The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    David Seaton's picture

    What now?

    By David Seaton on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 12:19pm |

    Nearly ten years after the attack on the Twin Towers, it is reported that Osama bin Laden has been killed in a military town in Pakistan by American commandos and his body quickly dumped into the ocean. At this writing there is no photograph of his corpse.

    The question that immediately springs to my mind is that, although Americans will feel a lot better, what will  be the real impact  of bin Laden's death (in battle) in an Islamist culture of martyrdom, a culture of countless suicide bombers? Are they expected to pack up and go home on hearing the news. To be killed in jihad was presumed to be bin Laden's heart's desire. To have captured him and brought him to trial would have certainly been more demoralizing.

    Do Al Qaeda still have the capacity to retaliate significantly? That is the real question in the coming days and weeks. 

    Crossposted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/

    Comments

    Knew you could be counted on to be a corpse denier.


    by Rootman on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 12:40pm

    No denial, but where is the picture? Why isn't a gory picture being shown? I mean, of course, if the American government says something is so, it must be true, right?


    by David Seaton on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 1:31pm

    The gory pictures apparently exist, David. This from TPM:

    Officials told ABC News there is an internal debate going on in the Obama administration on what to do with gruesome photographs taken of Osama bin Laden after he was killed by U.S. forces. While releasing the photographs would help preempt any conspiracy theories, they show a "massive head wound above his left eye where he took bullet, with brains and blood visible."

    If his burial place were known, it would become a shrine. Since Navy SEALS supposedly did the deed, dumping the body at sea seems appropriate.


    by acanuck on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 2:18pm

    No, no, no, no.

    I repeat myself:  lack of a body will not prevent shrines AND a legitmate burial shrine could be watched for acolytes with the potential to bcome suicide bombers.

    Dumping the body at sea is a really bad idea.

    As for disturbingly gory pictures, have you seen our broadcast tv for the past couple of decades?  One CSI show after another trying to outdo each other with gore.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 2:32pm

    While releasing the photographs would help preempt any conspiracy theories, they show a "massive head wound above his left eye where he took bullet, with brains and blood visible."

    So what? No body, no photos and only the word of the US government? If they have a photo show it now or nobody is going to believe this.


    by David Seaton on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 2:35pm

    "Watch out for faked photos making the rounds."  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 2:56pm

    You're right, so a photo wouldn't prove anything.


    by David Seaton on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 4:30pm

    David, David, David:

    I betcha there's a couple of folks in Madrid right now who are also glad that Bin Laden was killed yesterday:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3509426.stm

    I don't think you speak for the folks who lost loved ones because of OBL's handy work in Madrid, where by the way poll after poll shows they hate Israel and don't really care for Jooz in general.  Now ponder that.  Surprised

    BTW, where have you been?  

    Bruce


    by Bruce Levine on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 12:57pm

    I certainly  think Bin Laden's being removed from the scene is good news. What I don't understand and have never understood is why he was allowed to escape from Tora Bora in the first place. I also think it would have been much better to take him alive (using some sort of nerve gas?) than to make a martyr of him for a culture of martyrdom.Keep him in the brig a few day (and nights) with the strobe lights on and the hip hop at full blast and then take a picture of him and publish that.

    As to why I haven't been writing the last few days. It is a "long weekend" here in Madrid and I admit I am getting a bit bored with the political situation and am trying to think up some new angles.


    by David Seaton on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 1:27pm

    I realize you rarely deign to read others' blogs here, but Decider's has some really interesting history on bin Laden and Sudan and 'why not there?'


    by we are stardust on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 1:42pm

    There is a tendency to think that this story is all about us, but there are a lot more folks involved. From America's point of view, when the Towers went down bin Laden should have been captured or killed PDQ, for me the mystery is why he was allowed to get away from Tora Bora. That is part of the mystery that is G.W. Bush.


    by David Seaton on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 1:51pm

    Was it (in this case self-) sabotage?  We know Bush was thinking of tying Saddam to 9/11 to help make the case for ousting Hussein as early as...9/11, thanks to Richard Clarke. Which is hardly enough to make the leap that, because Bush is known to have been thinking about the strategeriatric or strategeric, or however he mangles the word, uses of 9/11 to get Saddam, prior to knowing whether or not Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, that therefore...he did so by making some deliberate decision, even a non-decision, to let the Afghanis round up OBL and his henchmen.  Thinking or hoping they'd not get the job done.  And privately hoping for that outcome. 

    Or was it merely massive incompetence--which, it must be recalled, was never a possibility remotely to be underestimated when it came to the Bush Administration?  

    I'm not suggesting it was a foregone conclusion that OBL would have been captured at the time had the US used its own forces at the end of that stage of the conflict, in Tora Bora.  And it might not have been a leadpipe cinch to an informed, sane observer at the time that the Afghanis would not have gotten AQ then. 

    So it might be an exaggeration to assert that he was allowed to get away at Tora Bora. 

    What I think is absolutely mind-blowing is that a sitting US President, faced with that situation, would agree to allow foreign forces to take over at that point--and would get away with it in the court of public opinion, to the point of not just surviving politically but being re-elected for a 2nd term. Riddle me that, Batman.

    If Obama had made the same decision, can you imagine the 24/7 Fox coverage, the immediate impeachment proceedings for high treason initiated against him, etc?

    David, I'm guessing the answer in your case is yes, you can!


    by AmericanDreamer on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 4:51pm

    Ah he was a self confessed mass murderer; no torture needed for his confession!

    Saved us a billion dollars by taking the sonofabitch out!


    by Richard Day on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 1:41pm

    What's your rush?  It only happened a day or so ago.  IIRC, it was a few weeks before Che's naked body sprawled on a morgue table showed up on the cover of ParisMatch.  

    I read something about the ocean dump and how it was supposed to deter shrines to a martyr.   LOL. Do these people never read history?  Lack of a body to enshrine plays a pivotal role in many, many martyr legends.  Iman Husain seems the most pertinent example in this context.

    Best thing would be to turn the body over to the bin Laden family after positive identification.  Let them do with it what they will.  

     


    by EmmaZahn on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 2:03pm

    Emma,

    I agree with you about the "shrine" angle. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't actually turn the body over to the bin Laden family for private burial and the "buried at sea" thing is just cover. The bin Laden's have loads of friends in high places in the USA... it could be arranged.

    As to the photo, there was no Internet in Che's day, no Twitter and no Iphones. Getting a photo out of Bolivia in those days would have taken quite some time. Now, I cannot see why the photos didn't appear right away.

     


    by David Seaton on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 2:30pm

    That's what I thought.  Doesn't Osama have like a couple of dozen brothers.  Why not just invite one to come do a positive ID and then hand the body over to the family?

     


    by Dan Kervick on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 4:14pm

    Live Holy Freedom Fighter or Dead Martyr. It matters not. It's the idea they follow. Like the NEO Nazis still follow Hitler.

    As for proof of his death. Oh hell there a people who still believe Elvis is alive and will swear they just saw him in a Taco Bell outside of Schenectady.


    by cmaukonen on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 4:08pm