We got him.
Schadenfreude is fun sometimes. You see it often in professional and collegiate sports, ill-will directed at the premiere opponents. It can get ugly, wherein fans root for the other guy to suffer serious or career threatening injuries. When schadenfreude leaves the stadium and enters the geopolitical arena the results can be disastrous. Kennedy’s obsession with killing Fidel Castro nearly got us all microwaved. W’s missile-tipped hard-on for Saddam Hussein cost the country a fortune in good will, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
And yet when we were told that Osama bin Laden was renting a watery one bedroom at the bottom of the ocean we rejoiced. After all, we who presume to rule must sometimes do vile things for the good of the realm.
Justice this was not. That would have entailed a trial, never mind the circus accompaniment. But the American people are happy to settle on revenge in the case of bin Laden, myself not excluded. The news was cathartic for a nation still traumatized by the scale of slaughter at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
9/11 remains the most significant day in our generation’s history, perhaps only matched by 1/20/09 and the election of the man who would announce the retribution two and a half years later. The event is a somber occasion, a national day of mourning and should be commemorated as such. I believe 9/11 should be an official national function.
The families of the victims on that day are entitled to a sense of closure that will never come. No retribution can bring back their loved ones. Osama bin Laden has paid for his crimes, and for many that may have to suffice as some small consolation. But how can they be sure?
By showing us the pictures. You can call me a cynic or a skeptic but that won’t change the fact that our government has lied to us a few too many times and only a fool would take them at their word. Show us the pictures. Show us the proof.
This is not a morbid curiosity or fascination. I believe the American public deserves proof that Osama bin Laden has passed into whatever world awaited him. Would releasing the photos or video inflame some parts of the radical Islamic world? Perhaps. But we should not let our actions be dictated by fear of how violent fundamentalists might react. That would be letting the terrorists win.
I personally could give a flying sow’s ass if anyone mourns bin Laden or feels motivated to follow his example.
What I see from my corner is a bunch of angry, hateful, regressive conservatives who took out their sexual frustrations on a society they deemed too liberal to be allowed to flourish. This is the truth about Al Qaeda. Religiously oriented terrorists and regimes are perched on the farthest feather of the great right wing in the sky.
Release the pictures as a warning to all those who would do this great leftist state called America any harm.
