War. War never changes.

[digitaldiscipline]

You know what the news about OBL makes me feel? Tired.

I am tired of the post-9/11 mindset; of raw, naked American Imperialism; of the fact that the erosion of our personal freedoms in the wake of it meaning that yes, as a matter of fact, the terrorists HAVE won; of the jingoist xenophobia and religious shouting; of the whole sorry fucking mess of the world.

And I am still cynical; the political timing - hard on the heels of giving the middle finger to the Birther bullshit and exposing Trump for the hollow pretender he is at the press corps dinner, Obama's announcement was, coincidentally or not, on the anniversary of a much ballyhooed bit of political and theatrical farce.

The rest of my thoughts are well-said by Jay Lake here; behind a f-locked post, other friends put things well, thusly:

"I'm slightly disappointed in myself that my initial, most visceral reaction was "Good." More rationally, I had hoped he would be taken alive, so that he wouldn't become a martyr and so he could face some kind of international justice for his crimes. I'm thinking World Court at the Hague, to avoid the death penalty (see: martyr) and to avoid any shady Guantanamo dealings. More lives were lost in the hunt for him than he took, and I don't know how to square that. And on some level, simultaneously, some inner part of me was lusting for vengeance... for the culture of fear the U.S. has plunged itself into (though in fairness, we have only ourselves to blame for that one)."

and

"I'm having a hard time reconciling the political boogeyman with the death of an actual human, not least because he actually died a [few days] ago and they've been waiting on the announcement until they had conclusive DNA evidence - and also because this was IMO a justified death in battle."

We are a culture that is entirely too self-aware; people jokingly talked about thirty years from now saying, "Yes, honey, I was grading papers / playing video games / fucking around on Twitter when I heard about Osama bin Laden's death..."

I have no problem with humor; I myself wondered last night on twitter what all the fuss regarding One Big Llama was about. But he was made into The Enemy, larger than life, more hated than death, by the ravening media machine our culture has wrought (and don't for a minute think that this wasn't fostered by people with agendas to push that having a capital-A Adversary made so much easier to go for); that has, as much as anything, changed the nature of the attention to his demise, and I think a lot of people are reacting to the political bogeyman and figurehead, rather than any kind of actual, real-world consequence of one man's end.

Like I said, tired.

Comments

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Someone over on the ontd_political board, aware of that anniversary, made this awesome image:



The ongoing tragedy of 9/11 was how the Bushies built a scary-powerful Executive branch and how Obama has yet to dismantle that.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I said in a comment on someone else's LJ the other day, when someone was going off on BO:

"He's gone from 'Dude I wanted to vote for' to 'Well, at least he's better than what the other side is offering'." It's disappointing, to say the least.


BARRY, DON'T BE THAT GUY.

[david-deacon.livejournal.com]

I'm not buying it. Complete bullshit. I've listened to enough White House press anouncements to know when I'm being lied to. OBL died in January of 2002, as far as I'm concerned; everyone in the Bush administration knew it but refused to acknowledge it, because a live Osama is useful to ratchet-up war hysteria and erosion of civil liberties.

The present story, that we killed him but respected his religious beliefs enough to give him a decent Christian  Muslim burial, is too ridiculous to take with a straight face.

Bullshit. He died in January 2002 and was "kept alive" until now for propaganda purposes. At least we acknowledge now that he's dead.

By the way, according to the FBI, OBL was never a suspect in the destruction of the WTC, due to "lack of evidence tying him to the crime."

[sloot.livejournal.com]

regardless of whether what you say is correct, their actions have left 3 possible situations with nobody able to independently vouch for them.

1) OBL was killed in that battle
2) OBL is still alive
3) OBL was killed in 2002

Nobody except the US government can prove any of them.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2011/05/few-more-random-observations-regarding.html

[angledge.livejournal.com]

I thought the burial thing made sense. No gravesite, no rallying point for extremists. Also no drawn-out negotiations trying to find some country that would take the body. I think giving the body at least minimally appropriate Muslim burial rituals wasn't done out of respect for Osama; it was done out of respect for the religion of millions of people who will be looking for every possible reason to be outraged by this action.

Why do you think Osama bin Laden died in January 2002? Previously I've heard theories that he died in December 2001, but not the next month. What's the story for January 2002? Thanks.

[david-deacon.livejournal.com]

I don't think there needs to be a "massive conspiracy," nor do I think the timing was rigged to make anyone look particularly good or particularly bad. I think that he's been dead for years, that they had to declare him dead sooner or later, that now is as good as any other time--plus Obama gets points for ceasing to use "bin Laden the Boogeyman" as an excuse for any more obscene rights violations, which is more than Bush ever did. (Pretending that a dead man is still alive so he can be used to scare people is not inconsistent with everything else Bush has ever done.) As far as "pony it up" is concerned, *cough*bullshit*cough*, your source (the United States Government) is hardly an unimpeachable source. I trust the naysayers more than I trust anything said in a government press release.

Whether dead then or dead now, he's dead, finally. Good. Ultimately my point (as usual) was that Obama's brand of perfidy is less offensive than Bush's.

[david-deacon.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm just a month off. My reasons have to do with insultingly amateur audio and videos of supposedly alive bin Laden basically saying "Yeah, I did it," released by the most corrupt administration in US history (and that's saying a lot). I grew quickly to disbelieve everything uttered by Bush and his minions, and I was usually dead right. I wouldn't believe a Bush press release if he told me that water is wet and it's dark at night. He was a proven liar. The better question is why should I believe anything uttered by Bush's people, any of them. Obama gets points for finally declaring bin Laden dead.

done out of respect for the religion of millions of people who will be looking for every possible reason to be outraged by this action

So . . it's OK to *kill* the man, as long as we give him a decent burial. At sea. Where his body will never be found. And with knowledge that Muslims don't "bury people at sea." How convenient. No, I'm not buying it for a second. But kudos to Obama for trying to put the matter to rest. You couldn't keep the man alive forever--he's not Elvis, you know. XD

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Yes. The way you treat or mistreat someone's body after they die can be inflammatory. I mean, we killed him - but he killed thousands of our citizens & had dedicated his life to killing more. So killing him is justified. But desecrating his body (by not burying him immediately) would add insult to injury.

Muslims have customs for burying people at sea. (http://www.al-islam.org/laws/burial.html)

[david-deacon.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link. OBL was not killed on board a ship. He was killed on land. I find it odd that the people who killed him would have enough respect for his beliefs to "bury him at sea," but not enough to refrain from shooting him multiple times in the first place.

[david-deacon.livejournal.com]

Just located this (http://www.bushstole04.com/911/top_govt_911_hoax.htm). I may have been wrong about the month, but according to this article, OBL's death pre-dates April 2002 in any case. Of course, you are free to disbelieve, but someone that high-up in the chain of command (although not recently) certainly has credentials and would be ideally placed to hear the truth.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

The people who killed him weren't doing anything out of respect for OBL or his beliefs, they were doing out of respect for the beliefs of millions of other Muslims. And yes, they twisted the Islamic rules on burial at sea. But I think that it is still a reasonable interpretation that they did what they did for the reasons that were given. I consider it more likely than a story that they did it because Osama's actually been dead for a decade.