Osama Bin Laden Turns The Big Five-O
Are you surprised that Osama bin Laden will be celebrating another birthday today, or whatever charismatic fugitive terrorist masterminds with weak kidneys and gadzillion dollar rewards on their heads do when they’re thousands of miles from the nearest Chuck E. Cheese’s?
I don’t see OBL and his bodyguards gathering around a cake with 50 candles, but the bearded one does seem to have some uncanny survival skills considering the several U.S.-orchestrated attempts on his life.
For some reason, OBL likes to go on the move in March. Thawing mountain snows and that kind of stuff. So yet again the trail apparently has warmed up and U.S. operatives are said to be trekking into Pakistan in the hopes of delivering a birthday present.
Methinks that a nice smart missile to his solar plexus launched from a remote-controlled drone would be a suitable gift.
More here.
11 Responses to “Osama Bin Laden Turns The Big Five-O”
Methinks that a nice smart missile to his solar plexus launched from a remote-controlled drone would be a suitable gift.
What punishment you suggest for accessories to his crimes ?
You will have fire missiles to White House and CIA HQ .
They trained him. They financed him. They provided him with all the logistical support. These are not assertions. I am witnessed to all these.
What exactly did you witness? I don’t doubt the commonly accepted narrative that the US was supporting the mujahideen and arming them, but accounts like Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower contradict the story of OBL being given financial support by the US. In fact when you read Wright’s account, OBL comes across as a much smaller player; a financier who inflated his own participation in the jihad against the Soviet Union and developed a band of followers who believed the propaganda and lionized him; this led to him becoming a cult hero. If anyone was built up and propped up in that conflict, it was Masoud, who was then assassinated by OBL’s cohorts. If you were a direct witness to events that contradict that view, I’d be interested to hear about it.
I’m not saying that the US policies didn’t help build up OBL and al Qaeda, but I don’t believe it was as direct as you are asserting. We should definitely learn from that experience that we can’t just fund radical groups to do our bidding against other enemies without expecting the law of unintended consequences to kick in.
C Stanley:
Your analysis — and that of Lawrence Wright — are correct.
The US has done this time and again, financing brutal men to fight against men we think more brutal and dangerous still, only to have them turn against us when they get cocky enough. Pinochet and Saddam himself come to mind. Still, we never learn, or at least the CIA never seems to learn and no one seems to be willing to reign them in. I dearly hope that Seymore Hersh’s article is off the mark, because if it isn’t we’re doing it AGAIN and will doubtlessly pay the price again, though not as much as the native populations of the places we influence.
As for a B-Day gift for OBL I thinks a smart missile would be very paltry. Better get him alive (though badly injured works as well) and ship him off to Gitmo, where we naturally prisoners are never tortured and get fair treatment, regardless of whether they are mass murderers or unfortunate goatherds. He must have a load of information, it’d take at least a few years to “interrogate” him properly, I’m guessing. Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t feel that way, but I really am not sorry that I do.
I think the best thing to do would be to capture OBL, put him in a cell, and forget about him. I do not think that there would be any punishment worse for him since death or ‘interrogation’ would only give him the martyr status he so desires.
A man is considered innocent until he is proven guilty. Even if a man claims that he is a murderer there has to be corroborative evidence and a fair trial. These are basic ingredients that help differentiate between democracies and dictatorships. The rule of law versus the rule of jungle.
I am afraid that the public discourse in the USA is now dominated by those who are ruled more by their hearts than by their heads. Even violence in words is as harmful to open societies as violence in deeds.
The increasing tendency to take the law into one’s own hands and suggest the killing of people – including leaders and criminals – in other countries is a patently dangerous and violative of basic legal and moral norms. Such an attitude generates an unending spiral of revenge and violence.
“Bringing to justice” does not mean annihilation of those whom one perceives to be a criminal. There has to be a judicial process. Everyone knows that the US leadership had been supporting and arming Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussain when it suited American interests.
For that matter some of the most brutal regimes in the world were supported by the US leadership at different times. Now the US leadership is trying to dismount from the tiger which it rode once with shameless vigour and excitement.
One can understand the myopia that grips the political leadership and the notorious manner they can endanger the lives and property of their own countrymen and of other countries. However, when this myopia and the desire to bypass the laws grips the saner elements in a country/society there is need for some introspection.
Violence begets violence. Be it in thought, word or deed. So when the people who claim to be intellectuals use a ‘pen’ as a ‘sword’ to commit violence, how are they different from the so-called murderers, militants and terrorists?
Swaraaj:
As a smart guy with a pen, I normally would agree with you, but the memory of what occured in New York, at the Pentagon and in a farm field in Western Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, is deeply etched in my memory.
I am not a revenge freak by nature, but my wish that OBL be united with those 72 virgins that his hijackers are frolicking with has not been slaked over the intervening years.
Sorry.
I would strongly support bringing OBL to trial. I feel he’s not going to come without a fight from some entrenched location, though, so if it’s tactically smart to just kill him, I’m not going to lose much sleep.
‘this myopia and the desire to bypass the laws grips the saner elements in a country/society”
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An apt description of our current leadership and the lambs that blindly follow.
u should be serious and btw u guys know and everyone know that the us deserves it and btw why does the rest of the world seem to hate u?
couse u are the ones who finance warlords and “terrorists” and then let them kill their ppl and then call it “starting peace”, u screwed ure own soldiers yea those 3000 for “weapons” and they all want out and btw u guys scrweded over irak and soon somalia (again). and the fucking funny thing is u guys never get enough of the killing. half million irakies died and u still not satisfied?
Well in general I do support non-interventionism in the ME whenever possible, because of this history of disasterous unintended consequences, which have perverted our foreign policy. Its one thing for a nation to act in its national interest, and quite another to participate in covert actions which work against another country’s national interest, and then color it with talk of preserving freedom and all of that rot. We are boxed into a corner because of our policies, which in the past appeared to advance our national interest. It appears to me that other than humanitarian efforts, which add to our reputation as a benevolent power, we should not interfere in another nation’s business.
Unfortunately, we may be forced into some interference to prevent more acts of terrorism, but I would like to see our actions confined, as much as possible, to law enforcement actions within our own borders, and intelligence gathering outside of them.
But to cause all of this misery and suffering by arming warlords or unleashing the hatred and violence of rival sects never has and never will be spreading democracy and freedom.