Tonight--just now, in fact-- I watched Barack Obama announce that Osama bin Laden is dead. He talked a lot about Justice, which, I have to admit, a year ago I might have still been stupid enough to like...
I should preface this--although it is almost offensive that I have to preface my comments with this-- that I in no way advocate wahhabist Islam, or the motivations of al-Qaeda, if indeed such an organization exists beyond the immediate minions of the now-assassinated bin Laden. Moreover, my opinion of Osama bin Laden, which I flatter myself to think of as slightly more sophisticated than the average American's, is that he was a wealthy young man with too much money and romance in his soul, corrupted early by modern radical Islam's very, very seductive persecution complex into launching an ill-fated and relatively ineffective campaign of haphazard terrorist attacks that, in the grand scheme of things, amount to little more than pinpricks against the capitalist imperialism and global overreach of the US military, which was bin Laden's actual target.
Now he will never die, because the United States has killed him.
Goddammit, somebody should have known better. If Justice had been done, bin Laden would have been shamed and humiliated and depowered by being held up before the world for everyone to see. For everyone to witness his impotence. For everyone--all peoples, all nations-- to have the right to participate in the condemnation of this bastard to any Hell you care to name. For everyone to have, in a sense, a hand on the knife as it was driven into his heart.
The world should have collectively judged him. Together. And in so doing, those foolish enough to follow him would have seen how not just those they fight but everybody else willingly condemned their beliefs.
But he was killed in the dark, by a hit squad sent by the Americans.
He was killed-- no, I can hear it already, in the feverish, bloody heart of fundamentalist Islam-- they had to kill him. The Americans were so afraid of him that they had to send their murderers to hound bin Laden across the goddamned planet to find and kill him...he was a hero, he was an example, he is a martyr. And they will raise their sons to say: bin Laden taught the mighty Americans fear.
Bin Laden's death may well have been an accident; it was said there was a firefight. But there is something in me that finds it hard to believe a 70-year-old man with kidney failure was on the front lines. But then again, the man clearly had some steel in him; he did last this long, after all...
Osama bin Laden is dead! But now he'll haunt the planet forever.
