Are we finished with Osama bin Laden, already?
If the killing of the murderous shithead doesn’t change the insanity of the so-called ‘war on terror’ than the whole thing is just a media spin to give poor US peoples a last chance to chant at the flag.
Is Osama’s killing a ticket out of Afghanistan, out of Iraq and back home?
Much doubt it.
Continuous war is now such a product of this age, the death of one guy is not going to change that fact, mainly because the US has too much already invested in conflict.
Maybe US peoples can feel good about themselves for awhile, glory in a US military operation which for the first time in a long time appears to have come off without a hitch — at least so far as the official story goes, but there’s a multi-layered history of the US not letting facts stand in the crossfire of a good Jessica Lynch fable.
(Illustration found here).
President Obama will journey today to New York and Ground Zero to even carry the flag waving even further, drawing the robe of war more tightly across the chest of US peoples, and putting in a political plug for the big race next year.
George Jr., though invited, has chosen not to attend — probably too much for the fertile macho man to handle.
Osama’s death will change nothing.
Chris Floyd adds:
Yes, the president of the United States, accompanied by various Establishment worthies and doubtless a few dignified clerics, will stand at Ground Zero to glorify a killing that his own minions tell us will change nothing whatsoever: the wars will go on, “vigilance will be redoubled†(i.e., civil liberties will continue to be eroded, black ops will continue in the 70 countries or more where America is carrying out covert operations), the Secret State will keep growing, the universal license to kill and snatch and incarcerate and torture will remain in full force.
So what exactly is being celebrated?
A cynic — or someone being skeptically “stupid†in the Digbyian sense — might say the occasion is more exploitation than celebration: exploiting the grief of the families of 9/11 survivors who will be trotted out to express their tearful gratitude to the president who has given them “closure†— and who will reap the poll bounce from this moment of “national unity,†just as his predecessor rode a similar exploitation of death to his own re-election.
And despite the death of the most-wanted sonofabitch in the world, NATO has reportedly not moved its bowels to clear the track to slip out of the Afghan quagmire, claiming Osama’s demise does not justify an early retreat — kiss my ass.
And with peak oil (and punishing gas-pump prices), climate change, soaring food prices among a host of other huge, huge problems facing not only US peoples, the entire world, war and terror from faraway should take a back, backseat.
Naw…
Being scared is always better — always be alert, so says nit-twit Republican Susan Collins:
The oft-criticized color-coded threat advisory system was replaced in April by the new National Terrorism Advisory System, which functions from a baseline understanding that the U.S. is always under the threat of attack and therefore always on alert.
If a specific threat emerges, however, the alert level can be raised to an “elevated†status, or, judging by the specific threat, an “imminent†status. The system does not require that a threat be considered “elevated” before being designated “imminent.”
“Under the new system, it’s raised in two-week intervals. That would give us time to make an assessment of whether we’re at immediate risk,” Collins said. “Just to be on the prudent side, just for the next two weeks, I would raise the terror threat level.”
Be afraid, be very afraid of those of say to be afraid.