Osama Bin Laden is Dead

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Ice

Pretty chill guy
If you haven't heard about this on the news yet, you probably don't own a working TV. We've chased this guy around for what, a decade? He's the face that pops up in most people's heads when they think "terrorist". Well he's finally dead, and everyone is happy and showing that dormant patriotism inside them all. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED AMERICA.

Here's a source, if you want to read more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-pn-osama-bin-laden-dead-20110501,0,4081556.story

Discuss.
 
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I'm still gonna miss Mystic.
 
It's midnight over here, and a small but loud chunk of the student body has erupted into celebration over hearing the news a couple of hours ago. Being out by the central academic building where the lot has gathered, it's like frickin' Mardi Gras. Shouting, cheering, whooping, singing patriotic songs, flag waving, laughing. There was one guy in a rubber Obama mask and other dressed as Captain America. I've seen nothing like it here, except during our annual spring festival week. Everybody describes it as a riot, but honestly, it's one of the most peaceful, if cacophonic, riots I've ever seen. I wonder what it was like when (or even if) the student body was gathered, riled up, and mad during the Vietnam War when the supposed politically-aware Baby Boomers were attending college.

I feel weird. I know the man was the modern-day American villain, but somehow celebrating a man's death seems morbid to me, even if he has a well-deserved reputation as one of the masterminds behind some of the most deadly acts of terror in recent times. I mean, yeah, it's human nature to smile on the inside when the bastard has finally been served justice, moreso if he directly affected you or your family. Maybe you knew somebody who was killed on September 11th, or killed or wounded during the invasion of Afghanistan or the arguably derivative war in Iraq. Maybe a loved one was temporarily called to service in order to participate in one of those operations. If so, I do hope that this offers a bit of closure, if only a little. Maybe that was an awful thing to write on my part. But I digress...

Aside from the personal queasiness I get whenever the death of even the most hated scoundrel results in outright and widespread celebration, this instance seems especially inappropriate to me. Osama's dead, yes. But the affects of his actions (and notably, the collective reactions of America's politicians and military) still live on. Fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq continue, and the War on Terror, by literal definition, will never be brought to a close. A few thousand military personnel and civilians from both America and the rest of the world have died or have been injured as a result of the War on Terror. Tens of thousands of innocent Afghan and Iraqi citizens have been killed and injured during its course. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled their homes to safer areas due to the war, often resorting to prostitution and being despised by the local residents if they travel abroad. Those that remain in the country may be homeless and more insecure than ever. This is to say nothing that has happened to the people of Afghanistan. Each death of a family member or friend, each blow, each deprivation, each humiliation has the potential to spark retaliatory fervor and potential for more terror and fundamentalism to come. And although not as important as the loss and degradation of human life, but still important, is the billions upon billions of dollars the American government alone has spent on and continues to spend on the War on Terror.

You never have to respect the things that Osama bin Laden did and planned. I certainly don't. But you must admit, if his goal was to throw the world into chaos (and, in order to establish the fundamentalist Islamic societies he envisioned, shaking up the status quo was necessary), he probably succeeded more fantastically than he probably imagined possible. His specter, his legacy, will continue to affect the world for years to come. And that is why I see no reason to celebrate.
 
Dang, I was all geared up to make this topic myself! But I guess it was too important a piece of news for it to go this long unannounced.

Unfortunately, I agree with Wombatwarlord777; it's a nice little symbolic milestone, but it doesn't undo the devastating societal damage wrought by religious terrorism, nor will it do much to address the real enemy, which is Islamic extremism itself. Groups like al-Qaeda are reflections of this problem, not its source. You guys already know how I feel about organized religion being a blight of ignorance and violence upon humanity, plus Wombatwarlord777 covered all the key points in any case, so I won't go too much more into detail about it.

But hey, I can still be thrilled that we took him out after all this time. And as a strong Obama supporter, I eagerly await whatever political praise gets heaped on him, deserved and otherwise.
 
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I agree with Wombatlord. I don't think there's much significance to his death. From what I've read, it sounded like they could have taken him prisoner, but a soldier put a bullet in his head 'when he resisted'. Considering Osama has to be hooked up to a kidney dilation machine, it makes me wonder how much 'resistance' he could have put up.

It's also sort of akin to killing someone that belongs to Anonymous. By their death, you really haven't done much to affect their movement. Since he's been on the run and hiding like a little girl for about 10 years now, I'm not sure the impact it would have on morale, either.
 
Of course, the real benefits may turn out not to be a negative impact on al-Qaeda's spirit, but a positive impact on our spirit. We've reaped an apparent benefit from our efforts, and that might do something for our soldiers' morale.
 
Shadowhog, you have just won the interwebz.

Also, as much as it is a great "milestone", it won't matter much his death since they can just put the second in-command as their new leader.

True, it's a step in the right direction, but still...
 
Shadowhog, you have just won the interwebz.

Also, as much as it is a great "milestone", it won't matter much his death since they can just put the second in-command as their new leader.

True, it's a step in the right direction, but still...
More than that, it will hardly make a dent in al-Qaeda's morale. Remember, from their point of view, he was courageously fighting in defense of Islam and went down as a martyr. They surely believe that bin Laden is currently sitting beside God, being accorded the highest honors a mortal man can receive.

Consider, by contrast, what would happen if al-Qaeda operatives assassinated Barack Obama. The United States would be shaken beyond imagination. Granted, America is also influenced heavily by religious belief (in this case, predominantly Christianity), but we are still far more secularized than al-Qaeda could ever possibly be, particularly in the way we view military conflicts. Though the notion that a fallen leader went to heaven would be accepted by a large swathe of the population, it would not reaffirm America's conviction of righteousness in the same way that it would for al-Qaeda.

Indeed, the U.S. government has jumped through hoops to skirt any and all religious debate in its treatment of the War on Terror. This is actually to our cost, because religion is at heart of the entire conflict and we are willfully ignoring the real issue out of a fetish for religious tolerance. In his speech about the death of bin Laden, Obama stated, "The United States is not at war with Islam". I wonder whether Obama genuinely believes this, or merely knows that telling the truth will trash his approval ratings. The fact is, if it wasn't for Islam, the rationale for the actions of groups such as al-Qaeda could not possibly exist.

Osama bin Laden was a highly educated, wealthy man who dreamed of a better world. He defined a better world through the literal word of the Qur'an...and what happened next could hardly have been a surprise. He did not "twist" or "misinterpret" the tenets of his religion in the slightest; the texts of Islam are crammed full of impossible-to-misconstrue calls for conquest, domination, subjugation, and slaughter. There are millions of Muslims who practice their religion peaceably, but they do so in violation of their own faith, blending their traditions with an incompatible view of secular tolerance.

This last part is crucial. Being at war with Islam doesn't have to mean (and wherever possible, should not mean) being at war with those who practice it. This is how tolerance must manifest itself. Reasoning with people must always be our first stage of attack. Physical violence must only be committed if our enemies will not be reasoned with.

I consider it the fault of America's own religious tendencies that we have failed to recognize the War on Terror for what it truly is. Our reverence for faith in general makes it hard for us to accept any connection between violence from people of faith and the faith itself. We prefer to blame the Middle East's problems on anything but religion, despite religion being the obvious culprit. We have two primary scapegoats that we like to blame: economic and political sluggishness, and righteous anger towards Western imperialism. Neither reason stands up well to scrutiny at all, and I will explain why individually.

First, it makes no sense to attribute suicide bombings and terrorist groups to political or economic shortcomings, because there are all kinds of places in the world that suffer from these problems without becoming terrorist hot spots. Furthermore, terrorists tend to come from the middle and upper classes, not the lower classes.

Second, the Middle East has little quarrel with us in terms of imperialism. While it is clear that Western civilization is guilty of a great many atrocities, most of which have gone unpunished, what have we done to arouse the ire of places like Iran? Western imperialism has been far more damaging to Central and South America, southeast Asia, and southern Africa. True, a few parts of the Middle East have been colonized at some point, but as a whole the region has remained relatively unharmed by the rampages the Western world have made across the globe.

The actions of Middle Eastern terrorists only make sense through a religious perspective. They view the West as a civilization of decadent unbelievers whose luxury and prosperity belong in the hands of the righteous. And they will continue to fight until they have either perished as martyrs or claimed the entire planet in the name of their faith. The result of all of this is that, unless bin Laden was an invaluable tactician whose absence will compromise the plans of his operatives, his death will do nothing to deter terrorist groups. Al-Qaeda will consider his death a moral victory, and there's no getting around that.
 
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Apparently, the Indians game had a 9-1-1 (Was it scores, strikes, and outs? IDR) when he was killed and revealed to the public. Kind of shocking to be honest.



PS3 comment (joke from another forum)
Osama Bin Laden was an avid PS3 gamer. I used to hit him up all the time on Call of Duty and SOCOM. (Apparently that was his daily practice for using a weapon). Unfortunately with the latest security breach on PSN, hackers were able to gain access to delicate information, like Osama's credit card information. The information was turned over to the government, and the FBI and CIA went on a manhunt. Osama, being very frustrated with over a week without some sort of FPS practice over PSN, was therefore unable to successfully defend himself from the government raid. Reports indicate that Osama fired over 99 rounds hitting not a single target, a testament to how a week without practice can make anyone rusty. This is the inside scoop from me, a daily gamer with Osama, you heard it here first.
 
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Apparently, the Indians game had a 9-1-1 (Was it scores, strikes, and outs? IDR) when he was killed and revealed to the public. Kind of shocking to be honest.
Not really. The odds that something that day would contain the numbers 9-1-1 would be extremely high. They probably occur every day.
 
Man If old age wasn't gonna kill Bin Laden a bullet to the head sure will. Oh and
@Shadowhog those pics had me laughing for a good 5 min.
 
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