We’re pushing Martin’s article back a day to allow writers to write about the death of Osama Bin Laden.  I’ll kick things off with some random thoughts.

  • This isn’t a victory for Democrats or a victory for Republicans.  It’s a victory for the United States, more specifically the military and intelligence communities.  There is no need to decide which regime deserves “more” credit.  It was a nearly decade long goal of the government, achieved as a result of actions under two commanders-in-chief.
  • Celebrating a death seems a bit callous.  However, I have no doubt that the world is a better place without Osama Bin Laden.  Al-Qaeda and organizations like it attempt to drive a wedge between Muslim countries and the West in order to achieve their own goals.  Does the average Muslim hate Christians and believe that they must join a jihad against the West, gaining glory by killing the infidels?  Of course not.  Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups have been successful in convincing many people that they speak for the entire Islam world.  This is not true, of course – they are simply a vocal minority.  While I don’t have a lot of Muslim friends, the ones I have are not sympathetic to the terrorists.  If we believe that the lunatic fringe speaks for the entire population, then the terrorists have won.  Al-Qaeda is no more representative of the Islam world than the Westboro Baptist Church is representative of the Christian world.
  • Before the conspiracy theorists start … stop.  If Bin Laden isn’t really dead, and if this is all faked, we’ll find out in due time.  If Bin Laden is still alive, I’m sure he’s in the process of making a video tape and will be shipping it off to Al Jazeera any moment now.  If the photos of the body don’t look a lot like Bin Laden when they are released … well, getting shot in the side of the head has a tendency to distort facial features somewhat.  I guess the Navy Seals could have gone for a heart shot to keep his face recognizable, but I’m guessing that having him dead was more important that making sure his pretty face was intact.
  • It seems that Pakistan may have some questions to answer.  It seems a bit hard to believe that Bin Laden could have been hiding in a compound that housed retired members of the military without anyone thinking “Hey, ‘John Smith’ looks a lot like that Bin Laden guy, doesn’t he?”.  For their sake, I hope that the Pakistani government does indeed have a good excuse.  Otherwise, the US-Pakistan relationship might he headed for rocky ground.  Too early to jump to conclusions, though.  It’s possible that there IS a good excuse.

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Kosmo is the founder of The Soap Boxers and writes on a variety of topics. Many of his short stories have been collected into Kindle books.

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