Ruminations on Osama
I know I'm mostly keeping lj for my own posterity nowadays. Most people have left and I have so much on here I don't think I'd feel comfortable adding anybody new even if I knew anybody who still used it. But I've had it so long I just can't let it go!
So. Osama bin Laden. What is there to say? For a split second I thought it was an April Fool's joke when I first heard it, and had to mentally check the date just to make sure.
I can't say I'm exactly happy about it, but I completely understand people who are. Mostly I'm just satisfied this is finally accomplished. And I'm happy that, for what will probably be just the blink of an eye in the current political climate, Americans could kind of just be positive and united about the whole thing. It's really a breath of fresh air. And for the most part it felt less like people were dancing on his grave and more like they were just breathing one big collective sigh of relief.
Of course, this opens a new can of worms: even more strained ties with Pakistan, the possibility of terrorist retaliation, and the inevitable tin-foil hat brigade encompassing everyone from the birthers to the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. At least with regard to the second issue, I feel like Osama's enough of a has-been that only a few crazies are really going to care about his death particularly. Young people in the Arab world, at least, are too caught up in movements of their own making to care about some old dude who professed to be speaking for their demographic back when they still children.
So while I don't know that this even by itself is anything beyond symbolically significant, I guess I have reason to feel optimistic in that it is, if nothing else, a sign of the times.
And now I'm going to take this verbosity and apply it to my personal statements.
So. Osama bin Laden. What is there to say? For a split second I thought it was an April Fool's joke when I first heard it, and had to mentally check the date just to make sure.
I can't say I'm exactly happy about it, but I completely understand people who are. Mostly I'm just satisfied this is finally accomplished. And I'm happy that, for what will probably be just the blink of an eye in the current political climate, Americans could kind of just be positive and united about the whole thing. It's really a breath of fresh air. And for the most part it felt less like people were dancing on his grave and more like they were just breathing one big collective sigh of relief.
Of course, this opens a new can of worms: even more strained ties with Pakistan, the possibility of terrorist retaliation, and the inevitable tin-foil hat brigade encompassing everyone from the birthers to the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. At least with regard to the second issue, I feel like Osama's enough of a has-been that only a few crazies are really going to care about his death particularly. Young people in the Arab world, at least, are too caught up in movements of their own making to care about some old dude who professed to be speaking for their demographic back when they still children.
So while I don't know that this even by itself is anything beyond symbolically significant, I guess I have reason to feel optimistic in that it is, if nothing else, a sign of the times.
And now I'm going to take this verbosity and apply it to my personal statements.