BREAKING: OSAMA BIN LADIN STILL DEAD.

[Simon_Jester]

Exactly, I shed no tears for him, he was a disgusting human being. But watching America afterwards was just bizarre.

Kinda reminded me of this.

I don't think there were actually very many people jumping up and down and freaking out about it.

Proportionwise, you can find a few percent of the population to celebrate almost any event that looks big and historic to them.

[Thanas]

Exactly, I shed no tears for him, he was a disgusting human being. But watching America afterwards was just bizarre.

Kinda reminded me of this.

I don't think there were actually very many people jumping up and down and freaking out about it.

Really?

[Sea Skimmer]

Yes crowds in the hundreds turned out at several spots. How many is very many is a matter of opinion, but we didn't hold the victory parade we would have if we still had the WW1 mentality going on and had spent the last ten years renaming Persian Cats Liberty Kittens ect... instead of stopping at just Freedom Fries.

[MrDakka]

The guy was dead anyway. It was going to be a bullet or a needle.

Needle?

[Aaron MkII]

If he'd been captured, they probably would have executed him.

[Stofsk]

I don't think that's a question of probability, but certainty.

[SirNitram]

It is amusing hearing the party of ghoulish repetition of '9/11' decry anyone else for politicizing national security. It's probably because they're unused to anyone else having an accomplishment to hoist a flag on, and it's a mini-breakdown.

[Aaron MkII]

What?

[SirNitram]

What?

Slightly OT, but since this is on the relative topic.. Obama is partly running on killing OBL. The GOP here in America is clogging the political news with kvetching about using it as a political tool. Which is hypocritical as fuck.

[Aaron MkII]

Oh certainly.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Very hypocritical when we know if they had actually managed to kill Bin Laden they would be using it as a political tool. Heck, they would not even try and hide using it...the GOP would be shouting at street corners 'vote for us...we killed Bin Laden!'. Got to love America's political system.

[Ahriman238]

Yeah, Bin Laden dying wasn't the end of his evil empire, his volcano fortress didn't erupt around him just after his death-rattle, and his victims weren't miraculously resurrected.

Don't really care.

He was the very definition of an evil fuck, a man who planned the cold-blooded murder of thousands of innocent people, then crowed about what a righteous act it was, the world is much improved by his absence. He was an outlaw in the truest sense of the word, someone who through his actions became unworthy of legal rights or protection, or participation in any society, similar to pirates. Osama Bin Laden crossed the line separating men from rabid animals that need to be put down, for the safety of others, as quickly as humanly possible.

Thing is, even as a horrific mass murdering shithead, he probably doesn't even make the Top Ten list.

So he's dead, and I... am glad. I don't think anyone could truly say it was worth the violation of sovereign borders or the wars and resulting deaths. I will likewise shed no tears for the Taliban and Hussein, who were awful men and brutalized their own people, though I can wish we'd substantially improved on the situation there.

Osama Bin Laden, the butcher, is dead. The only way to complete our revenge is to let his reputation be destroyed, his cause discredited, and his name forgotten. We're 2/3 there, but I doubt the last will ever happen. Like Hitler and Pol Pot, he has achieved an immortal notoriety.

Was there celebration when he died? Yes. I think it quite natural to cheer the passing of an immoral monster. Did some people go over the top? Of course, they're people. What did you expect? Did we immediately drop everything in the Middle East? No. We went to war to find Bin Laden, but it hasn't actually been about him for some time.

We invaded two nations, and never really planned for the aftermath. We overthrew wicked regimes through force of arms, and it was easy, and we were for once indisputably right to do so, or so we felt at the time. But we had meant to be liberators rather than conquerors, but we weren't the liberators we'd envisioned. We were responsible for what happened to the Afgahnis and Iraqis now, but mentally, emotionally, and physically unprepared for the demands of occupying a hostile nation for a long period of time. Our enemies became not the terrorists who had attacked us, not the armies of oppression, but 'insurgents' simple people invaded by a foreign nation and taking arms against it.

And perhaps conquering multiple governments was the wrong way to reassure people about American imperialism.

We were wrong. I don't think we can heal as a nation and a people until you can admit this in public without dodging thrown objects. Many people are discontent for the wrong reasons, seeing the long occupation, the money and lives spent, and feeling we should have left those nations immediately on finding nothing, neither Bin Laden nor WMDS. These people should not scorn the government for trying to live up to responsibilities it never really planned on taking on.

Others believe the war was a cynical manipulation to allow us to steal the Mid East's oil. No, while many have profited from the war, if profit were our sole concern we'd have invented a pretext for war a decade before.

The truth is, we were pissed off. We had been attacked, in a cowardly manner (though our technological and martial prowess makes any other attack by someone with Bin Laden's resources suicidal and pointless) and we wanted revenge, we wanted him. The fact that the people sheltering him, and later blustering and, we thought, preparing weapons that would level the playing field, were genuinely evil people and sources of poor governance contributed and lent a shine to our actions. As much as our petty revenge, we wanted to free these people. We wanted to help them. No setting up a dictator because he's anti-communist, just a chance to be unambiguous good guys.

We were wrong. If there is one defense I can make, one request of you, please do not leave it at that. Rather let it be said "the Americans were wrong to invade these nations... but they had good intentions to go with the dubious ones."

[weemadando]

ITT Ahriman doesn't understand irony.

[cosmicalstorm]

He is dead and the organization is crushed. But to me it seems he still succeeded. The US was successfully suckered into blowing what? A trillion dollars? On an overly specific lesson. Those moneys could have been spent on building a microwave power-generation satellite network or something else.

[MKSheppard]

Woopy, an ineffectual old man is dead

Actually, not so ineffectual. He was still plugged into his network and contributing ideas; but most of his effort was being spent in trying to increase/maintain his operational control of Al Quaeda.

The Counterterrorism Center (CTC) at West Point is going to start dumping selected documents that we carried off when we busted down his door last year.

They've released the first 17 declassified documents at Link

Terrorism is funnily enough, like being a writer or businessman. You can't coast forever on your ONE BIG SUCCESS. You have to keep producing.

It'd been ten years since he'd hit the crusaders/zionists at home, and AQ being responsible for scores upon scores of dead muslims in vietraq through it's splinter groups such as Al Quaeda in Iraq...is not a good recruitment drive.

It appears that the first 17 declassified documents detail his efforts on this end; trying to rein in the excesses of groups like AQI, which killed scores of Iraqis as collateral damage in bombings, etc to get a minor number of American troops, damaging the AQ brand in that part of the world.

the ideology that fostered the attacks still exists

Unfortunately.

Afghanistan and Iraq are still hellholes, with no end in sight for the former, countless people are dead

Unfortunately.

and your nation continues to crack down on dissent.

You mean Obama's war on leakers?

Congratulations on your petty revenge.

Thank you.

[MKSheppard]

from
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/02/07 ... her-means/

But wars are not fought against flags or ideas, nations or demonized dictators. They are fought against people, 98 percent of whom are resistant to killing, and most of whom had little or nothing to do with bringing on the war.

I agree, which is why I think Ronald von Reagan's statement that the United States does not assassinate people openly is a very bad idea, all the more so that it's been carried over by every President since then.

In effect, it's saying that it's OK to kill tens of thousands of poor schmucks who had nothing to do with anything, via a war/invasion/police action; but killing one person directly -- who is much more responsible, is somehow far more immoral than the deaths of the previously mentioned tens of thousands.

[MKSheppard]

Osama Bin Laden, the butcher, is dead. The only way to complete our revenge is to let his reputation be destroyed, his cause discredited, and his name forgotten. We're 2/3 there, but I doubt the last will ever happen. Like Hitler and Pol Pot, he has achieved an immortal notoriety.

There's a very good argument to be made that OBL was the next Great Man of History [tm], after the prior batch from around WWII; as he forcibly took the stream of history and wrenched it off it's natural course through his own plotting and actions.

At the very least, he should have gotten the TIME magazine "Man of the Decade: 2000-2010" award; under it's criteria: "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

[Simon_Jester]

Political leaders love to say that assassinating political leaders is off-limits. The US in particular is so incredibly protective of its president that the effect is further amplified- the government is unwilling to tolerate the risk of, say, a Libyan plot to assassinate the president in retaliation for an American attempt to blow up the Libyan dictator. Since assassination attempts aren't really that expensive and can be carried out by fairly small groups, it makes for one hell of an asymmetric warfare ploy, with the US on the wrong side of the asymmetry.

This shouldn't surprise anyone.

[MKSheppard]

But, I don't doubt the general gist of it happened: some kids are dead, and local people are angry about it. Who's specific bullets did the killing isn't really important - what matters is these kinds of things happen daily, and probably wouldn't have happened if we weren't there.

We kill them. They kill us. We kill more of them. They try to kill more of us, and innocent people get stuck in the middle.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

UNAMA 2011 Full Year Report

Summary of the report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) on civilian casualties from 1 January to 31 December 2011 -- it's actually quite balanced, probably because UNAMA has a decent amount of personnel on the ground in Afghanistan, so they can fact check claims, and they don't circular file what ISAF says.

Anti-Government (Taliban/AQ)
2,332 civilian deaths
---967 are from IEDs
---450 are from suicide attacks
---495 assassinations of civilians/NGO workers/etc

Pro Government (US/Afghan National Army/etc)
410 civilian deaths
---187 are from aerial attacks
---63 are from night search operations

Some other notes:

Anti-Government Forces IEDs killed 112 children and 69 women; as opposed to 45 children and 21 women in aerial attacks by pro government forces.

UNAMA documented 18 killed and 36 wounded from when Pakistan shelled Afghanistan with units in the Pakistani FATA.

The numbers are remarkably consistent year to year; staying in the same proportions, only increasing in intensity:



The majority of IEDs that kill civilians in Afghanistan are victim-activated pressure plate IEDs (PPIEDs). The typical PPIED in Afghanistan has 20 kg of explosives; about twice that of an anti-tank mine, but with the trigger of an anti-personnel mine. (from UNAMA talks with the ISAF counter-IED office).

Meanwhile, deaths from the pro-government forces have trended downwards, even as combat becomes more intense:



It's actually quite interesting to read this -- the Taliban have not been reading Chairman Mao's Little Red Book on how to successfully conduct a guerilla campaign, relying on indiscriminate brutality to win friends and love. It also mentions that in 1998, the Taliban banned the use, production, trade, and stockpiling of anti-personnel landmines under the Statement of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on the Problem of Landmines, 6 October 1998.

[Skgoa]

You sig has never been more appropriate Adam. We've destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of our young people, and those abroad, for what?

Ideally, it would have been to establish the principle that bloody-minded little tyrants and would-be tyrants can't parade around the world killing swathes of innocent people without retaliation.

Yeah but unfortunately the tyrants then retaliated by occupying Afghanistan. Shoulda seen that one coming, tbh.
e/ Though, the argument can be made that the US did more to spread al qaida's message and cause than they ever managed to, themselves. In the end it was more successful than most terror attacks. The damage it did to america is certainly very hard to repair, that is if it is even possible to recover from this low point.

[Stark]

I think he meant the illusion that ... whatever drivel he said. The idea tyrants can no longer kill innocent people is astonishing in its absurdity.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't think there's ever been a war that had, as its outcome, an ideal result. Here, there were a number of single things we can point to, and say "obviously, therefore, the war would not achieve this goal." But that isn't even a necessary condition. Even when there's no single reason you can point to, it goes wrong.

It's war. Things get fucked up. That's why I had two paragraphs, even though the first one got quoted a lot more often than the other.

This would probably have required a bit more luck and a much more competent, honorable, and generally decent leadership than the US has enjoyed for a long time. Instead, we wound up proving that a flashy enough terrorist can get a lot of his own people killed by tricking the bull into charging the red flag, and that America likes playing the bull.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I'm just realizing that my ex-roomate mikie's birthday is the same day as the anniversary of OBL's death... So Mike, you may not like Obama, you may have threatened me with violence for pointing out that there was no tie between Saddam and 911, however, Obama gave your a great birthday present last year....

[edaw1982]

The sad thing is, he probably would've been caught/killed sooner if there hadn't have been that "OOOOOH SHINY THING!" moment with Iraq.

Seriously, everyone was all geared up for sticking it to the 'Evul Nayshun of Afghunnustun (tm)', then all left-field, like a shiny peice of tinfoil, comes Iraq. And with that comes a sudden humming and hawwing from the rest of the world "Well yes invading one nation over the actions of one man (and a handful of terrorists) is all well and good...but we need something a bit more...concrete, to go invading yet another nation other than 'I want to out-do my daddy/My daddy got embarrsinated/Newkewlaw weaponses."

Although why there was a war in the first place, as if the whole nation of Afghanistan needed to be brought to heel is beyond me.
Still, I suppose it was simply too much effort not to have a war.