Osama is Dead

Finally. Good riddance, and a toast to all who helped him depart.

The other good thing: Obama can now declare victory in Afghanistan, as part of an exit in Afghanistan. I wonder if he will, and if he does, who will oppose him, and with which arguments.

 

Not to rain on anyone's parade or anything. But I have a hard time believing the validity of this. For all we know, the person that was killed was a body-double. Until I see DNA evidence and a corpse to match it being paraded through every town and city in America, I'm going to remain skeptical about all of this business.

 

Just saw the news.
Well, Kudos to them. I too am curious what will happens next.
A good part of the radical Islam Club is not amused!

 

If you're inclined to look, there's a picture of the corpse around, I found it easily enough.

This wont really change much IMO, it's not like Al Quaeda will pack up and go home. On the other hand, though, nice work yanks! Do the soldiers that got him get to split the bounty on his head?

 

And so he rises to martyrdom, would have been better to keep it quiet - if it is really him the US has just stroked its ego nicely instead of simply killing the man and knowing he was dead the US leadership has created a near god to his followers.

 

Look at the birthers, obviously proof and evidence are no medicine against conspiracy theories to fester.

Not the point. Of course they will fight on without him, and there will be an Osama martyr brigade. So what? They have suffered grievous losses at the hand of the US and allied militaries, intelligence and police forces, and they will continue to suffer such losses. Only last week German police arrested three AQ suspects with materials to build explosives. They are but a shadow of their former strength.

The big importance is IMO for the collective American psyche. 9/11 is eventually avenged. The beast is dead. So this can change much.

If the Obama administration now come to the realisation (maybe they are there already) that for a very long time they haven't been fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan but the Pashtun tribes under the summary label of 'Taleban' the US will have a rare chance to readjust policy. I hope Obama will use it. Of course there is a chance that America will proceed on auto pilot in trying to reshape Afghanistan into something it likely cannot be and, on top of that, stubbornly doesn't want to be. That would be tragic.

 

Honestly, I think the reaction has been kind of embarrassing. People getting teary eyed over this are making fools of themselves. It doesn't mean or change anything, the only way it will impact American lives if by securing Obama another term.

 

Does that mean that all the money and resources devoted to hunting him can be devoted to something useful now? Probably not.

 

Dunno, probably the result of Americans in their recent wars and political skirmishes having fought personalised evil(doer)s - not Iraq but Saddam, not Libya but Qathafi, not Al Qaeda but Bin Laden, not Afghanistan but the Taleban, not Iran but Ahmadinejad. Probably no surprise from the country that invented PR.

The downside of the mobilising effect of such personalised evils is that it

• binds people politically into politics (i.e. unless the monster is slain there cannot be normalcy i.e. the country cannot be dealt with - and if you try to do that, you're soft on evil and will be (politically) attack( ad-)ed) even if the policies you want to change don't work and are counter-productive and
   
• obstructs the view on the country or problem proper (i.e. the old Baathist Iraq was not the same as Saddam; Nationalist Baathism wasn't any worse an ideology than Maliki's Shiite supremacism that Iraq has now. Likewise: Islam is not the same, not at all, and not by a very very long shot the same, as Bin Laden's Tafkiri ideology) limiting severely an understanding what the hell the US got themselves into.

 

Many people have believed him dead for years, it would have been better to do this in secret and leave the mystery, this may have been more about obama's popularity then anything else

hmm..... they've hastily buried his body at sea...

 

I think Al-Jazeera released the news first - iirc initially stating they were killed in a drone strike. After that, confirming it might have been the best option for the US administration.

Altogether, I agree that this won't stop Al-Queda and might provide a temporary boost to their activities. However, I think it had to be done sooner rather than later - it brings the US people (and a lot of others) a sense of justification, and shows that defying a superpower comes at a price. Congratulations to the people who put the operation together and carried it out.

Mind you, Al-Queda is now more of a "brand" than an organization, a front pretty much anyone who agreed with their ideology can hide behind.

 

what price? its the US and the UK which have paid with blood

 

This is the best thing about the whole thing.

Loving the reaction outside the White House.

"USA! USA!"

*cringe*

The jokes have started

A week after it's discovered Apple tracks users locations, Osama bin Laden is dead; correlation?

So Osama Bin Laden is dead... Amazing what the Americans can do when the Playstation Network is down.

 

"Paid" presumes you have paid for something. Osama is the one who instigated an atrocity like 9/11, but for some ten years afterwards he was alive and free. What happened to him was the price for his crimes - and if anything, it should have come a fair bit earlier. Even apart from the deaths and violence he orchestrated, by spitting in the face of a superpower and just surviving he was undermining the world order and the US/UK's standing. If a renegade Saudi with no country could do something like that and had died in his bed, what would that say about those whom he injured?

 

The problem is that the extremists now have a martyr. Add to that the fact that an estimated 110,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by the allies (compared to approx. 5000 Americans) and you end up just giving Al-Qaeda an excuse for more violence

 

Time to re-read Jingo.

 

I disagree, paying implys that someone has lost something of value, we value life, the extremists do not, they gladly die for what they believe, all of the people who died on our side lost something of value, their lives and their families lost their loved ones, bin laden got what he wanted, he killed thousands and died a hero to his cause.

he won, we lost.

I saw a placard being held by some of the celebrators;

Obama 1
Osama 0

ummm, shouldnt that be

Obama 1
Osama ...... countless thousands

 

I don't see a problem.

First, they already have plenty martyrs. Sure, this one is more prominent than others, but since the Tafkiri Jihadis are already irreconcilable anyway, what difference does it make? There will be and would have been acts of terror with Bin Laden dead or alive. Likely his end will have unknown and perhaps unknowable repercussions; so would have his life.

Second, what choice did the US have? Had Obama let him escape he'd be accused of cowardice, just like Clinton was accused of missing the chance to get Bin Laden. Also, the 'Barak Hussein Obama, the secret Muslim' theme will sound even more ridiculous now than it did before. Besides, Osama was a wanted mass murder. McVeigh was executed for his mass murder; and Bin Laden was shot in a raid in Pakistan? Legalities* aside, that is not a result that should surprise anyone. 9/11 was still unfinished business - for justice to be served, and emotionally as much as politically.

Bin Laden's death is political capital for Obama, true, but it would have been political capital for any president. It will now be difficult for the R's to accuse him of having lost (which they would do without either scruples or inhibitions) Afghanistan. I hope Obama uses it to US advantage by turning around Afghanistan policy based on that the war is over now that he is dead, that'd be a shrewd move.

Spoiler

* Legally, the US assault was illegal and an act of aggression (a deliberate violation of Pakistani national sovereignty by US military forces), another one if one keeps in mind the countless drone strikes the US have conducted on Pakistani territory. Since the Pakistanis are unlikely to complain, nothing will come of this. They will complain, naturally, but meekly. Having Bin Laden hiding in a town among Pakistani Generals and near the Pakistani military academy probably is an additional disincentive for Pakistan to get too noisy about this. Where there is no plaintiff, there will be no judge.

 

True, but it's not that they need a big excuse. However, as rags stated, Osama had to pay for what he had done. The US letting him be was an even worse option, and life imprisonment... well, I wonder if someone didn't decide it would be too much hassle.

Speaking of martyrs, I wonder if that was the reason the US was so hush-hush about the body and buried it (at sea, no less) so quickly. You don't have a lot of footage that extremists can circulate for posters, you don't have any tomb that someone could get to, and you can have all those conspiracy theories Osama could be alive. Maybe all of that was just to lessen his importance as a martyr? A symbol of defiance can become more powerful due to open repression and ridicule. Here it almost looks like the US was planning to "bury" the memory of bin Laden.