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London Zoo: [Closed] Bin Laden Killed in Pakistan

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  1.  (9829.61)
    I guess I'm with Oldhat on this one in that I'm personally loath to celebrate someone getting killed - but at least some kind of justice has been served and a dangerous, murderous individual disabled.

    I was going to speculate on what they'd do with the body, but burial at sea seems like an extremely sensible option.

    Chapter ended. Now we wait for the next chapter to begin.
    •  
      CommentAuthorDenari
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.62)
    @Hey Apathy Did you save some for me?

    You can call it 'Freedom Pizza'.
  3.  (9829.63)
    I'd also just like to say for the record that I was in favor of stringing the bastard up in Times Square and letting the pigeons have at him. Not that they'd want to eat the bitter bastard, but they could at least peck his eyes out...
  4.  (9829.64)
    The people currently celebrating are not necessarily celebrating Bin Laden's death in itself. Some are, of course. Some are celebrating a blow struck against the face of terrorism, an enemy that can be so invisible, so intangible and for that reason frightening. Some are celebrating one of the few legitimate objectives in the war being finally carried out. And some are celebrating because, goddamn it, they could use a celebration after all this shit. I can understand, especially when it comes to New York.

    But all I can think about are the ten years of lies that preceded this, the thousands of deaths on both sides, and the pointlessness of it, which remains regardless of Bin Laden's death. One could argue all this glee anticipates the good things that will hopefully come out of his demise, but what I'm hearing the most right now is "re-election", with a bit of "the markets are very happy about this" on the side.

    Bin Laden flew two planes into a building. It was horrendous and traumatic beyond words. But the two wars that were born of it, the Patriot Act, the lies and the thousands and thousands of casualties came from the reactions and decisions of other men, other monsters. The damage triggered by Bin Laden's actions over the years probably surprised even him.

    I hope all this celebration is soon channeled into fixing it, rather than self-delusion that something earth-shattering has been accomplished with the death of an old piece of shit.
  5.  (9829.65)
    We should always be happy when evil human beings are removed from the planet. It happens so rarely.
    •  
      CommentAuthorFoamhead
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.66)
    @ William George:
    As much as I like to fall into the whole "every life is precious" line of thinking, the older I get, the more I begin to believe that there are some people who are so irredeemable, for whatever reason, that removing them (nice euphemism, I know) might serve to make the world a better place.
    Or maybe I'm just becoming as inflexible as the people I'd like to see the back of.
    • CommentAuthorOddcult
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.67)
    /b/'s reaction to this is quite telling. It's got 'America, Fuck Yeah' on loop and the macros are churning out by the dozen already.

    But yeah, Obama's recent comments about that have been downright cocky since the birth certificate was revealed and now, with this in the offing, the timing makes sense as well as his confidence to do so.

    I've got mixed feelings about this, but am taking a longer view. I've really had a lot of doubts about Pakistan's place in the world and I think that extremism from Pakistan has been far worse and likely to be more of an ongoing problem than that of most Arab nations, which are actually pretty moderate, yet regularly get demonised. If Pakistan was sheltering Bin Laden in any kind of official capacity and that brings the leadership there into conflict with the US and Britain, things could get very worrying, as they have nuclear weapons. It may also get very, very messy if India regards a strong western stance against Pakistan as tacit support and decides to have another go at Kashmir.

    But...

    I think that it does show that Obama's caution, deliberation and lack of militaristic and nationalistic rhetoric of the type that Bush produced to excess actually does mask action going on behind the scenes and no one can really doubt this now. Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' banner was fucking ridiculous. Right now, Obama would be utterly justified in doing something like that, but I suspect he won't.

    What Obama will get now is a hell of a lot of political capital. The more I think about it the more it seems like he's been putting all his pieces in place to be able to say 'Check' to his US political opponents. He's completely outmaneuvered Donald Trump, his likely main political opponent with the speech at the White House correspondents dinner this week being a beautiful slapdown (if you haven't seen it, do watch it on youtube, it's very funny and has an extra dimension too, knowing that when he was delivering it that this was in the offing), which with this has moved beyond just claiming that he's someone who works on difficult issues and takes hard decisions.

    After this week he's pretty much got his second term guaranteed and with the political capital he's gained should be able to get a mandate to deliver on a lot of his early promise. In Clinton's second term he made a fair stab at balancing the US budget and managed to get a lot done throughout the world (and left a plan to go after Al Queda that the Bush administration ignored, don't forget). It looks like Obama may have been planning for a while to pull off a similar trick.

    One thing that I think *may* be conspiracy worthy, or perhaps was in part down to this coming up, was the delay to the launch of the final space shuttle mission. If Obama uses that, or its successful landing, to announce another moon, or possibly Mars, mission, on an affordable budget, then he's going to be able to generate enough goodwill and enthusiasm in the US to get a lot of other things done too.
    •  
      CommentAuthorAlastair
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.68)
    @andre, here here. you say what i wish i had the ability to
  9.  (9829.69)
    @ Fookwit- For all of the glory it's capable of, the human species is also a pile of bastards. There may come a day when we ARE all precious, but we're still far from that.
  10.  (9829.70)
    I watched 2 minutes of Sky News reporting on this today.
    2 minutes was all it took for a commentator to say "I think Obama is taking too much personal credit for this."
    So I guess that's the party line on this one then.
    •  
      CommentAuthorLeto
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.71)
    livetweet

    Man inadvertently livetweeted the death of Osama bin Laden.
    •  
      CommentAuthorFoamhead
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011 edited
     (9829.72)
    @ RobSpalding:

    You're probably right about the party line but I just read a comment on a YouTube clip based on "America - Fuck Yeah!" from Team America which is citing something else deserving of credit for OBL's death:
    I've already gave out my compliments! But i gotta say, It's amazing what you Americans can do when the PS3 Network is down!
    •  
      CommentAuthorD.J.
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.73)
    Osama bin Laden has been a sort of running joke for so long, I feel it really surreal to hear they finally found, and killed, him.
    • CommentAuthorFan
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.74)
    > The damage triggered by Bin Laden's actions over the years probably surprised even him.

    No I think that damage was his plan: that he wanted to fight America, but couldn't on American home ground, so he lured them to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq where he expected them to lose, economically.
  15.  (9829.75)
    @'running gag'.
    yeah, a caricature, or perhaps a macguffin. either way I think what south park has to say is Very Important.

    http://allsp.com/l.php?id=e74
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul Sizer
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.76)
    My hope: that actual Americans spend less time gloating over the death of an evil piece of shit and more energy into helping those impacted by this evil find solace and closure.
    •  
      CommentAuthorFauxhammer
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.77)
    This is nice and all, but there are still two wars being fought, and they're still taking dickpics at the airport. I absolutely understand people singing the Ewok Celebration Song, and I can't begrudge them that, but the damage is done.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul Sizer
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.78)
    This is nice and all, but there are still two wars being fought, and they're still taking dickpics at the airport.

    Ooh, that's right; I'm flying to New York this week; better get my genitals washed and pressed for the cameras...
    •  
      CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
    • CommentTimeMay 2nd 2011
     (9829.79)
    Thought 1: After calming down a bit, I do agree with Robin. Celebrating his death on the White House lawn doesn't necessary paint us in the greatest light, internationally-speaking (and probably fucked up the Obama family's sleep a bit, I imagine) and is almost barbaric enough to "prove" some of what bin Laden and others preached about us.

    Thought 2: If THIS is what it takes to get people, no matter their politics or beliefs, to agree on one thing, and maybe make something of it... well, then that's what it takes, I guess. We'll see in the next few months if this was a significant victory, symbolic, political or otherwise, or if it was just one more casualty.
  20.  (9829.80)
    @Paul - Expect new levels of privacy-invading insanity from the TSA now that they have the excuse that terrorists are gearing up for a series of revenge attacks.

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