Osler's Razor

Gut reactions: Retaliation is certain. The President could have thrown President Bush a compliment (read a bone)instead of taking all credit for himself. The ugly comments on FB are sad. Yes, OBL was evil, but I don't wish for anyone to "rot in hell."
 

Why wasn't Jimmy Carter consulted before Obama's announcement (all the other living, former presidents were)? And I guess even Geraldo is susceptible to a Ted Kennedy moment. So it's kind of all very ironic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRCyvhQbULc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzx5R9_u3ts&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDcSC7SoJRw&feature=related

Other Kendall
 

and yikes, Norah O'Donnell...

http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/02/typo-msnbc-correspondent-accidentally-reports-on-twitter-that-obama-killed/
 

I'm glad he's dead. Sounds harsh, but there you go.
 

I feel a little sad.
But a little hopeful.
Sad that this is already becoming a political platform....
Sad that the media has become more of a reality show than actually reporting the news...
Sad that we find pleasure in vengeance...
But hopeful...
Because we, as people, heal each other up.
Maybe this is healing for some.
I am hopeful for that.
 

Only half the job is done, as Bert must now be brought to justice. Where might he be?
 

Gut reaction: I wept...
 

In the long term,the bigger story will be the killing of Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren. A callous and stupid act which had the purpose to create fear as did Bin Laden's act on 9/11. The cycle of violence continues. We should not continue to celebrate violence. We should express regret that we don't have the guts to end the cycle.
MOD
 

I fear we have kicked a bee hive...
 

Great day. Proud of our current president, proud of our previous president, proud of our military, and proud of everyone that never gave up in the search for this guy. Just all around excellent news that the man who organized the killing of 2,977 American civilians on September 11, 2001, and other attacks on our country, got his comeuppance, and that it came at the hands of US military.
 

My gut reaction...Bin Laden martyrdom. We just blew some fresh evil energy into the movement. Since he was hiding and on the run for so long I’m assuming he could no longer be as “hands on” as he used to and that job was already in someone else's hands, but now...I don't know. I hope I’m wrong and the vicious circle has not just become a lot more vicious. No black-clad policemen with machine guns in NYC subway this morning, but I fear I'll see a lot more from now on and believe me it is not a reassuring sight...not in my book anyway.
 

Nice shot with Bert.
 

Well,Bert does get a bit cranky with Ernie's over-the-top enthusiasm and annoying persistence.Particularly when he is attempting to sleep. Not sure he's upset enough to put a bomb in his boxers. That being said...violence begets violence,and doesn't bring back the innocent dead. It has always been that way. I wish there would have been some way to take him alive. I thought continually posting the photographs of the copious amounts of blood on the carpet was disturbing and the burial at sea wrong. On 9-11 I was scheduled to go to London for my work. I was a flight attendant for 35 years. I had just moved and was sick with stress-related respiratory junk. I lay in bed answering the phone calls from parents and friends,who were wondering where I was. As details became clear,I wept for the flight attendants whose terror and pain I could only imagine and was beyond words when I learned of Flight 93. It was very very hard. And people who flew after that continually wanted reassurance that we would make it to our destination,and I had to lie and say I knew for a fact we would be just fine. It doesn't go away that anxiety,that horror. It doesn't stop. I'm glad they got him,but I don't like any kind of killing...anyone.
 

People like celebrating in the streets made me uncomfortable Seriously.
 

I'm not sure this is necessarily kicking over a beehive. We had similar concerns in WWII after Hitler died. American and British troops raced to the Alps to prevent hardcore Nazis from waging a never ending guerilla war...a guerilla war that never happened.

Having said that, I'm sure there will be some sort of retaliation, but certainly nothing widespread. While every life lost is tragic, Al Qaeda isn't what it used to be. We'd killed scores of bin Laden lieutenants with drone strikes. Most are stuck in Afghanistan or Pakistan. They cause problems there, of course. But Al Qaeda's ability to reach out globally and strike is almost non-existent. Their "best and brightest" minds (and I use that term loosely) are either dead, in Guantanamo, or at a black site wishing they were dead or in Guantanamo. It's the B team running things now.

I know there has always been concern about sleeper cells waiting to strike after bin Laden's death. But the world doesn't look quite as rosy (or jihadi?) on May 2, 2011. Your symbolic leader just died from a double tap to the head from some Navy SEAL or Delta operator. You have no money to fund whatever operation you were planning on because most of your major donor's assets have been frozen, and all available money has gone to keeping up bin Laden's $1 mil. pad. Revolutions have been taking place all across this Arab world this spring, but they certainly haven't been the 15th Century style Islamic Wahabism infidel killing revolution that your Al Qaeda bosses had been promising. (While the motive behind the revolutions may be debatable, certainly none of them have been outwardly fundamentalist Islamic) The revolutions have been brought on more by Facebook and Twitter than Al Qaeda. If I'm a sleeper cell member, maybe I woke up today thinking it's time to find a new hobby, because Al Qaeda is about to go the way of the Nazis or the Bolsheviks. Sure, we might see some dying gasps, but Al Qaeda's era is over.
 

A priest said he was relieved for the soldiers' sakes, but he didn't like the idea of hunting down someone and killing him.
 

As one of the Razor's more junior readers, I literally grew up alongside the "War on Terror". After all, I was in 6th grade when the towers fell.

People in my generation tend to accept the indefinite trajectory of our wars in the Middle East--if for no other reason than we don't remember much about a time when we weren't fighting them.

Still, I was disappointed in many of my peers who rallied in the streets last night in a wave of national enthusiasm and celebration. One student held a sign that said, "GW Tuition: 40k; Dorm Room 10k; bin Laden Dead: Priceless".

This seems fundamentally wrong on a number of levels. First, this nation has paid a very real price to get this far. Thousands of lives, trillions of dollars, and a great deal of our international credibility have all been poured into this effort. Second, as dangerous and depraved as bin Laden was, he was a human being--pitiable, evil, but human.

Gut reaction: I welcome the death of Osama bin Laden, but I don't revel in it.
 

Sometimes this blog bums me out. I mean, all this hand wringing over people reveling in the death of Osama bin Laden? The guy was evil personified. Thousands of people, both Americans and non-Americans, of every race, color, and creed have perished at the hands of this man and the terrorist organization he spearheaded.

I don't revel at the death of any human being. But I have no problem rejoicing at the death of a depraved, sadistic, murderous animal. And that is all he was. And the world is a better place without him.

There was some writer for Slate that wrote on twitter something to the effect of remember watching people celebrate the 9/11 attacks in the middle east and how horrified we were, so we shouldn't behave like them now. That kind of moral relativism and "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" nonsense is insulting and offensive. Sometimes it is difficult to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. In this case, there is no question. And celebrating, cheering, and reveling in his death is in no way equivalent to reveling in the death of 3,000 people whose only crime was showing up for work that morning.

Call me a simple-minded jingoistic blood-thirsty redneck. I would rather be that than be the kind of person that can't recognize evil in the world, call it like it is, and want to see that evil eradicated.

USA! USA! USA! Now lets go get the rest of those bastards.
 

I don't like the idea of state sanctioned killing, but letting him stay alive and uncaptured was not a good idea.

Capturing and keeping him in custody was also not a good option.

This brought finality. Sec. State Hillary Clinton's statement today was excellent.... We are the United States. We will hunt you down and get you. Don't mess with us.

Sadly, diplomacy sometimes resembles a school playground. Only there's no playground monitor, let alone teacher or principal watching over the play area to keep kids in line.

TR's adage, "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick" is still an excellent rule to live by.

This does not mean the stick should be used often. The point is to let the world know we do have a stick. And we will use it if necessary.

In this case, using the stick was the right thing to do.

And sure, people were excited and happy. Its GOOD for people to be happy about our country. When was the last time there was a spontaneous positive demonstration at the White House like that? 1865 maybe? Certainly not in any of our lifetimes.
 

Uhm...is it just me that wonders how many simple-minded rednecks have any idea the word jingoistic even exists? Not to mention using it to describe themselves in context.
 

Click for the Wikipedia etymology of jingoism! (my new favorite word, thanks RRL!)

Click for a Politico report that bin Laden used his wife as a human shield
 

@Renee - I have many flight attendant friends (AA) who have told me the same thing about that day and flying after that day.

@CTL - thank you for the youth perspective. Sometimes we forget that so many have grown up in the shadow of these wars and the pursuit of Osama bin Laden.

I myself spent many of my work years traipsing in the shadows of the WTC and the surrounding neighborhoods and Battery Park. All of my friends working in the towers and surrounding buildings survived 9/11 but none of us were the same after experiencing such a tragedy close up. Last night I started to realize how much I have changed in the past 9+ yrs due to this one event.
 

Thanks CTL, I happen to have known the word, but it's been a long time since I've seen it used and a lot more fun seeing used by one of my favorite simple-minded redneck Razorites, even if I don't truly buy the act.
 

Marta, my simple-minded redneck ways and use of the term jingoism may be somewhat paradoxical. Then again, two weeks ago I misspelled "Rwanda" about 50 times on this blog, so it may just be that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
 

like rrl, i think the world is a better place for bin laden-- an evil-minded animal-- having been exterminated.
people were glad when mcveigh was captured (and many were glad when he, also evil, was put to death).
should it be any different now, simply because bin laden was at very least the figurehead of muslim extremists and not a fellow american?
and i don't particularly worry about this being a kicking of the beehive. i don't doubt that al qaeda in yemen were planning their next act of destruction long before yesterday. this could just make them act in haste and make them more vulnerable to being caught and their plans averted.
just sayin', public enemy no. 1 got his due, and the world, not just america, is better off for it.
 

I do not think that the celebration in the streets is due to Bin Laden's death in and of itself, but rather because people want a kind of VE/VJ Day in the 21st Century - some closure and assurance that the past 10 years have been worth it and that we prevailed. The Hitlerian/Bond evil mastermind is dead and so the narrative arc is completed.

Too bad real life ain't like the movies.
 

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr
 

I admire your modesty RRL, but I still think that one doesn't have to be a redneck to not suffer pompous fools and simple-minded does not a simple mind make...it takes a fairly complex mind to filter piles of brain noise into simple clear notions. And nice try, but misspelling Rwanda 50 times does not qualify for valid proof of your “troglodyte” (remember that one?) ways.
Anyway, I'm glad Bin Laden is dead, but only as a symbol of “try not to mess with people that will spare no expense to make sure you do not get away with it”...because I did find appalling the crowds chanting like maniacs, since they didn't look any different than the maniacs chanting on Al Jazeera nine and a half years ago.
 

Renee - there was a way to take him alive. Under U.S. military policy and the law of armed conflict, we don't kill people who are surrendering. The insertion of SEAL Team Six into the compound was a legitimate military op under law and policy. Had bin Laden and his ilk not initiated the firefight, we would have taken him peacefully. Even with a dude like bin Laden, we don't shoot someone who's putting his hands up and saying "you got me, I surrender." However, he and his cronies chose to shoot, so our servicemembers fired back in self-defense - again, this is a legal and legitimate use of deadly force under the law of armed conflict.

RRL - capturing him was an option, as I stated above. Doing so would have been consistent with the law of armed conflict. It would have created problems just as killing him has created problems, but it was a viable option, and I have no doubt our guys would have done the right thing if bin Laden had raised the proverbial white flag.
 

Sorry...meant to address that last one to Renee and IPLawGuy. Sorry, RRL.
 

Oh, I am sure capturing him was an option... esp. now that we learn he was unarmed. But who needs him spouting rhetoric from a holding pen in .... where? Gitmo? Obama said no new prisoners there... Someplace in a SuperMax Prison on U.S. Soil? In a Courtroom, heaven forbid.

And imagine how his followers and sycophants would be acting if he was in custody.

No, better dead than alive and serving as rallying figure.