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Osama bin Laden's death (presumed here to be fact) has resurrected the longstanding question whether America should have attempted instead to capture him alive. Below, I contrast the choice of taking him out over bringing him back for trial.
THE CHOICE TO KILL OSAMA BIN LADEN
In some ways, I almost wish the pathetic old loser had just been allowed to continue to wither and fade rather than be a martyr. (I've even wondered if Bush had his location but made such a decision, rather than risk the storm Obama now has created.) Instead of a suicide belt in case he was confronted, it turns out he had Euros sewed into his robes,![[*]](/toolshed/new-window.png){kind=small}
presumably so he could flee quickly if necessary! Instead of a booby-trapped compound, he was defended by one booby who was taken out immediately.
It's not that I have pity for the creep, but it's a little bit like when they find some WW2 Nazi concentration camp guard has been living for decades as a peaceful, friendly, respected family man somewhere in America and drag him to prison for crimes committed 70 years ago. However heinous the crime in the midst of WW2, with no statute of limitations it might be a kind of mortal justice done, but what good does it really do?
On the other hand, the whole thing about "don't show the photos," and worrying about inflaming the Muslims seems ludicrous.
(A) It's not like we're going to make them hate America any more than they already do anyway, and sometimes if you get them riled up they get careless, and charge out in the open where they're easier to target, right?
(B) What nobody seems to have said is, remember how whenever we turn tail and run they disrespect us, so this time shouldn't we get more respect from those primitive thinkers for our success in counting coup?
Barbarians who do not choose sides by intellectual debate or moral reasoning nevertheless respect strength even when used against them, and might just learn it's really the Taliban/Kyduh who are the losers.
On weekend talk radio (different crew from the weekday usuals), I even heard some extreme right wingers (I presume that's what they were) arguing how, basically, we killed a man outright without trial or evidence. There's substance to that objection. We've all heard and most of us believe that he was the "mastermind" or at least a chief instigator behind 9/11, and all the rest of what he's supposed to have done (and likely did), but propaganda and rumor are not evidence. He wasn't killed in the heat of battle. In an undeclared war with too many enemies, too many fronts, and too many complicated and convoluted purposes, we took out a sick, aged, self-absorbed old fool, hiding in a dump, who had actually already been usurped and marginalized. Not quite the same thing as taking out Hitler at the height of the war.
Of course, if as reported Osama was still trying to regain his position, allegedly had been traveling around trying to position Al Kyduh in the various Middle East uprisings, and was still doing his best to plan deaths of our soldiers and otherwise attack us, so, no pity, no qualms, just good riddance to bad rubbish.
THE OPTION TO CAPTURE OSAMA AND TRY HIM FOR WAR CRIMES
First and foremost, I sure hope not one of those SEALs involved ever suffer a moment's doubt for their excellent work, that's for sure. They were sent into they knew not what but succeeded spectacularly. Quoth Tennyson, "Theirs not to reason why...."
Second, someone -- some say Obama himself -- chose to put boots inside the compound instead of just dropping a load on the place. That turned out to be a good decision, in the way that a guy gets to be a hero instead of a goat (as Bill Cosby put it long ago in his stand-up comic days) if he gets away with some risky move on the battlefield. The women and children were mostly saved. We got to be sure it was Osama. None of our guys was even hurt. We did expose and possibly compromise our stealth helicopter technology, and it seems Pakistan is threatening to turn it over to China, but that's the hazards of war. We also got a lot of intel that would have been lost. Although it turned out well enough, the decision could all too easily have been another Carteresque Desert One.
Third, the team sent in was what the Lefties during Bush called "Cheney's hit squad," now magically transformed into Obama's heroes. As many have said, you don't send those guys in with orders to capture. So, that debate ended before they took off.
Still, if we pretend for a moment that they didn't have clear kill-not-capture orders, and also suppose that Osama had managed to plainly, obviously, non-threateningly surrender (as if he was given the chance, surprised in the dark in the middle of the night!), instead of ducking back into his bedroom where our guys would be facing who-knows-what (I wonder if his video prop AK47 reportedly under the bed even worked), then we might have had to figure out what to do with him.
So, IF we'd arrested Osama, we'd be dealing with
(1) security nightmares out the wazoo,
(2) the whole Guantanamo "issue," and relatedly
(3) what kind of trial.
Most of the Left did a 180° pirouette, celebrating that Obama did what they would have screamed about if Bush had done, so maybe they wouldn't have insisted Osama get a civil trial in Cleveland instead of a quick, safe military trial and firing squad in Guantanamo, but it very well could have dragged out for ages, with all attendant threats and problems.
Pop. Pop. Splash. Done! Hard to beat that for concise.
The folks who say he should have been buried in an unmarked grave filled with pork fat... that's just... okay, it's funny.
The folks saying the war is over, and that kind of thing -- yeah, of the whole mess, that's the weirdest! You really have to wonder how bad the public schools have been. Unfortunately this conflict is a game of Whack-a-Mole. Jesus said, the poor you have with you always, and I think that applies to the moral and intellectual poor. We still have people around who think of themselves as Nazis, even ones that aren't just noisy but cause real trouble. You can't justly kill them just for claiming to be Nazis, you just try to make sure they never have any significant power again. That'll be tough with Islam!
But you know, it is really all our fault that the radical jihadists hate us. We just need to quit doing those things which offend Muslims, and everything will be hunky-dory. Here's the still-growing checklist. Keep this list handy. There will be a test later.
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Posted by email to HillBuzz.
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." —Ian Fleming, Goldfinger (attributed as a Chicago saying)
Yet another comment of mine failed to get posted Saturday. I am always left wondering, was it just tech-eaten or moderated away? If the former, good luck fixing the bugs. If the latter, see, I like you guys and your site, and I sure don't want to post what's unwelcome, wasting my efforts and your time and dampening your Smithsonian-worthiness! [har] Not knowing is the worst part.
I note that for a long time there was just one comment on Saturday's open thread. This morning there are several (but not mine), including an earlier comment than the one which had been standing alone all day. Hm. There were no Friday comments all day, then late (and of course right after I mention Friday's lack of comments in my unposted Saturday message) a bunch of comments finally show up. Hm. Yes, I know you all have tech problems and also the moderators have lives and jobs and HillBuzz can't be your main thing, at least not yet. Still….
Broken links, belatedly- or never-posted messages (not just mine, evidently), paginated and javascript-managed comments making some hard to link to, and (personal problem) the huge overhead of the new site, which you worked so hard to set up, taking so long to download on our not-broadband rural connection... it's like HillBuzz's enemies broke it. I wasn't on the "old" HillBuzz long, and I do appreciate what you did (and why) in the tech changeover, but in these ways, like some others have said, I miss it.
Darlings, we can't keep meeting like this. Time for me to resume lurk mode, and let my self-consciousness circuits relax. (Overtaxed moderator lets out sigh of relief?) :)
Can't go without a parting shot, of course. But I'm not going to bother leaving it as a comment. Here, just for whoever's reading this:
A Mindful Webworker comments:
I like the community of folks here. Running around on some other sites in recent days has made me appreciate this site all the more. I like the way the place is run. I really appreciate the links folks post here. Most of all I like the (ironically Democrat-inspired) will to action.
Before my father's untimely death in 1968, I once asked him how he became Republican National Committeeman from Oklahoma. Dad told me, it began with a get-out-the-vote campaign by the Republicans across our county which he initiated and led. Volunteers went door-to-door, handing out literature and repeating this message: "We want you to get out and vote. We encourage you to vote Republican, but however you vote, get out and vote!" The effect was so record-breakingly, headline-drawingly dramatic, it got the attention of the state Republicans, and he was tapped to do the same thing state-wide.
What he found as he moved into the state level, though, was what HillBuzzers know too well as Cocktail Party Republicans, RINOs not so much interested in winning, nor in principled government, as in the lucrative benefits to being even a lame-ass 2nd party. Dad did the unexpected. He came to make such a significant impact that the late, great honorable gentleman, Henry Bellmon became the first Republican governor since Statehood, and a formerly solidly Democrat fiefdom was utterly transformed from those days.
Dad and Ike at the 1960 Republican National Convention
Bellmon went on to serve as a US Senator before returning to the Governor's chair. There's a sad lesson to be found in Bellmon's biography, in his frustration at the impossible glacial mess of Washington DC politics after serving in an effective state government.
Life & Times of Henry Bellmon at Amazon.com
Bellmon is often credited for the state's turnaround. That's true, too, but not for nothing is there an entire chapter in his biography devoted to my behind-the-man Dad. It started with that get out the vote campaign, about the time I was born.
Hardly anything is as infuriating to me than those who don't vote because they think their vote won't have an impact, when more than half the people don't vote! I know it's sometimes frustrating. Here in the reddest of the red states, the main election is really the primary, just as it is in Chicago, because the election is pretty much a foregone conclusion. By the time a vote comes up, it's like it often seems already too late, things are decided. Still, not to vote at all seems not just un-American to me, but socially suicidal.
It's absolutely unpredictable what an impact it would make if even half the non-voters voted. Or as Dad's results demonstrated, maybe it is predictable, if the discouraged majority still love liberty and respect the Constitution. I have enjoyed the groundswell of those ordinary people inspired to take an interest in government, self-rule, by what they've come to see in recent years, and certainly not just because the current President is half-Swedish. I'll never forget the one woman I got to talking with in a doctor's waiting room, who was so enthused, so inspired by the grassroots movements, and so frustrated that she still couldn't get her relatives and neighbors to wake up. One by one. Slowly. Then it builds. Then it's a flood-tide that sweeps the country. That's what I hope will continue.
How to start a movement TED video at YouTube
I remember how the Hungarians and Czechs were crushed in their moments of hope, and only decades later did the Poles (quelle surprise!) finally break the Soviet Union. Pidgen history version to make the point, there is no divine protection in being on the right side. Jesus said, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." He knew (and died because of) how the wolves devour. His words might ring empty, had he not also lived to the full what he commanded. Good people, be that canny, while remaining innocent!
When I see articles like this one at National Journal discussing "a showcase of five Republican presidential hopefuls, including Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and [Mitt] Romney" (and... #5?), I feel kind of sick and hopeless for my country and the very future of liberty on our world. In my life I have seen America sway back and forth from Eisenhower to Johnson to Nixon to Carter to Reagan to Clinton to Bush to Obama. (Yes, I skipped a few.) How could a country be so bipolar? In the end, like so many discouraged citizens, it looks like all the parties and politicians are ruinous.
We stand on a delicate precipice. We have a challenge greater than any faced in the 20th Century. We are opposed by well-organized, well-funded, and absolutely immoral enemies, allied only in their hatred of what really matters about this country. A third of the country is insane, a third is confused, so the remaining third face incredibly tough challenges.
Kevin, O HillBuzz Originator, my ragged cowboy hat is tipped to you and all those on both sides of this site, and all those across the nation taking action, being involved, employing tactics and strategies in canny fashion. I pray it will be enough.
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The game is afoot, Watson! The propaganda game for Obama, that is.
A Mindful Webworker comments on HillBuzz:
Saw a headline from CBS, the network that brought us Dan “ol’ Reliable” Rather: “Birther” claims debunked in new report. Oh, really? thinks I. Okay, the original report was at Commie News Network, but I scanned the CBS article.
Paragraph 1: “there is no doubt that President Obama was born in the United States.”
Graph 2: [CNN report] concludes that “Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Period.”
Graph 3: Doubt… has been thoroughly debunked by multiple sources.
Graph 4: The matter was dead until The Donald (tell Joe Farah!).
Graph 5: Poll results showing which groups believe what.
Finally! in paragraph 6, the PROOF: CNN interviewed a number of sources who were able to confirm the validity of the president’s birth certificate and provide first-person accounts of the events surrounding his Hawaiian birth.
Oh, I see. Hearsay by a number of people confirming a birth certificate nobody’s seen, and “eyewitnesses.” Boy, I’M convinced!
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They know the Constitutionalists will (already did) rip this forgery to shreds, but the blind Obamabots will take this as solid and indisputable proof — just as they did before it was ever released.
A Mindful Webworker argues with Magic M on The Sussman Show
"And which US state has BC’s with footprints? None. Prove me wrong, I challenge you."
Oklahoma 1952. Chicago 1985. Just to name two. (Pardon me if I don't provide "proof" by uploading my own and my sons' birth certificates. When one of them runs for President, maybe.) Apparently not Hawaii, though, as you rightly point out. Both sides can lay that one to rest.
Race was not picked from a pre-defined list but by the parents as they identified themselves.
Maybe in Hawaii at that time. Many other places, pre-defined list, like it or not. White (or Caucasian), Negro (not Black until, what, at least the late 1960s, probably later), Other. Or, in some states, Indian (AmerInd, not Asian).
It makes perfect sense an African would identify himself as “African”, not as “Negro” – especially during a time where blacks were still effectively second-class Americans.
Well, not perfect sense. For one thing, it's not a "race" then or now; it's not even a nationality. (In the Goode family cartoon show, the liberal family adopted an African child. Joke was, he was white.) And comparison with other BCs from the same time and place will not prove anything, unless we find another actual African parent listed as African. Not terribly likely, but we could at least see if others were marked as Negro, just out of interest. I might've guessed "white" would be used, not "Caucasian," in those days, but from the Nordyke BCs, that guess would be wrong.
http://state-of-the-nation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/NordykeTwinsBi...
The Nordyke BCs also show that the M in P.M. apparently was, indeed, pre-printed on the forms. Scratch that one. OTOH, the P on Obama's doesn't appear to have the white photoshop halo of the rest of the altered letters. There are other differences that might mean nothing, like the birth month on Nordyke's being "Aug." and on Obama's "August." Typists repeatedly filling in forms would be consistent, buuut not necessarily. Might've been different people. Again, comparison with SEVERAL other forms from the same date might be indicative.
Ignoring the aging, smudging, and other matters which might be copying problems not on the original, the Nordyke BCs were filled in on a manual typewriter. (I spent a LOT of time on those, back when.) On Susan's, line 7a & 7c both have "Honolulu" In 7c, the H is slightly high, indicating the carriage-shift didn't get held down well. Just the opposite on Gretchen's. There are a few seeming but less-obvious such indicators in Obama's. It is much tidier in this regard, fwiw.
And you may need to replace the blade in your Occam's (not Ockham’s) Razor, M. The most likely explanation for a bad forgery like this is that it was not "two years… with the help of the FBI" [snort!] but with the help of relative juveniles acting in isolation who didn't know any better. Or, maybe instead of Occam we should apply Machiavelli, my preferred theory, because They know the Constitutionalists will (already did) rip this forgery to shreds, and also point out that, even if valid, an African father disqualifies him from being President, but the blind Obamabots will take this as solid and indisputable proof — just as they did before it was ever released — and damn that old rag written by dead male Europeans and all the 'racist birthers.'
[Note: To be clear, Magic M was not saying that about the FBI involvement, but was mocking it.]
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They know the Constitutionalists will (already did) rip this forgery to shreds, but the blind Obamabots will take this as solid and indisputable proof — just as they did before it was ever released.
A Mindful Webworker comments on The Sussman Show:
Y’gotta wonder: are the mechanical parrots really that duped, or just happily participating in the lie? Either way, pathetically sad.
They play the race card like good mechanical parrots. ALAN WEST FOR PRESIDENT! He’s blacker! Oh, I mean “Africaner.” (That’s the first one I noticed — as many have pointed out, nobody used “African” as a race in 1961, but I’m willing to examine any proof to the contrary. Comparison with other contemporary Hawaii BCs would be useful.)
The mechanical parrot keeps picking out the weakest, lamest points, ones I also found weak and lame, from the Smoking Gun article. Some of these are possibly nothing, like the small-font M being pre-printed on the form: good possible explanation (we need a comparison form, again, of course). Oh, but the photoshopping artifacts, what about those, parrot? What about why hide it, let a soldier get jailed, divide the nation, all so he can laugh at “birthers”? What about, if he had released this mess at the first, probably nobody would have taken so hard a look. Bracko has even more Machiavelli than Marx about him. They release a bizarrely obvious forgery which (1) they know the Constitutionalists will quickly see right through, but (2) will make all the blind mechanical parrots dance and laugh at how right the Big 0 was that even this (propaganda ploy) wouldn’t satisfy the Constitutionalists. The President isn’t just unqualifed. He is unfit in every regard.
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