Bin Laden Dead?

the u.s. seems to have a really weird relationship to public celebration. when i was watching coverage of celebrations here, i knew they made me uncomfortable but still can't quite explain why.

i don't feel bad or upset that he's dead, but actually celebrating seems pretty grotesque

i really appreciate you sharing that mordy

i don't think i'm coming from quite the same place but i can dig that

Not really a turn-the-other-cheek issue in a way - they went to get him, he resisted, they shot him in self-defence. The biggest wrong here was breaching international law by invading Pakistan. No revenge or even moral issue at all, if you frame it in those terms. I'm sure we all do.

yeah i agree with gbx. especially since just about all of us were pretty far removed from any kind of direct impact thanks to bin laden. and yeah, i was raised catholic, so there you go

NV - probably not

I mean the celebrating is only a step removed from 'public hanging', which I find to be hideous and medieval, but it isn't like this was some kiddie fiddler that was murdered, ya know...I saw many friends of mine who are extremely passive even go out of character last night. also US perspective is tainted by the fact that it doesn't experience major terrorist attacks on its soil daily like some weary, beleaguered nations...

if this had happened under pres bush would there have been about half the celebration? or would the demographics have just looked differently

anyway a colleague of mine showed up to our final exam this morning LITERALLY DRAPED IN AN AMERICAN FLAG

i just wonder if another country was in a equiv. situation and i saw them celebrating how would i feel

also THEY TOLD BIDEN -- all jokes aside i'm sure there were points where obama saw biden walk out the door after one of the five high priority briefings and went "jesus fucking christ..."

this was after we dropped atom bombs on two Japanese cities when Japan had actively been seeking to negotiate a surrender treaty since April

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, May 2, 2011 8:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Celebrating the end of World War II is very different than celebrating one assassination.

xxxxpost if it happened in the weeks to months following 9/11, reaction would have likely been more muted because of the proximity to the event and the continuing fear of ongoing attacks. if it had happened around 2003 or 2004, I'm willing to bet there'd have been 305 million barbeques within the surrounding 3 days.

as was mentioned before, the ppl celebrating were probably just college kids looking for an excuse to party

I missed all of the celebration because I was asleep; usually my first reaction to any large group of mostly white people cheering loudly about someone's death is "people in my family had to uproot their lives to avoid getting lynched as recently as the 1940s".

xp: with the "public hanging" comment I see I'm not the only one who gets flashes of this

also lol @ them outing KSM as one of the snitches -- maybe the most thinly veiled attempt to have him murdered by another inmate ever

definitely does seem weird to react "Osama's dead, hey, wanna shotgun some beers?".

frogbs used women as human shields

anyway a colleague of mine showed up to our final exam this morning LITERALLY DRAPED IN AN AMERICAN FLAG

― estkella (k3vin k.), Monday, May 2, 2011 6:49 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i wore a team usa baseball jersey http://i.imgur.com/blXaG.gif

also mlk otm

i think the "any excuse to part-ay" line is probably accurate.

fuck any sympathy for a belligerent murderer like Bin Laden, what makes me sad is more the notion that the end of level boss has been beat and the game has been won

as was mentioned before, the ppl celebrating were probably just college kids looking for an excuse to party

― That Dunkster! (absolutely clean glasses), Monday, May 2, 2011 5:51 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

this

so now we need to find out (I don't think we ever will) whether KSM shared the information after a few Marlboros and a Coke or he was tortured.

btw I'm not going to lecture a relative of someone killed in the attacks about the proper way to celebrate or mourn.

yes this was quite obvious -- but no one on TV was going to ruin their footage by saying that

Dr. Phibes was just holding court on ABC. Couldn't bring himself to say Obama's name: the administration deserves credit, and we owe "him" the same sense of satisfaction we all feel. Whatever that means.

fuck any sympathy for a belligerent murderer like Bin Laden, what makes me sad is more the notion that the end of level boss has been beat and the game has been won

― bell hops (Noodle Vague)

bush and bin laden kickin it

http://ui32.gamespot.com/1535/bushbowser.jpg

btw I'm not going to lecture a relative of someone killed in the attacks about the proper way to celebrate or mourn.

i wouldn't lecture either but that doesn't mean i don't have an opinion about what's civilized or useful

Our long national nightmare is over: love Lee Ann Womack, but I don't wanna hear "I Hope We Dance" again.

btw I found most offensive the enthusiasm with which Facebook posters and the bottom run of right wing websites wrote a variation on "I hope the SEALS stuffed pork in this a-hole's mouth!" You could almost hear the sixth grade giggling and smirking.

*bottom rung

don't mean to derail thread but looking at the GWB photo made me think again about how it's not entirely clear to me how he is any less moraly culpable for the deaths of 1,000s than OBL. yet he's living high on the hog in texas.

well he's less morally culpable to the extent that he didn't say "let's go and deliberately kill 1000s of random people"

He's "morally culpable" of something by approving torture and the invasion of a sovereign country, if that's what you mean.

'a sovereign country' to quote michael moore

said more or less the same thing in the US politics thread last night, but though i'm a card-carrying bleeding heart, i find it difficult to be weirded out or repulsed by the celebrations and juvenile trash-talk. it all seems pretty tame and predictable, honestly. people celebrate when their enemies die, especially the officially-sanctioned, level boss boogeymen. they always have and probably always will. to tell the truth, i'm more weirded out by my own indifference.

^^^ absolutely

there's been general agreement since sep 12 2001 that killing bin laden would put the lid back on the hotpot of american anxiety that the attacks had stirred up - i don't think it will, but the fact that so many have believed it, for so long, will actually go some distance towards it - and the length of time involved strangely aids this i think

A confession: beyond relief that my uncle and a few friends were not in the kill zone on 9-11, I didn't feel much at all, other than recoil from the horror of paralysis: we had to Do Something, so Something Was Done.

Erm--admin releases more details: didn't fire a shot, may not have picked up a weapon. (They said, I just didn't catch all of it.) Discussions of which will tie in with deaths of Khadaffi's son (the youngest and apparently most harmless, BBC says; plus grandchildren). But still.

Reagan's attack on Libya also resulted in the death of a Qaddafi child (his adopted daughter).

Yes. Have they said what happened to the woman Bin Laden reportedly used as a human shield?

Was the mission to capture Bin Laden or to kill him?

It was "kill or capture"

maybe this feels different in america, but this seems from here like a clear case of a bad guy getting his just deserts. will it stop terrorism? no. to call it an anticlimax would suggest people were anticipating a climax, which they haven't been for a long-ass time. wonder if he was even involved in terrorism in a significant way at this point.

i had heard the mission was just to kill.

http://www.ajc.com/multimedia/dynamic/00921/bin_laden_2_921003c.jpg

http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/02/official-bin-laden-mission-was-kill-or-capture-not-just-kill/

ah it was kill or capture with a strong assumption that it would be the former. capture with extreme prejudice.

I wouldn't have minded a trial, but because this White House has proven itself incompetent when it comes to dealing with the intricacies of criminal prosecution of terrorists, I'm glad this problem is now gone.

In addition, think of Hannah Arendt's fictionalized fantasia of what she would have wanted Eichmann's judge to say before his execution. I'll post it if I can find it.

haha, best part is the AJC's caption "Osama bin Laden’s death is a “touchdown” for America, said VFW Post 5408 Cmdr. Steve Grillo in Acworth."

Kinda surprised there wasn't more calls for them to post his head on a pike at GZ or the WH like he was fucking Cromwell or something.

kill doesn't feel like the naturally best option to me, but was almost certainly the inevitable option