There are pictures of celebration in all of the media. People are dancing with fists in the air. Flags are being waved proudly. Smiling people embrace and look ecstatic, as they informally congregate in front of government buildings.
And all because somebody has been killed!
Perhaps I have missed the point; America is a safer place without Bin Laden, and hence celebration is justified? Or have the American people now received the vengeance and retribution they were looking for in terms of 9 11? Is the world really safer now that the general of a terrorist organisation has been destroyed? Was Bin Laden even alive or was his mere existence an election fabrication? Have the politics in America revolved for too long around the ‘war on terror’ and hence ensured a public incapable of seeing outside of this frame of reference?
I have neither answers nor any wonderful insight into world terror. I do however have a view on the acceptable amount of celebration for a carefully planned operation aimed at the termination of an individual. Surely, America, jubilation is too much?
If I compare Bin Laden to Hitler, two megalomaniacs intent on forcing the world to bend to their wills, it perhaps puts this celebration into a different light. Would I have been happy at the news of Hitler’s death? Honestly? I probably would have been, but my celebration would have been for the end of a terrible war as opposed to the death of an individual.
This ‘war on terror’, a battle between an old religion and the secular West, will continue to play out for a long time to come. I wonder if more would have been achieved to dampen this war if the news of Bin Laden’s death caused all of the religious to head for special church services to pray instead of heading for the streets in unbridled joy?
1 comment:
I was also a little surprised by the parties. I knew they'd make a big deal of it if they ever caught him... but I am also exceptionally skeptical of anything the American politicians proclaim to be fact.
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