I kind of went off the grid yesterday, avoiding all news/emails/facebook type stuff for the day. So, I missed the whole Osama Bin Laden is dead thing, until I signed into email and facebook this morning and was seeing things like this:
Take that terrorists! We're coming for you!
We got em! Yay America!
and America! Fuck yea!
Does it escape anyone else's notice that this took 10 years? What is the threat there? We're coming for you terrorists-in like a decade, after we start other wars and forget about you for awhile and then, yea........
Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that it happened and even more pleased that it happened on the watch of a Democratic president. But I think it may have made more of a difference 5 or more years ago, when Al Qaeda was controlled by a more central group. Recent documents posted on Wikileaks revealed that Al Qaeda trained groups from around the globe in the last 5 or so years, with the understanding that the group could not help with planning and logistics of attacks, but any attack carried out on the west was good. Bin Laden was, more than anything, just a figurehead for an organization made up of many independently operating cells who all share a hatred for western culture. I'm not sure that his death necessarily makes us safer.
^This. A thousand times, this.
ReplyDeleteAmerican people…appear to glory in their chains, now more than ever, they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses.
ReplyDeleteJames Baldwin