Osama bin Laden is dead. We have, figuratively speaking, cut off the head of the snake. We are all now and dancing around in increasingly expanding circles, singing “The Wicked Witch Is Dead, ala The Wizard of Oz, as Dorothy begins her journey to the Emerald City. Much like Dorothy, we are going to have some adventures, trials and tribulations along the way. I am curious who will play the Scare Crow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man, nominations anyone?
Our initial exuberance will be judged by some in the Muslim world as gloating and an insult to Islam. Radical Muslims will be incensed and the emotional response to our own emotional reaction will probably result in violence directed towards Americans. The truth be told, al-Qaeda, as a fundamentalist Sunni sect, has done a heck of a job destroying far more Shiite men, women and children than Americans, but this may change as a result of our success at finally finding and killing OBL. Heightened vigilance is the rule for the coming months.
Of course, we have only cut off one of the snake heads, for as Medusa the Gorgon, there are many snakes and many heads. If we are really lucky, and I doubt we will be this lucky, the other heads will consume themselves in the power vacuum left by OBL's death. However, if the analysis is correct, OBL has become significantly less than an active leader and may have become a figurehead.
OBL may have become just a figurehead in the analysis of many, but the killing of even a figurehead has consequences. Imagine the outrage that would have been visited on the IRA had they ever assassinated the Queen of England. She is a figurehead leader of Great Britain, but a much beloved Monarch. In a warped sort of way, I am sure that there are practitioners of radical Islam that might view OBL in the same way and it is these radical few of whom we must be wary.
The competing factions, among other issues, are those that believe we should not only celebrate, but should post the pictures of OBL's dead body on the web and that the video should be viral on YouTube vs. those that, whether it be for religious tolerance or because we just don't want to inflame the greater Muslim world, would not have us publish the photos and video. I suspect that we will be seeing OBL on film at 11 relatively soon. While we profess to believe in the golden rule, we would have video OBL’s body dragged through the streets of New York while pig entrails are thrown at it. A grisly, but I’ll bet accurate, description of what my Conservative brothers would do. However, that does not make it right. We as a people are better than that.
A dear friend of mine has, over the years, convinced me that we do things because they are right, not because someone else would do it to us or because someone else has done something to us. We tell our children that it is wrong to do certain things. They are no less wrong when we grow up, but we become increasingly able to rationalize behavior we would punish if our children did it. It is one of the things that the Right views as weakness; the fact that Liberals will tend to do what is right, as opposed to what makes us feel better or stronger than our enemy. They believe in doing things just because we can and might does make right.
If we reduce ourselves to the level of our enemies, what difference does it make who wins? We cannot afford to give up the moral high ground or it just does not make sense to fight. Does the fact that it is a free country doing the torturing and abusing and human rights violating make it less immoral, unethical or wrong? There are those that respond with a definitive, “Yes, it does.” I am sad to say.
On the other hand, the conspiracy theorists...you know, the people still looking for the gunman on the grassy knoll, 47 years after the death of JFK...are already claiming that OBL is not dead. I am not sure how that is going to shake out, but it will probably be propounded by those that also think that no aircraft flew into the Pentagon and those that will still be asking to see the President's birth certificate, long after those theories have been debunked. There are just too many intelligent people that apparently have nothing better to do. Are you listening Orly Taitz?
The reason that some of my favorite neo-conservative, Right-wing, fascists cannot believe that OBL is really dead is that they might have to give credit where credit is due, to President Obama and, as we all know, that is not possible. They have the two tiered logic system that causes reality to be denied, and logic to be abandoned. It also is the logical loop that will lock up your computer when occurring in millions of lines of programming code. Rule One: Barack Obama is always wrong. Rule Two: When Barack Obama is right, refer to Rule One.
Some of those that are just a smidgeon this side of nuts, like Fox News for example, do manage to escape the logical loop by utilizing just the right amount of spin (Are you listening Bill O'Reilly of the Right-wing spin zone?). They want to believe that President Obama only worked on the results of President George W. Bush and that it is GWB that we must be crediting with the demise of OBL, to the exclusion of anything our current President did. Oh, and they also want to use it as a justification for that heinous act of torture, water-boarding. They now claim that the only reason we got the information to locate OBL is because we tortured people. In the immortal words of Mr. Rogers, "Can you say the ends justify the means? Sure, I knew you could. It's a special sort of feeling."
Once again, we find ourselves divided among moral lines. What do we do? I suggest we hold on the moral high ground we have steadfastly tried not to give up, with a few lapses I am sorry to say, since the birth of our nation.
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