Osama Bin Laden Dead

16 Responses to “Osama Bin Laden Dead”

1. mischiefmanager says:

   May 2, 2011 at 8:32 am

   1. The proceedings were never necessary and even less effective.
   2. So we got one. So what? There are countless more where that one came from, and every day we’re still in Afghanistan we’re growing more.
2. Cimorene says:

   May 2, 2011 at 8:49 am

   Yeah, all the celebrating is grossing me out. People are doing cheering, chanting, singing We Are The Champions?!?! How is that ok?

   I don’t like Bin Laden, obviously, the man was a murderous, bloodthirsty asshole. But acting like his death is cause for celebration is disgusting and makes me realize how absolutely barbarous and infantile people really are.

   What makes his death cause for celebration? He killed lots of Americans? Well, George Bush killed lots of Iraqis, and I for one don’t think American lives are worth more than Iraqi lives. How many people have died in America because they live in poverty? Or lived without health care? Have been executed by the state for crimes they didn’t commit?

   I’m not saying we–or people, anyway–oughtn’t take satisfaction in his demise. But I think about how it will look when a country sings, chants, dances, cheers because one dude who killed several thousand Americans is dead, to a country that’s been blasted to hell by Americans, to people who have lost fathers, mothers, siblings, children, babies to American soldiers and American bombs and American guns, and it’s just sickeningly callous.

   The only real thing I want to celebrate is what this means for Barack Obama. He just got himself pretty much the holy grail of political capital. This has ensured his reelection, as far as I can tell. And it’s shown that you can actually “protect” “America” without bombing an entire population of people and murdering thousands of innocent civilians. Hopefully he’ll use this capital to do some good and quite this across-the-aisle pandering bullshit.
3. BeckySharper says:

   May 2, 2011 at 9:40 am

   I am absolutely fucking delighted and I make no apologies for it. I could tell you all about what it was like to live through 9/11 as a New Yorker, or know families who lost loved ones in my Virginia hometown (the Pentagon is in Arlington, Virginia, not Washington, DC). That would take a while, and I would get extremely emotional. I could tell you how long the trauma of that day lingers, and how I get on the subway every fucking day wondering if I will die the way Al Qaeda’s victims in Madrid and London did.

   Yes, we should not do victory dances in the street, but we should feel glad Bin Laden is dead. My only regret is that this comes after almost 10 years of unjust, unnecessary, imperialistic wars in the Arab world (one of which was never even remotely about Osama bin Laden anyway). Those wars, however, I’m laying squarely at the feet of Bush, Cheney and the neo-cons, where they belong.

   But the “so what?” attitude minimizes the horror of bin Laden’s crimes, as well as the fact that bin Laden has continued to foment many other plots—some of them successful and devastating—outside the US since 9/11, and continued to recruit terrorists to his cause. We can’t just ignore murderers and terrorists simply because other murders will be committed once they’re gone—justice has to be served regardless of what the future holds.

   And make no mistake—Bin Laden’s death is justice. He already got almost 10 more years of life than his 9/11 victims. Now he does not get to live out his days in a mansion in Pakistan. He does not get to die by his own hand to avoid capture and trial. He was an evil mass-murderer who lived by the sword and died by the sword—that was his choice—and frankly, y’all, if I had been there, this dyed-in-the-wool bleeding-heart liberal would have put the bullet in his head myself and felt no remorse at all.
4. annajcook says:

   May 2, 2011 at 9:43 am

   Thanks, Marie Anelle, for posting this! I’d prepped and scheduled the “on our backs” post last Friday … way before Hanna and I woke up this morning to the news on the radio.

   The first thing I thought of was the moment almost TEN YEARS AGO when we heard that bombing had begun in Afghanistan following 9/11. It seemed like a wasteful act of retaliatory violence then, and it seems like a wasteful act of retaliatory violence now. With a decade worth of bloodshed in between.

   It’s at moments like this when I realize how fucking outside of the mainstream I am, to just feel sick about the whole thing.
5. mischiefmanager says:

   May 2, 2011 at 10:05 am

   I take your point, Becky. But I also have even more fear for our troops in Afghanistan. We didn’t need wars to hunt this monster down, and wars won’t solve the problem of Al Quaeda.
6. SarahMC says:

   May 2, 2011 at 11:23 am

   I’m with Cimorene. I’d have no qualms about putting a bullet in his head either, but bin Laden’s death doesn’t make me happy. It makes me deeply ashamed of the past ten years of war, conducted for nothing.
7. BearDownCBears says:

   May 2, 2011 at 11:37 am

   Patriotism sucks, but just once I wish we could sneer when someone who sucks dies without making an enormous deal about it one way or the other.

   Besides, I’m a lousy dancer, and I’m fresh out of flag bandannas.
8. annajcook says:

   May 2, 2011 at 11:45 am

   A seminarian friend of mine just wrote a moving post about the reactions to Bin Laden’s death:

   @eskenosen: Some of my ramblings on a Christian response to the death of Osama bin Laden.
9. BeckySharper says:

   May 2, 2011 at 11:59 am

   @Anna: That’s a very moving post, and I wish more Christians saw Jesus as an advocate of non-violence. (Although I note that she left out mention of the controversial verse from Matthew 10: Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. )

   I’m leery, though, about anyone who says that we should simply turn the other cheek and take no action against evil and violence. Non-violence is the gold standard of justice-seeking in some situations, but it is not particularly effective against terrorism and/or religious fanatics. All the non-violent protests and peace-love-understanding in the world will not stop Al Qaeda.
10. PhDork says:

    May 2, 2011 at 5:59 pm

    I…don’t know. I guess it’s good news? I feel like I *should* feel something more than I do, because I feel mostly like “well, this changes nothing.”

    Yes, Obama has more political capital than he did at this time yesterday, but as for day-to-day operations? Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss. Al Qaeda still exists, along with its many off-shoots and wannabees, Gitmo is still in operation, and US Americans are still killing brown Muslims and swinging our jingoistic dicks around for oil, corporate greed continues unabated, the rich get richer, the fucked get fucked-er.
11. rodriguez says:

    May 2, 2011 at 9:11 pm

    I don’t have much to add, you all have covered this for me, except that FB is treacherous today. I sorta hate it for this reason. I’d like to discuss some of this there, but it’s just not an option.

    Here, an the other hand … One day maybe we might discuss pacifism. These types of things bring up that issue for me. My reflexive reaction is full pacifism, but I am also suspicious of most extreme positions in myself.

    I think that Becky is right that certain problems just don’t yield to pacifism, but I can’t not look at the waste and the loss and the suffering of the past 10 years. To sum: ?
12. foureleven says:

    May 2, 2011 at 9:27 pm

    @Cimorene – Well said!
13. Phoenix Talon says:

    May 3, 2011 at 2:07 am

    @Becky I am in COMPLETE agreement. I get the whole ‘eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’ argument, and I understand that there are a lot of murderers still out there…but I am wholeheartedly joyous that the bastard is dead. I am super glad that he can no longer hurt anyone anymore.
14. betterfishtofry says:

    May 3, 2011 at 10:49 am

    I avoided the internet yesterday solely so I could process things.

    I lived in NYC on 9/11 and lost family members in the attacks. I watched the towers fall and never felt so scared in my life.

    I woke up Sunday night bc my close friend, whose husband was killed in 2010, a month shy of their one year wedding anniversary in Afghanistan, called me. She was crying because she felt vindicated, and like her husband did not die in vain. Turns out his unit was one of many trained to find bin Laden.

    I still am unsure where I fall, or what I feel, but I know this: celebrating like mindless idiots is stupid and paints us in a poor light. My friend is not celebrating over how Osama was killed, or what they did with his body, but because she feels her husband has had justice served. And she celebrated by gathering friends in her home and remembering all those who have been killed in the past 10 years.

    I think that is far more useful and appropriate…singing “we are the champions” make me feel ill.
15. SunlessNick says:

    May 3, 2011 at 1:40 pm

    I could tell you how long the trauma of that day lingers, and how I get on the subway every fucking day wondering if I will die the way Al Qaeda’s victims in Madrid and London did.

    I’m a Brit, and Bin Laden’s lot weren’t the first or the second to try and break our world with bombs. I absolutely get why you’d want to celebrate that scumbag’s death.

    I know I phrased that as if there’s a “but” coming. There isn’t one though. Some people are so vile that their removal from the world is reason to be glad.
16. Cimorene says:

    May 4, 2011 at 1:47 pm

    I want to add (really late) that I am not against feeling happy, or satisfied, or pleased, or vindicated, or safer now that he’s dead. I am not a pacifist, except in the abstract way that doesn’t apply to actual life. I’ve made enough jokes about wanting to start an assassination club to feel comfortable knowing for sure that some people are better off dead.

    But even if I ever did get my assassination club together to start painlessly offing those who must be deleted from humanity, I still would not be doing a happy-dance after I did it. Not even Dexter Morgan is that happy about killing bad guys. I think there’s a difference between being “absolutely fucking delighted” and acting like an asshole about it, though. I can’t imagine anyone who routinely reads any halfway decent feminist blog would put on their american-flag body-suit and go out celebrating by singing songs and chanting and cheering and so on, over the death of anyone. I mean, I even felt uncomfortable chanting pro-woman cheers at the Take Back the Night march last week, so the idea of chanting “USA! USA!” because someone was killed–even if that someone deserved to die–makes me feel icky. It’s not the emotional response that’s problematic, it’s the way it manifested itself, I think.

    I was also especially grossed out by facebook’s initial response. A lot of people I know responded in ways that were decidedly unpleasant. On the other hand, in recent days I’ve seen a lot of people unexpectedly offer non-violent responses to the sheer joyous madness that immediately followed the announcement of his death, which was reassuring.