"One Killer Killing Another"
In the past four weeks I've been involved in four protest actions in my free time and so I've had little time to actually sit down and discuss politics lately. There's been a lot I've wanted to say re. Libya, Obama's approval of the use of predator drones in highly built-up civilian areas, etc., AND the recent protests Obama had to face when he
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Right on. All the flag-waving and "U-S-A!" chanting is just disgusting. And last night, everybody online was like, "Party right now! Serious talk tomorrow!" They didn't want to hear it. Because the "bogeyman" had been disposed of. I did initially make some stupid comments along those lines, because it's so easy to buy into, but the more I think about it, the less I can call this a credit to the USA. Beyond the whole celebrating someone's death.
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Earlier today I was reading a piece by one of the fathers of the victims of 9/11 (it's on cnn.com) and he talks about how this isn't a time for rejoicing. As he rightly says, this killing doesn't bring his son back. It doesn't change the fact that no one in the Bush administration has been held accountable for their massive incompetence in handling al Qaida before 9/11, or the fact that the deaths of these people were exploited to take us into wars and occupations that have managed to kill more of our own citizens than 9/11 itself (to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq, Af/Pak, etc.).
And as you say, this isn't really a "credit" to our country: al Qaida was already seriously hampered due to their funding being significantly choked off and many of their organizers being killed off. Killing OBL is symbolic; it doesn't kill terrorism. It doesn't do anything to change the fact that we continue to make more enemies and continue to fuel more hate and potential violence against ourselves the longer we continue to occupy countries and kill civilians with drones. So long as our policies of funding corrupt/questionable people (like OBL, like the Taliban) and creating enemies with our violent actions don't change, the death of OBL means very little.
It's a great propaganda tool though: Unless the US economy seriously tanks within the next year Obama's reelection is virtually assured at this point.
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Seriously, fuck that bullshit: As if all the douchebros celebrating in the streets of DC and NYC lost loved ones and/or their livelihoods to the attack, or as if people would be out celebrating so wildly if they actually knew how many Iraqis/Afghanis/Pakistanis/Libyans were killed on the same day as OBL in the name of ~9/11~ and ~keeping Amurrka and the world safe~. And most importantly, many relatives of the victims have come out saying that celebrating OBL's death is highly inappropriate, not just to the memory of their deceased relatives but also in the context of what led to this assassination and where the US war machine is headed from here. So no, I have no time for that jonstewartian, mainstream "liberal" apologism for death-cheering. Especially since these are probably the same people who were rightfully upset when the (possibly apocryphal) images were broadcast of Palestinians cheering the fall of the World Trade Center, because countless Palestinian lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by US actions.
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I love how the "perspective" people were trying to give him was only about the repercussions of killing OBL and nothing about the larger context of the conflict in the Middle East. No fucking kidding he's lacking some perspective. He's subscribing to a spurious narrative.
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