Ezra, there’s a mighty big sand dune behind you. Calverts Beach, March 2011.
First of all, I have no need or desire to see snuff photographs or videos of Mr Bin Laden. However, I will confess to being bemused by the White House’s comment of “We don't trot out this stuff as trophies”, given the pep rally-like glee that this particular extrajudicial killing has generated. It strikes me that the passionate response to this week’s events very much resembles a trophy hunt. As it has been for ten years now…
What confuses me is the American leadership’s sudden coyness when it comes to the precise details of the killing. While assassinations are always a messy business, they’d not exactly hidden that such an outcome was welcome for this particular odious fellow. Welcome to the world of asymmetric warfare!
The legal interpretations will continue for some time, and as with all things that involve the law, will never be resolved. What struck me though was the fact that the initial reports clearly intended to paint this operation as anything but a targeted assassination. The fact that they’ve backtracked already makes the whole thing seem even more sordid than it already worse (from a purely ethical point of view).
How very timid! How many drone strikes have we seen under this very President? Drone strikes are nothing more than a mechanism to kill someone thousands of miles away. The use of drones by their very nature precludes any chance of surrender, so why sudden get all shy about the bloody detail. I guess that killing someone who is in the same room is just a little more complicated.
Up on Top, by Olav H. Hauge
After stumbling a long time over impossible trails
you are up on top.
Hardship didn't crush you, you trod it
down, climbed higher.
That's how you see it. After life has tossed you
away, and you ended up on top
like a one-legged wooden horse on a dump.
Life is merciful, it blinds and provides illusions,
and destiny takes on our burden:
foolishness and arrogance become mountains and marshy places,
hate and resentment become wounds from enemy arrows,
and the doubt always with us becomes cold dry
rocky valleys.
You go in the door.
The pot lies upside down in the hearth,
it sprawls with hostile black feet.
5 comments:
Hi! Kris...
Kris said,"What confuses me is the American leadership’s sudden coyness when it comes to the precise details of the killing."
I have to agree with your comment wholeheartedly, like I mentioned in my previous comment I'am not a conspiracy theorist, but something isn't adding up 1+1 isn't equaling 2...
Kris said,"The fact that they’ve backtracked already makes the whole thing seem even more sordid than it already worse (from a purely ethical point of view)."
Kris, I only watch International news and the commentators, are already questioning the backtracking too and my last words on this subject is Pakistan and drones.
Cont...
"Ezra, there’s a mighty big sand dune behind you. Calverts Beach, ..."
LOL! Thanks, for sharing the beautiful photograph Of Ezra, the quote, and the links too!
DeeDee ;-D
"Trophy hunt" - hit the nail on the head there.
I doubt we'll ever get the full story.
Until I see Osama hanging from a gibbet I am afraid I will entertain doubt.
Personally I believe he should have been held up as an example of what happens if you mess with the U.S.A.
Too graphic? Christ, don't these people watch American films? The only difference would be that this would be a snuff movie we could all take solace in.
If they didn't kill him, then what price did they pay him to disappear?
I have absolutely no doubt that they killed him. I have absolutely no doubt that it was a targeted assignation mission. I actually have very little moral quandary about a military operation that sets out to kill an identified target.
What I do question is a) the attempt to pass it off as a standard ‘capture mission’, which b) deliberately obfuscates what it was: assassination. I understand the legal quandary of the political executive ordering such operations (which necessarily denies any chance of habeas corpus, let alone any kind of trial. Yet, I can’t muster anything but bemusement at the clumsy efforts give that the current President has already publically endorsed assassination of US citizens on foreign soil and has tiptoed around the issue of torture.
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