the stock markets of the world have rejoiced and they are all trading more briskly that normal. Why do you think that is?

You know what I am going to dislike more than anything else, all the media coverage. They will be pulling out people who had some obscure involvement over the last 10 years and put them on the tub as an expert. All of them will be talking about how they knew this day was coming and how important it is in the war on terror. Hell I even heard Colin Powell said that he knew he wasn’t hiding in a cave. Hindsight is 20/20 proves itself once again. Every one of these media types will be drooling over this, some trying to make a name for themselves, some trying to keep their name on top. I listened this morning for about an hour, that is all I really need – the actual news part of it. Like Joe Friday used to say “just the facts ma’am”. Osama Bin Ladin was killed by the Navy Seals in a stronghold in Pakistan that took 40 minutes and he was buried at sea within 24 hours in keeping with his religious beliefs. What is everything after that really – just noise.