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bin Laden's History
May. 2nd, 2011 02:35 amOsama bin Laden, dead.
You know, I thought I would be more enthusiastic about it all. There are a few things that are tempering my reaction.
The first is the history. In a very big way, the United States funded bin Laden's efforts way back when. If we hadn't, would he have risen to the position he reached? The problem with time is that you can't rewind it and see what might have happened if you had made a different choice. Maybe we would have saved countless lives had we not helped Osama when we thought he could benefit us.
And that's really the second element of it all. At this point, as far as we knew, bin Laden wasn't really "in charge" of anything. He was just whiling away the hours in his mansion, til Jack Bauer (or whomever it was) arrived and took him out. But it's unclear what that accomplished in the bigger picture. Yes, it was a deserved death for someone who clearly had been either directly or certainly indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. But the next obvious question is will the counter move prove even more fatal to us?
I get why people are chanting USA! USA! in Times Square, at the World Trade Center site, and outside of the White House. I know that singing The Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America are a part of it and that some are in a party mood, but I'm just feeling a bit more cautious about it all.
Really, it's just a milestone and not an ending, and that's really why I'm not caught up in it. I am glad that he was finally taken out, but I do wonder where we're going now... with Afghanistan, with Iraq and the whole situation in the Middle East... with Libya, it's just more of the same.
Let's see where we go from here.
You know, I thought I would be more enthusiastic about it all. There are a few things that are tempering my reaction.
The first is the history. In a very big way, the United States funded bin Laden's efforts way back when. If we hadn't, would he have risen to the position he reached? The problem with time is that you can't rewind it and see what might have happened if you had made a different choice. Maybe we would have saved countless lives had we not helped Osama when we thought he could benefit us.
And that's really the second element of it all. At this point, as far as we knew, bin Laden wasn't really "in charge" of anything. He was just whiling away the hours in his mansion, til Jack Bauer (or whomever it was) arrived and took him out. But it's unclear what that accomplished in the bigger picture. Yes, it was a deserved death for someone who clearly had been either directly or certainly indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. But the next obvious question is will the counter move prove even more fatal to us?
I get why people are chanting USA! USA! in Times Square, at the World Trade Center site, and outside of the White House. I know that singing The Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America are a part of it and that some are in a party mood, but I'm just feeling a bit more cautious about it all.
Really, it's just a milestone and not an ending, and that's really why I'm not caught up in it. I am glad that he was finally taken out, but I do wonder where we're going now... with Afghanistan, with Iraq and the whole situation in the Middle East... with Libya, it's just more of the same.
Let's see where we go from here.