Fuzzy Aim
I actually had this idea right away after hearing about the death of Osama Bin Laden, but because it was very similar to a cartoon I did on Saddam Hussein’s execution in 2007, I wasted a few days trying to see if I could come up with anything better, and consequently I’m a bit late to the party.
As most of you are no doubt aware, “party” isn’t merely being used as a figure of speech, here. I’m not going to mourn the loss of an evil, mass-murdering psychopath, of course, but I do find the bloodlust reflected in many of my countrymens’ jubilant celebrations disappointing and dangerously short-sighted, though not all that surprising.
Other than ridding the world of a very bad person, I don’t see what practical ends killing him has accomplished. He didn’t really seem to constitute a clear and present danger to national security any more–guy wasn’t even armed when Navy SEALS busted in on him. Surely it would have been a better idea to capture him and publicly eviscerate his ideology, instead of martyring him immediately? I feel the path that was chosen will only result in the germination of a bigger crop of new terrorists, more determined to continue Bin Laden’s war than ever.
And look, we’re still mired in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing Bin Laden didn’t save anybody’s lives there. If anything, it puts them in greater jeopardy.
I also think a longer, drawn-out public spectacle of some sort would have been more likely to force Americans to reflect on how our government’s foreign and economic policies, as well as our greedy consumption of the world’s resources, aid the persistence of terrorism. I saw part of a program on HGTV today about the most expensive homes in the world. This fat woman was talking about her $5 million closet, and how she thought she needed to buy more stuff to put in it since it isn’t full. As she bragged about the garish opulence of her overwrought home, I thought, “This is why the terrorists want to kill us.”
As David Cross once said in reference to seeing a commercial for battery-operated scissors: “The terrorists hate our freedom? I hate our freedom, if this is what we’re gonna do with it!”
This is a very broad topic, and the above cartoon doesn’t even come close to saying everything I’d like to say about it, so I may have at least one more on it in the next update. Stay tuned!
3 Responses to “Fuzzy Aim”
Whole lotta white people in the middle east.
Sorry, but I cannot agree.
So long as he was alive, he was able to motivate and fund multiple terrorist cells. That’s certainly a clear and present danger to us. Others too, of course. He can’t do that now. The terror cells still exist, and they’ll propagate, but not as quickly.
It would have been good had we been able to arrest and jail him, but that’s applying the rules of a civilized society to a wartime environment. He was not armed (that they could see), but certainly he was with people devoted to him who *were* armed. Attempting to act in a civilized manner would have put our people at greater risk.
As for publicly eviscerating his ideology: I suspect we still don’t know how to do that.Logic doesn’t work well against hatred.
Hey Terrence:
Way to go on your thoughts!
Dan
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