ACCORDING to official reports Obama bin Laden is dead. He was killed by an American serviceman. Let me get something out of the way first. A while back I wrote that bin Laden was the “everlasting man.” That is, he needed to be kept alive, in the same sense that Hitler needs to be kept alive (in order to give cable TV topics for their programming). I argued that, perhaps, the only way to keep support for the Middle East wars was to present it as an endless search for bin Laden.
I do not withdraw the position. I modify it. Clearly the president felt that he was obligated to give the order to kill the guy. Recall that Osama, the one is Washington, does not like this country. He does not want US victories in any war. Thus, he may well have fully accepted my position. That is, he may have ordered the killing so that popular support will evaporate, and he can then arrange defeats. We may never know, or future events may teach us.
However, this time I wish to analyze a related topic. Also according to the official reports, bin Laden’s body was treated “properly” according to the Mohammedan practice. That is, it was prepared and buried in an acceptable way. By the way, as you probably know this “religion” has two major subdivisions, Shiite and Sunni (the words are Arabic for dumb and dumber). The funeral treatments for each are NOT the same. Thus I do not know how “the” proper method could have been used. No one comments on this, except for me, of course.
Some have argued that this “last respect” was not justified. It seems to me that the argument against the action was that the family members of victims of the 9/11 attacks were owed more. Those victims did not have normal funerals, and their families, unable to have this last satisfaction, suffered additionally. Interestingly enough this is EXACTLY why a correct funeral for bin Laden should have been conducted. The principle here is that the innocent family members should not suffer.
When bin Laden was identified as the leader of the 9/11 attack some of his family members were identified as living in the US. They were removed from the country with government approval. The reason was obvious. These people, who were innocent, might have been treated badly, even killed, by angry Americans. As they had nothing to do with the attack, they should not have been made to suffer. Yet they would have, if bin Laden corpse would have been mistreated. That is they would have been punished without just cause.
A lot of Americans like to say, when advocating a policy, “that is not what we are.” This may have been the first time this expression actually applied. We are not the types to punish innocent people simply because of their lack of luck with DNA. Osama Obama did the right thing.
Comments