Apparently there is some sort of controversy raging over the death of Osama the Dead Terrorist and the release of photos of his remains. Normally I’d pay more attention to this sort of thing, but I find myself strangely apathetic to the debate. As I stated a few days ago, I think the Administration did OK with the actual mission, it certainly has screwed up the aftermath. As one comedian said, “Osama was killed, and we got the 72 versions.” Better to have said nothing and left people speculating than release multiple versions of the story and become a laughing stock in many circles. Especially the circles that heretofore had been pretty supportive of President Obama. Reap as you sow, I guess.
I’m not particularly anxious to see pictures of his remains either. I’ve seen enough people who were shot in the head to last a life time. Generally, it’s pretty gross, although the currently in vogue term is “graphic”. The pictures of the bodies of the other people in the house weren’t all that gory, all things considered. On the other hand, if Osama was in fact shot up close with a 5.56 mm round or two in the melon, it’s likely to be very, uh, graphic. Yeah, I get the whole thing about Mogadishu, Fallujah, Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, Abu Ghraib etc. and my issue is with the hypocrisy of the Administration and the media. Especially the media. Which has never had a problem with gory pictures. Remember “If it bleeds, it leads”.
Nor am I particularly impressed with the softies that think that celebrating the death of a man who planned attacks that have killed a few thousand American is improper. I don’t know if there were wide spread celebrations (but I doubt it) when the death of Adolph Hitler was announced. There certainly were wide spread celebrations when the end of World War II was announced.
Remember this picture?
These folks don’t seem exactly somber and reflecting on the death of all those Japanese that made the victory possible.
Killing Osama bin Laden was a significant achievement, one that took years of sifting through piles of intelligence. Some of that intelligence was made possible by the use of “harsh” interrogation techniques which were once criticized as cruel and ineffective. I’m sure that that were particularly unpleasant, but they do seem to have been pretty effective. The strike by Special Operations Forces was well executed, with no loss of life of any of our people and what appears to be no loss of life among non combatants on the enemy’s side. They got the guy they were after, killed a couple of his underlings, picked up what will hopefully be some useful intelligence, and got out. The loss of the special operations helicopter was bad because it’s remains might be sold to other people who aren’t particularly friendly towards us, but it could have been a lot worse.
Excuse me if I don’t mourn the death of a man who despised me, my way of life, how (or whether) I worship, my country, my values, and just about anything else you can imagine about my country and our way of life. Not only do I not mourn his death, I was downright giddy when I heard the news. He’s dead and with luck more of his ilk will soon join him in Paradise.
To the Europeans, American Leftists, journalists, psychologists, counselors worried about how this will effect “the children”, and others who are aghast at the celebrations of death, I have to words of advice.
One of them is not used in polite company. The other is “you”.
To those of my readers who live in the real world, hoist a glass in honor of the brave Americans who carried out this operation as well as the ones who helped make it possible. You can even raise a glass to President Obama for going along with it.
Let me preface with this, I am a leftist, but I agree with most of what you said. Pretty much all but the thing about the hypocrisy of the administration, which sounds like you are talking about things the Bush administration did and Obama isn’t, but my ultimate point is, this is an EMS blog. I don’t want to read your political ramblings while I am trying to expand my knowledge and hear other opinions about EMS. I understand it’s your blog, but if you want to call it an EMS blog, stick to the topic. If you want to spew political stuff, start a political blog or pour your heart out on your personal Facebook page.
No, the hypocrisy is of the Obama Administration because Candidate Obama ran against the use of any sort of interrogation that was not within the bounds of law enforcement rules. President Obama banned waterboarding specifically. Still, he had no qualms about using intel gleaned from those techniques.
I’ll direct your attention to the mast head of the blog. Below the name it says, “Paramedicine, guns, politics, and a little country western music”. I haven’t done much gun or country western music of late, but I never advertised this as an EMS only blog. There are a few of those around, but if you look at most of them they are a mix of subjects. The truth is that blogging about EMS only would get pretty boring pretty quickly. As to Facebook, you obviously haven’t read this blog all that much, have you?
Some Americans still regard Osama bin Laden and his hardcore followers as a human beings capable of empathy, open communication, and compromise.
The man okayed the use of human shields when the SEALs came marching in. To me, this says he was afraid to die, despite all the talk of the 72 virgins. Deep down, this man feared death…
Just a thought…
Like a lot of “terrorist leaders” he was all for sending other people to do the dirty work and die, but not all that much interested in doing it himself. Look at Saddam Hussein, who let his own sons die, along with a good number of his people, but was caught in a hole in the ground like many other rodents. You’ll notice that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was too important to the movement to get his fat ass on a plane and fly it into a building himself. They’ve conned their followers into killing themselves for a cause for which they themselves are not will to die. That should tell you all you need to know about Osama the Dead Terrorist.
The job got done- It’s not pretty, but it was DONE! Bottom line, that is what counts. The screwed up AAR is because there were no true warfighters there to explain what was actually happening to the people, and the military was NOT involved in the follow-up press conferences. The military wasn’t saying Jack 🙂
Re the other commenter, it’s YOUR blog 🙂 I read ALL of your entries because I learn from ALL of them!