Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
So Osama bin Laden is dead and buried at sea. I’m sure there will be those who will not accept any evidence of that, even if they were standing there when it happened. Such are the conspiracy theory skeptics.
What amazes me is that the DNA testing confirming the body was indeed bin Laden was done so quickly, within hours. Yet, death row prisoners are often denied that testing to prove their innocence. One would think that an honest judicial system would ant to be sure they had the right person, the key word being honest. In NYC, the remains of the 9/11 victims still are unidentified after 10 years. Around the country rape kits go untested and the rapists go free because of statute of limitations in many states.
This comment from TalkLeft fairly sums up my thoughts on the events of the last 24 hours:
1. There is one less evil person in the world; that’s not a bad thing, but if I removed one eyedropper of water from a full bathtub, would it look any different?
2. Are we now officially an eye-for-an-eye society now, where when we kill someone who killed others, “justice” has been done? It appears so, which is both offensive and frightening. I am troubled by the expression of this sentiment from the president, who is supposed to be a defender of the Constitution.
3. The real legacy of Osama bin Laden may not lie in the numbers of deaths he was responsible for, but in the erosion of freedoms, the loss of privacy and the perversion of our system of justice, which I do not believe will ever be restored.
4. Dancing in the streets in front of the White House to celebrate the killing of bin Laden is a scene I could have done without; a candlelit vigil in memory of all the lives lost and lives affected would have been a more fitting way to mark the occasion – in my opinion.
5. “Now is not the time to let down our guard” is the watchword of the day, just as I expected it would be; bin Laden’s death is not the end of anything, just another data point on a spectrum that continues to move away from strengthening and protecting our individual rights. Who will the new Face of Evil be, and what will we have to give up in that fight?
6. Lots of questions about Pakistan: how could Osama have been hiding in plain sight of the Pakistani equivalent of West Point? Is their intelligence that bad, have they been paid to look the other way – or worse – and what will the repercussions be, if any?
Finally, I said last night that for me, this is anticlimactic; bin Laden’s death is never going to see the restoration of all that we have lost as Americans.
That being said, I am not so jaded and cynical that I don’t understand that this may have brought some kind of closure to those who lost loved ones in the many bin Laden-engineered attacks both here and around the world, and it isn’t my intention to try to deny that to them; we all have to handle this in our own way – we all feel what we feel for our own reasons.
On a lighter note, this IT guy, trying to find a safe place from the chaos, fled to the hills with his lap top for some peace and quiet in Abbottabad, when he was disturbed from sleep by helicopters hovering near by and began Tweeting. Unbeknown to him, he was Tweeting the biggest news since Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” thus making Sohaib Ather, “the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid”. He is now a much sought after media darling and has over 66,000 followers on Twitter. Nice job, Sohaib.
*Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1am (is a rare event).
*Go away helicopter – before I take out my giant swatter.
*A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty.
*All silent after the blast, but a friend heard it 6km away too … the helicopter is gone too.
*Seems like my giant swatter worked!
*The few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani …
*Moving to Abbottabad was part of the ‘being safe’ strategy.
*Since Taleban (probably) don’t have helicopters, and since they’re saying it was not “ours”, must be a complicated situation #abbottabad
*Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. ISI has confirmed it. Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood.
*Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.
I apologize for reporting the operation ‘unwittingly/unknowingly’ – had I known about it, I would have tweeted about it ‘wittingly’ I swear.
“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” Jessica Dovey, student, University of Pennsylvania
