Hey, I am glad he's been "Actioned" in whatever circumstances. I don't care about his human rights in this case.
But you can't say one thing one day and then say, hang on, actually this happened, the next day without expecting people to wonder if anyone knows or is telling the truth.
Yet this is what has happened. Surely no-one official should have speculated to the press before the facts had been established.
This is funny stuff. If officials hadn't said anything at all that first day THAT would have been used by the usual suspects as fuel for the conspiracy buffs. There is no way of avoiding the whacked out speculations of that crowd.
you keep talmbout how only crazies are raising questions about Osama's death (you insisted this when I said we should have held onto the body further up in the thread; you're saying it again here).
I don't know what you read/where you live/who you talk to, but I'm hearing lots of legit questions about the operation from lots of intelligent, normal people.
lawyer Dershowitz kinda sums up my feelings on the body disposal thing, which I was saying further up the thread.
and to answer your Q, the author offers a few perfectly legit questions re: Osama's death at the beginning of the piece. you are free to enlighten us on these Qs since you seem to know everything....
Yeah, the fact that he planned 9/11. USS Cole, Khobar Towers, etc., say otherwise, IMO. Maybe David Brooks can do those things and not be "one of the most seasoned guerrilla fighters in the world.", but I doubt it. Or is Brooks saying OBL didn't do those things?
Well there's a difference between actually being a "seasoned guerrilla fighter" and planning military or quasimilitary attacks. I don't know Brooks' source and probably what I'm suggesting isn't true most of the time, but I'd imagine there are people who've planned successful terrorist attacks who haven't done shit in terms of actually fighting anyone, and I know there are a lot of 'successful' (whatever that means) fighters, in the literal sense, who couldn't plan a fucking birthday party.
Like so many of LaserWolf's "facts," the Brooks-derived opinion about bin Laden seems to be wrong. Bin Laden had genuine guerrilla experience fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
I don't think OBL worshiped the Norse gods, either, but I suppose it's possible.
lawyer Dershowitz kinda sums up my feelings on the body disposal thing, which I was saying further up the thread.
and to answer your Q, the author offers a few perfectly legit questions re: Osama's death at the beginning of the piece. you are free to enlighten us on these Qs since you seem to know everything....
Sorry, I don't see how any of those questions matter much. "Was he shot in the front or the back?"
Who cares? And even Dershowitz says: "I fully credit the administration's explanation that the reason for the hasty burial at sea was the desire not to offend religious Muslims and not to create a shrine to a dead mass murderer."
I'm not seeing anything in his piece that, um, trumps that. Feel free to tell me what does, since you seem to know everything.
lawyer Dershowitz kinda sums up my feelings on the body disposal thing, which I was saying further up the thread.
and to answer your Q, the author offers a few perfectly legit questions re: Osama's death at the beginning of the piece. you are free to enlighten us on these Qs since you seem to know everything....
Sorry, I don't see how any of those questions matter much. "Was he shot in the front or the back?"
Who cares? And even Dershowitz says: "I fully credit the administration's explanation that the reason for the hasty burial at sea was the desire not to offend religious Muslims and not to create a shrine to a dead mass murderer."
I'm not seeing anything in his piece that, um, trumps that. Feel free to tell me what does, since you seem to know everything.
there's no "trumping" anything.
Dersh "fully credits" the admin, meaning he takes their explanation for the hasty burial at face value, i.e. he believes it was done out of genuine concern for religious sensibilities.
....but he thinks it was nonetheless the wrong decision.
and yo, you asked for legit Qs surrounding Osama's death, I presented a source that listed several, and all you've said is "who cares?" good one dude.
- there's no legit Q's surrounding Osama's death.
- yes there are.
- oh yeah, which ones?
- X, y and z.
- oh THOSE ones? c'mon, who cares?
well, clearly YOU don't.
but your claim that only crazy people have Qs about Osama's death is apparently wrong.
Since I never made such a claim, I'll agree that such a claim would be wrong.
I did say that no matter what the government said whackjobs would still be pushing conspiracy claims. And that's as close as I came to saying anything like what you're saying I said.
I'm not responsible for your fantasies about what I didn't say. You are.
BTW I agree with Dershowitz that the photos should be released, but I don't see that as a question about OBL's death. That's a question about how to deal with the aftermath.
lol I dont have to fantasize anything dude. each time it has been suggested in this thread that the disposal of Osama's body at sea might possibly raise questions, you've started talking about whackjobs and how they'll never be satisfied. those are two separate issues. there's normal, intelligent people who have questions about Osama's death, and for whom more information re: the operation would likely suffice. and then there's conspiracy nut whackjobs for whom no amount of evidence will ever satisfy them. you've conflated these two groups. each time anyone has raised the issue of the former, you've suggested the latter.
my point, and Dersh's in the WSJ article, is that the disposal of Osama's body (a) raises Qs about the circumstances of the death, and, at the same time, (b) ensures that said Qs can never be answered.
I'm happy you're happy with how Osama's death all went down (really, I'm overjoyed). and you are free to dismiss out of hand any and all questions about it.
meanwhile plenty of normal, intelligent people will continue to raise very obvious and fundamental questions about a prettymajorfuckingoperation that resulted in the death of one of the most significant world figures of our time, -- and yet has yielded neither a body nor even any photos of a body.
lol I dont have to fantasize anything dude. each time it has been suggested in this thread that the disposal of Osama's body at sea might possibly raise questions, you've started talking about whackjobs and how they'll never be satisfied. those are two separate issues. there's normal, intelligent people who have questions about Osama's death, and for whom more information re: the operation would likely suffice. and then there's conspiracy nut whackjobs for whom no amount of evidence will ever satisfy them. you've conflated these two groups. each time anyone has raised the issue of the former, you've suggested the latter.
my point, and Dersh's in the WSJ article, is that the disposal of Osama's body (a) raises Qs about the circumstances of the death, and, at the same time, (b) ensures that said Qs can never be answered.
I'm happy you're happy with how Osama's death all went down (really, I'm overjoyed). and you are free to dismiss out of hand any and all questions about it.
meanwhile plenty of normal, intelligent people will continue to raise very obvious and fundamental questions about a prettymajorfuckingoperation that resulted in the death of one of the most significant world figures of our time, -- and yet has yielded neither a body nor even any photos of a body.
Yeah, sure. Normal, intelligent people think OBL is still alive and is running the show from Uranus. Or he was killed 9 years ago and was in deep freeze until now.
Okay.
I just like how the bar for what "normal, intelligent people" has been lowered.
"Normal, intelligent people" were birthers, too. Except birthers weren't normal or intelligent, They were a bunch of ignorant numbskulls with no rational basis for their delusions.
I know the bottom line is whether we'd rather Barry O have the nukes or some "Rag Heads" but...
If you are happy for the government to tell you to believe one thing one day and the complete opposite the next, and not question this, who is the whackjob?
THE CIA COMMITS OVER 100,000 SERIOUS CRIMES EACH YEAR
It's no big secret that the Central Intelligence Agency breaks the law. But just how often its does
in is a shocker. A Congressional report reveals that the CIA's spooks "engage in highly illegal
activities" at least 100,000 times each year (which breaks down to hundreds of crimes every
day). Mind you, we aren't talking about run-of-the-mill illegal activities ??? these are "highly
illegal activities" that "break extremely serious laws."
In 1996, the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a
huge report entitled "IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century." Buried amid
hun-dreds of pages is a single, devastating paragraph:
The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of
the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break
extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated
efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times
every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in
highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment
to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals
and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself."
Amazingly, there is no explanation, no follow-up. The report simply drops this bombshell and
moves on as blithely as if it had just printed a grocery list.
I know the bottom line is whether we'd rather Barry O have the nukes or some "Rag Heads" but...
If you are happy for the government to tell you to believe one thing one day and the complete opposite the next, and not question this, who is the whackjob?
I'm waiting to hear what this "complete opposite" shit is.
If I'm expected to care about trivial details being cleared up by the government within a day or two without prompting - well, I just don't.
So if the minor discrepancies so far really wind your watch, I'll say you're a whackjob. I haven't seen or heard anything yet that seems significant.
lol I dont have to fantasize anything dude. each time it has been suggested in this thread that the disposal of Osama's body at sea might possibly raise questions, you've started talking about whackjobs and how they'll never be satisfied. those are two separate issues. there's normal, intelligent people who have questions about Osama's death, and for whom more information re: the operation would likely suffice. and then there's conspiracy nut whackjobs for whom no amount of evidence will ever satisfy them. you've conflated these two groups. each time anyone has raised the issue of the former, you've suggested the latter.
my point, and Dersh's in the WSJ article, is that the disposal of Osama's body (a) raises Qs about the circumstances of the death, and, at the same time, (b) ensures that said Qs can never be answered.
I'm happy you're happy with how Osama's death all went down (really, I'm overjoyed). and you are free to dismiss out of hand any and all questions about it.
meanwhile plenty of normal, intelligent people will continue to raise very obvious and fundamental questions about a prettymajorfuckingoperation that resulted in the death of one of the most significant world figures of our time, -- and yet has yielded neither a body nor even any photos of a body.
Yeah, sure. Normal, intelligent people think OBL is still alive and is running the show from Uranus. Or he was killed 9 years ago and was in deep freeze until now.
Okay.
I just like how the bar for what "normal, intelligent people" has been lowered.
"Normal, intelligent people" were birthers, too. Except birthers weren't normal or intelligent, They were a bunch of ignorant numbskulls with no rational basis for their delusions.
History repeats.
bro are you serious right now? why do you keep doing this?
the questions raised by Dershowitz (hardly a birther-level intellect) in that article are more than legitimate. you would ask these questions in the event of pretty much anyone else's death. and yet rather than simply acknowledge that they're legit, but that you just don't care about the answers, you insist on trying to paint these questions as being on some Roswell shit. it seriously damages your argument.
we've established that YOU don't personally care about the circumstances of OBL's death. but you'll have a hard time convincing me that questions like "Was he shot in the back or in the front? Were his hands raised in surrender? Was he actively resisting? " represent some sort of birther-level inquiries.
it boggles the mind this shoulder-shrug-who-gives-a-shit attitude toward the circumstances of the killing of a guy everyone's been obsessed with killing for ten years.
WHEN THE HELL DID OUR COUNTRY TURN INTO MAMBYPAMBYLAND ON GUM DROP ISLAND?
Go get in your Waaaambulance and sing "We Are The World" at the top of your lungs.
If the USA wasn't so quick to paint itself as the bastion of all that is good and pure in the world, maybe the US govmnt???s statements wouldn???t be put under such scrutiny. If they were just honest and said outright: ???Our economy benefits from armed conflicts overseas. We wage wars or fund and arm others to wage wars. That???s what we do, that???s why we have the standard of living that we have, so shut-up and watch the Oscars???, then fine, there wouldn???t be much to argue about, but instead there???s the constant drip-drip of self-aggrandising saccharine bullsh*t about spreading democracy and American values. One of the few positive things that came out of the gulf oil spill were the voices who instead of seeking to apportion blame at least saw that it was the thirst for oil, the markets, modern life etc that was driving the risks, and that sometimes those risks blow-up in your face. Unfortunately it???s always those furthest from the profits of the risks that end up carrying the can, and who will find it harder to be philosophical about repercussions.
Killing OBL seems stupid if the aim of ???Teh War on Terror??? is to win a war rather than win a battle. But that???s not to say he didn???t have it coming. If OBL wanted to take on capitalist imperialism, he at least had the financial clout to have a stab at it legitimately and peacefully. Maybe he could have gone the Ghandi route. He didn???t. I don???t personally think that two wrongs make a right though, so sign me up for a toffee-apple.
vis-a-vis the "Wrong + Wrong = Right" argument, you have to weigh up if you can deal with "Kill or be killed" situation. I had this out with a buddhist monk, he wouldn't, I would. He was very much about what had gone down previously in the afterlife etc. It seemed to fatalist to me. It doesn't seem right to stand there and watch whilst someone stabs you or your kids to death.
There are certain human urges we are trained to resist, like gawping at boobies and punching idiots in the face, but self-preservation is surely the most natural and valid?
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but as anyone heard the conspiracy theory that Osama Bin Laden never existed? That he was created by the Bush administration to put a face on the war on terror and that is the reason there are no photos? These nutcases will think of anything.
If the USA wasn't so quick to paint itself as the bastion of all that is good and pure in the world, maybe the US govmnt???s statements wouldn???t be put under such scrutiny. If they were just honest and said outright: ???Our economy benefits from armed conflicts overseas. We wage wars or fund and arm others to wage wars. That???s what we do, that???s why we have the standard of living that we have, so shut-up and watch the Oscars???, then fine, there wouldn???t be much to argue about, but instead there???s the constant drip-drip of self-aggrandising saccharine bullsh*t about spreading democracy and American values.
Well put. And with all the lies that have been told over the years, the lack of healthy skepticism is the true "whackjob" behavior to me. Hi, Bob.
I know the bottom line is whether we'd rather Barry O have the nukes or some "Rag Heads" but...
If you are happy for the government to tell you to believe one thing one day and the complete opposite the next, and not question this, who is the whackjob?
THE CIA COMMITS OVER 100,000 SERIOUS CRIMES EACH YEAR
It's no big secret that the Central Intelligence Agency breaks the law. But just how often its does
in is a shocker. A Congressional report reveals that the CIA's spooks "engage in highly illegal
activities" at least 100,000 times each year (which breaks down to hundreds of crimes every
day). Mind you, we aren't talking about run-of-the-mill illegal activities ??? these are "highly
illegal activities" that "break extremely serious laws."
In 1996, the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a
huge report entitled "IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century." Buried amid
hun-dreds of pages is a single, devastating paragraph:
The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of
the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break
extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated
efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times
every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in
highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment
to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals
and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself."
Amazingly, there is no explanation, no follow-up. The report simply drops this bombshell and
moves on as blithely as if it had just printed a grocery list.
To be fair, though, these are spies we're talking about. It's a serious crime just to be a spy in most countries. As is accessing classified information. They don't have to be murdering people and raping cows to be committing serious crimes.
vis-a-vis the "Wrong + Wrong = Right" argument, you have to weigh up if you can deal with "Kill or be killed" situation. I had this out with a buddhist monk, he wouldn't, I would. He was very much about what had gone down previously in the afterlife etc. It seemed to fatalist to me. It doesn't seem right to stand there and watch whilst someone stabs you or your kids to death.
There are certain human urges we are trained to resist, like gawping at boobies and punching idiots in the face, but self-preservation is surely the most natural and valid?
im with you on this. i wasnt that excited about OBLs assassination, either way. but if my folks had been in one of those planes, theres a chance i may have joined the army a long time ago. if i see someone doing harm to my folks or a vulnerable person, id like to think i would put a stop to it and if that necessitates violence, well thats that. id really like to believe in the relevance of non violent solutions and i do see non violence as a much more courageous path rather than succumbing to rage and bloodlust, but i cant say im that righteous. when thieves broke into a house i was working on and stole copper pipes i had dreams and daydreams for weeks of beating their heads in with a crowbar. not very zen of me. still, chanting USA USA in the street is in poor taste, regardless. maybe we had to do what we did, but it definitely doesnt make us a more righteous or morally superior nation.
vis-a-vis the "Wrong + Wrong = Right" argument, you have to weigh up if you can deal with "Kill or be killed" situation. I had this out with a buddhist monk, he wouldn't, I would.
A Christian would act the same as the Buddhist. Turn the other cheek.
Same for Jews and Muslims and everyone else. Thou Shall Not Kill. Universal belief.
This would certainly be a better world if we all lived what is preached to us.
maybe we had to do what we did, but it definitely doesnt make us a more righteous or morally superior nation.
On the subject of restraint, the best thing America has done in (my) memory was the immediate response to 9-11. I think that the rest of the world was holding it's breath, fully expecting Dubya to reach for the nukes. Instead we got an incredibly well-measured and articulate speech from Colin Powell, and a promise to find those responsible. This wasn't the usual US military response of cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer. Of course what followed wasn't so great.
And just in case it was misconstrued, I didn't post that NY subway thing to mock - it was nice to see some restraint and decency at a time when many NY'ers minds must linger on 9-11.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, but as anyone heard the conspiracy theory that Osama Bin Laden never existed? That he was created by the Bush administration to put a face on the war on terror and that is the reason there are no photos? These nutcases will think of anything.
Must have been the first Bush administration. Old Poppy Bush WAS in the CIA.
Osama already was and will forever be an icon for Islamist terrorists. An evil form of Che Guevara with millions of potential followers worldwide. Look at the worldwide (well, all over the first world) leftwing intellectual movements of the 60s. Very few like the German RAF or the Weathermen took to a violent level but even most of those guys were still technically squares from middle class backgrounds and if they were honest to themselves, most probably still had visions of growing old, building homes, having families and leading lifes as more or less orderly citizens.
Now look at all those muslim countries out there. Many of them have a virtually endless supply of poor, uneducated and disillusioned kids. Religion is a powerful tool. These kids have absolutely no perspective for life, they grew up watching their siblings die because their family could not afford the $5 they would have had to spend on lifesaving medication. The official life expectancy in these places is usually somewhere in the mid 40s to mid 50s while you can be sure that the real numbers are much much lower since in most places, the poor don't give birth in hospitals, most never get registered and never show up in any statistics. Look at all the crazy shit that educated people are capable of believing when it comes to religion. With "educated" I mean people who went through a rudimentary first world school system. Now imagine how easy to manipulate some kid must be who never went to any school. As absurd as it may seem to us, they easily will adapt the unshakable belief that martyrdom leads them straight to paradise, including these dozens of virgins who magically are virgins again in the morning after being deflowered the night before. They see the way we live and they don't hate us because we're free or some shit like that, they hate us because we live in excess while they don't have nothing. Their Iman tells them that we're the devil and there's no reason they shouldn't believe that. I mean really believe that, with every fiber of their being. Many generations of kids like these, millions of them, they all now have their icon. Somebody whose killing they can avenge.
That's why this is not the end of a war. Maybe a turning point. And if one thing is for sure, this shit is only ever going to turn for the worse.
If the USA wasn't so quick to paint itself as the bastion of all that is good and pure in the world, maybe the US govmnt???s statements wouldn???t be put under such scrutiny. If they were just honest and said outright: ???Our economy benefits from armed conflicts overseas. We wage wars or fund and arm others to wage wars. That???s what we do, that???s why we have the standard of living that we have, so shut-up and watch the Oscars???, then fine, there wouldn???t be much to argue about, but instead there???s the constant drip-drip of self-aggrandising saccharine bullsh*t about spreading democracy and American values.
Well put. And with all the lies that have been told over the years, the lack of healthy skepticism is the true "whackjob" behavior to me. Hi, Bob.
I've got skepticism to spare about many things. Whether OBL was shot in the front or the back is not one of them.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The very fact that you are painting all Muslim countries and their people with one brush stroke is just a small, tiny indication of this.
I hope your fans do not take your knowledge of records as knowledge of the greater world as well. This is some cartoon-level explanation of millions of people living through almost as many different realities.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The very fact that you are painting all Muslim countries and their people with one brush stroke is just a small, tiny indication of this.
I hope your fans do not take your knowledge of records as knowledge of the greater world as well. This is some cartoon-level explanation of millions of people living through almost as many different realities.
Stick to records and cheese.
I'm talking about "potential" followers and painting nobody with any sort of brush. I didn't mean literally "all muslim countries" but those where radicalization takes place. Poverty and lack of education is a big factor and I didn't mean to imply that all uslims are poor and uneducated, It is the poor and undereducated where fundmental islamists go to recruit followers.
You've most probably never been to places where stores sell Bin Laden T-Shirts and posters, where kids go to Koran school to learn Arabic without knowing how to read or write in the official language of their country. I have.
I'm drawing my experiences from stays in the muslim North of various West African countries and there it is obvious how Saudi agents are being very active in radicalizing people. I know people who lived in Indonesia for years and who told me about similar experiences.
But thanx for getting all pissy and arrogant on me.
Comments
Oh, yeah? What questions are those?
and to answer your Q, the author offers a few perfectly legit questions re: Osama's death at the beginning of the piece. you are free to enlighten us on these Qs since you seem to know everything....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703849204576303431557377492.html
Like so many of LaserWolf's "facts," the Brooks-derived opinion about bin Laden seems to be wrong. Bin Laden had genuine guerrilla experience fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
I don't think OBL worshiped the Norse gods, either, but I suppose it's possible.
http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/world/12004204532486/timeline-osama-bin-laden-s-life/
Sorry, I don't see how any of those questions matter much. "Was he shot in the front or the back?"
Who cares? And even Dershowitz says: "I fully credit the administration's explanation that the reason for the hasty burial at sea was the desire not to offend religious Muslims and not to create a shrine to a dead mass murderer."
I'm not seeing anything in his piece that, um, trumps that. Feel free to tell me what does, since you seem to know everything.
there's no "trumping" anything.
Dersh "fully credits" the admin, meaning he takes their explanation for the hasty burial at face value, i.e. he believes it was done out of genuine concern for religious sensibilities.
....but he thinks it was nonetheless the wrong decision.
Maybe you didn't read the piece.
- there's no legit Q's surrounding Osama's death.
- yes there are.
- oh yeah, which ones?
- X, y and z.
- oh THOSE ones? c'mon, who cares?
well, clearly YOU don't.
but your claim that only crazy people have Qs about Osama's death is apparently wrong.
Since I never made such a claim, I'll agree that such a claim would be wrong.
I did say that no matter what the government said whackjobs would still be pushing conspiracy claims. And that's as close as I came to saying anything like what you're saying I said.
I'm not responsible for your fantasies about what I didn't say. You are.
BTW I agree with Dershowitz that the photos should be released, but I don't see that as a question about OBL's death. That's a question about how to deal with the aftermath.
my point, and Dersh's in the WSJ article, is that the disposal of Osama's body (a) raises Qs about the circumstances of the death, and, at the same time, (b) ensures that said Qs can never be answered.
I'm happy you're happy with how Osama's death all went down (really, I'm overjoyed). and you are free to dismiss out of hand any and all questions about it.
meanwhile plenty of normal, intelligent people will continue to raise very obvious and fundamental questions about a prettymajorfuckingoperation that resulted in the death of one of the most significant world figures of our time, -- and yet has yielded neither a body nor even any photos of a body.
Yeah, sure. Normal, intelligent people think OBL is still alive and is running the show from Uranus. Or he was killed 9 years ago and was in deep freeze until now.
Okay.
I just like how the bar for what "normal, intelligent people" has been lowered.
"Normal, intelligent people" were birthers, too. Except birthers weren't normal or intelligent, They were a bunch of ignorant numbskulls with no rational basis for their delusions.
History repeats.
If you are happy for the government to tell you to believe one thing one day and the complete opposite the next, and not question this, who is the whackjob?
I'm waiting to hear what this "complete opposite" shit is.
If I'm expected to care about trivial details being cleared up by the government within a day or two without prompting - well, I just don't.
So if the minor discrepancies so far really wind your watch, I'll say you're a whackjob. I haven't seen or heard anything yet that seems significant.
bro are you serious right now? why do you keep doing this?
the questions raised by Dershowitz (hardly a birther-level intellect) in that article are more than legitimate. you would ask these questions in the event of pretty much anyone else's death. and yet rather than simply acknowledge that they're legit, but that you just don't care about the answers, you insist on trying to paint these questions as being on some Roswell shit. it seriously damages your argument.
we've established that YOU don't personally care about the circumstances of OBL's death. but you'll have a hard time convincing me that questions like "Was he shot in the back or in the front? Were his hands raised in surrender? Was he actively resisting? " represent some sort of birther-level inquiries.
it boggles the mind this shoulder-shrug-who-gives-a-shit attitude toward the circumstances of the killing of a guy everyone's been obsessed with killing for ten years.
If the USA wasn't so quick to paint itself as the bastion of all that is good and pure in the world, maybe the US govmnt???s statements wouldn???t be put under such scrutiny. If they were just honest and said outright: ???Our economy benefits from armed conflicts overseas. We wage wars or fund and arm others to wage wars. That???s what we do, that???s why we have the standard of living that we have, so shut-up and watch the Oscars???, then fine, there wouldn???t be much to argue about, but instead there???s the constant drip-drip of self-aggrandising saccharine bullsh*t about spreading democracy and American values. One of the few positive things that came out of the gulf oil spill were the voices who instead of seeking to apportion blame at least saw that it was the thirst for oil, the markets, modern life etc that was driving the risks, and that sometimes those risks blow-up in your face. Unfortunately it???s always those furthest from the profits of the risks that end up carrying the can, and who will find it harder to be philosophical about repercussions.
Killing OBL seems stupid if the aim of ???Teh War on Terror??? is to win a war rather than win a battle. But that???s not to say he didn???t have it coming. If OBL wanted to take on capitalist imperialism, he at least had the financial clout to have a stab at it legitimately and peacefully. Maybe he could have gone the Ghandi route. He didn???t. I don???t personally think that two wrongs make a right though, so sign me up for a toffee-apple.
There are certain human urges we are trained to resist, like gawping at boobies and punching idiots in the face, but self-preservation is surely the most natural and valid?
The fog of war.
Well put. And with all the lies that have been told over the years, the lack of healthy skepticism is the true "whackjob" behavior to me. Hi, Bob.
To be fair, though, these are spies we're talking about. It's a serious crime just to be a spy in most countries. As is accessing classified information. They don't have to be murdering people and raping cows to be committing serious crimes.
im with you on this. i wasnt that excited about OBLs assassination, either way. but if my folks had been in one of those planes, theres a chance i may have joined the army a long time ago. if i see someone doing harm to my folks or a vulnerable person, id like to think i would put a stop to it and if that necessitates violence, well thats that. id really like to believe in the relevance of non violent solutions and i do see non violence as a much more courageous path rather than succumbing to rage and bloodlust, but i cant say im that righteous. when thieves broke into a house i was working on and stole copper pipes i had dreams and daydreams for weeks of beating their heads in with a crowbar. not very zen of me. still, chanting USA USA in the street is in poor taste, regardless. maybe we had to do what we did, but it definitely doesnt make us a more righteous or morally superior nation.
A Christian would act the same as the Buddhist. Turn the other cheek.
Same for Jews and Muslims and everyone else. Thou Shall Not Kill. Universal belief.
This would certainly be a better world if we all lived what is preached to us.
On the subject of restraint, the best thing America has done in (my) memory was the immediate response to 9-11. I think that the rest of the world was holding it's breath, fully expecting Dubya to reach for the nukes. Instead we got an incredibly well-measured and articulate speech from Colin Powell, and a promise to find those responsible. This wasn't the usual US military response of cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.
Of course what followed wasn't so great.
And just in case it was misconstrued, I didn't post that NY subway thing to mock - it was nice to see some restraint and decency at a time when many NY'ers minds must linger on 9-11.
Not with the current size of our population.
Must have been the first Bush administration. Old Poppy Bush WAS in the CIA.
This is not the end of a war.
Osama already was and will forever be an icon for Islamist terrorists. An evil form of Che Guevara with millions of potential followers worldwide. Look at the worldwide (well, all over the first world) leftwing intellectual movements of the 60s. Very few like the German RAF or the Weathermen took to a violent level but even most of those guys were still technically squares from middle class backgrounds and if they were honest to themselves, most probably still had visions of growing old, building homes, having families and leading lifes as more or less orderly citizens.
Now look at all those muslim countries out there. Many of them have a virtually endless supply of poor, uneducated and disillusioned kids. Religion is a powerful tool. These kids have absolutely no perspective for life, they grew up watching their siblings die because their family could not afford the $5 they would have had to spend on lifesaving medication. The official life expectancy in these places is usually somewhere in the mid 40s to mid 50s while you can be sure that the real numbers are much much lower since in most places, the poor don't give birth in hospitals, most never get registered and never show up in any statistics. Look at all the crazy shit that educated people are capable of believing when it comes to religion. With "educated" I mean people who went through a rudimentary first world school system. Now imagine how easy to manipulate some kid must be who never went to any school. As absurd as it may seem to us, they easily will adapt the unshakable belief that martyrdom leads them straight to paradise, including these dozens of virgins who magically are virgins again in the morning after being deflowered the night before. They see the way we live and they don't hate us because we're free or some shit like that, they hate us because we live in excess while they don't have nothing. Their Iman tells them that we're the devil and there's no reason they shouldn't believe that. I mean really believe that, with every fiber of their being. Many generations of kids like these, millions of them, they all now have their icon. Somebody whose killing they can avenge.
That's why this is not the end of a war. Maybe a turning point. And if one thing is for sure, this shit is only ever going to turn for the worse.
I've got skepticism to spare about many things. Whether OBL was shot in the front or the back is not one of them.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The very fact that you are painting all Muslim countries and their people with one brush stroke is just a small, tiny indication of this.
I hope your fans do not take your knowledge of records as knowledge of the greater world as well. This is some cartoon-level explanation of millions of people living through almost as many different realities.
Stick to records and cheese.
I'm talking about "potential" followers and painting nobody with any sort of brush. I didn't mean literally "all muslim countries" but those where radicalization takes place. Poverty and lack of education is a big factor and I didn't mean to imply that all uslims are poor and uneducated, It is the poor and undereducated where fundmental islamists go to recruit followers.
You've most probably never been to places where stores sell Bin Laden T-Shirts and posters, where kids go to Koran school to learn Arabic without knowing how to read or write in the official language of their country. I have.
I'm drawing my experiences from stays in the muslim North of various West African countries and there it is obvious how Saudi agents are being very active in radicalizing people. I know people who lived in Indonesia for years and who told me about similar experiences.
But thanx for getting all pissy and arrogant on me.