It wasn’t near as entertaining as the replays that would normally preoccupy my weekend, like those on ESPN. So I was tapping away at my computer all the while instead of remaining glued to the tube, trying to turn 3500 words worth of mush into 3000 words worthy of another magazine story, and I barely noticed the rest of the wedding. The wedding reruns morphed into Geraldo on Fox, and he prattled on as only Geraldo can, while the President frittered away some more of his only term as President. Obama was almost an hour late for his scheduled teleprompter read before the nation. Maybe he was in the bathroom.
By the time our President finally got around to speaking, the cat was out of the bag, and all the news services had already announced to a grateful world that Osama bin Laden was dead. It says a lot about the guy, Osama not Obama, that the whole world noticed when he croaked.
Ya have to piss off a bunch of people to get this kind of a response from the world just because somebody put a bullet into your brain. But that is what Osama did. He set out to rule the world, and the proven way to do this is to get the unsuccessful of the world stirred up against the successful. Question his methods if you wish, but at this he was good.
Osama had the gift. He was an emotional leader. He stirred up people desperate enough to listen to his rants, mostly by promising to kill as many of us as he could, and then to enslave the rest. And the folks he wanted to murder all felt it, because when he looked into the camera, with those raptor eyes, (I wish I came up with this description, but I stole it) everybody he threatened to kill felt very much like he meant it, personally, and so he was pretty much the scariest dude on earth for a while.
Osama was very successful at killing people. Or at least in ordering others to kill people for him. Thousands of innocent people died because of him, for no more reason than it is far easier to kill the unarmed and unsuspecting than it is to kill folks prepared to defend themselves. And since one definition for civilization is that folks living in one have the luxury of not having to face murderers at every turn, Osama found easy pickings among the civilized nations, and in those borderline civilizations, like post Sadam Iraq, that were struggling to find peace.
The only reason Osama didn’t kill far more people, in the nine years since his infamous celebratory dance after the slaughter of 911, was that he was ducking and running much of the time. The civilized nations were after him. Constant pressure on him and his minions, by those people hot on his trail, no doubt saved thousands of lives. Because unless all those threats by Osama, as he tried to stir the losers of the world into hatred for the decent folks, were just campaign promises, one can only wonder how many more innocents would have been slaughtered in those years.
Lots of the good guys were on Osama’s trail. Thanks are due to the Brits, the Israelis, and the occasional Islamic leaders who would like to see at least some parts of the Islamic world someday considered civilized, too. But the bulk of the load was carried by the United States, under the urging of former president Bush.
The search for Osama was not a constant chain of successes. No mechanism was in place in 2001 to deal with the type of threat Osama and his terrorist minions presented. It was learn as you go, and learn from the mistakes. America’s critics had little tolerance for the mistakes, but that is nothing new. Even when we approach perfection, we can’t do anything right in the minds of some.
A series of small victories beginning early in the chase and continuing right up to last weekend, some hard found information carefully assembled, the coordination of intelligence assets and superbly trained military units, the evolution of technology aimed at counter terrorism, all came together to put an end to this evil man.
Small wonder that some people around the world celebrated when they heard the news of Osama’s death. Osama had inflicted himself upon the lives and wellbeing of millions. For nearly a decade, people around the world awoke each day with at least part of their consciousness haunted by that threatening visage. Ding Dong! The witch is dead! The universal sigh of relief was palpable.
These celebrations were a bit unseemly, but none approached the level of delirious joy that we witnessed in places like Palestine, and various other monuments to the 12th century, when the news of the massive slaughter of innocents on 911 spread round the world. But then, we are talking the civilized world this time. These celebrants will go back to their lives soon enough, with just a little less to worry about.
Some were embarrassed by celebration. America caught the brunt of the criticism. How dare we celebrate? Shouldn’t we instead be so embarrassed by our hard work and success over the last hundred years, that we should instead bow down in apology because our success gave this terrorist his excuse to murder in the first place? To this I simply ask…HUH?
Even the President was caught up in the celebration. Which was just a little bit embarrassing. Apparently, as he stood in front of the nation Sunday night, and took much of the credit for the mission that ended Osama, Obama forgot all about his promises to his supporters, (to get himself elected), that he would eviscerate the very military and intelligence assets that pulled off this remarkable mission. Of course, now he is running for re-election and trying to appeal to the political middle, so I guess we weren’t supposed to notice this little flip.
Fortunately, once he found himself mired in the running of a great nation, Obama moderated his attacks upon the people who defend this country, as he listened to folks who actually know what they were doing, instead of the usual pack of community organizers surrounding him. So America still had the ability to hunt down and eliminate this evil man.
Obama facilitated the hunt for Osama by shutting up and getting out of the way. Our Hero.
Some referred to Obama’s granting permission for the execution of this mission as a gutsy move. For someone so accustomed to doing the wrong things, finally doing the right thing must have seemed gutsy.
I hope that when the time comes to select our next president, voters will pull out a copy of that photo showing Obama in the “Situation Room” surrounded by serious looking folks as they monitored the attack in Pakistan. The man with the look of abject terror on his face….sorry folks, but that is our leader. Maybe he should have been in the bathroom then.
I watched Hillary playing Secretary of State on the tube this week, talking about the death of Osama. If you turned down the sound, you could pretend to see what she really meant to say, “Dammit, DAMMIT! If I hadn’t talked Bill out of offing that bastard back in the 90’s when WE had the chance to do it right, but instead worried about those few points in the polls, it would be ME in that presidential chair instead of that hack!!!”
More embarrassing would be the question asked by some network journalist who really should know better, “Does this mean the war on terror is over?”
Ahhh, no honey. Go back and study some history, which you should have done before you went to journalism indoctrination, sorry…school. When fanatics use religion as an excuse to wage war, said wars tend to last generations. Try not to let down your guard just because we stopped one of the savages.
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