The media paroxysms began last night just before the late local news programs were to begin. Since that time we have gotten very little substantive information that one could say really sheds any light on how the US finally was able to locate and kill Osama Bin Laden.

We have gotten little gossipy snippets about how Osama's last cowardly act was to use a woman, perhaps one of his wives, to shield himself. We have been fed some oh-so-serious photographs of our fearless Commander in Chief and his top flunkies in the sacred "situation room" where they watched "the operation" unfold in "real time" like a "video game".

We have been fed countless hours of the same basic facts over and over and over again. We have been fed a steady stream of essentially groundless speculation about "what it means" that Osama Bin Laden has bitten the dust, been rubbed out by Uncle Sam, been brought to justice and so on. We have been subjected to a genuinely enormous amount of gossipy speculation by puffed up celebrity news personalities, overpaid consultants to the Pentagon, terrorism "experts" of all kinds being asked questions about "what happens next" that they could not possibly answer with any certainty. We have endured all sorts of very self congratulatory commentary and "reporting" on just how damned fucking good our special forces are. And we've generally been bathed in fulsome applause for anything having to do with the US military which we all support, love, honor, and obey... "I do."

We have been shown lots and lots of the same footage looping over and over of (mostly) the nation's privileged youth ballyhooing the death of the great terrorist in front of the White House, at "Ground Zero" and on college campuses. Interesting how the rest of the nation's adults are not really joining in but the gossip and kibitzing industry isn't focused on that. It's the action out there that's important so we'll just keep showing the same pictures and creating an atmosphere of much greater celebration in America than there actually is. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure few (if any) of our countrymen and women are shedding tears for Osama today.

But really, beyond loads of gossip and speculation and a very sketchy narrative about what took place what have we got in terms of actual information that's all that different from the basic facts the President included in his late night statement of yesterday evening? Methinks not much really. Why is this?

I am concerned about the false conclusions that appear to be being sold to the public with all this, shall we say, irrational exuberance. The undertone of much of the yammering on the airwaves and in the blogosphere since last night has been that this somehow justifies our imperial occupation of two Muslim countries and our not so covert imperialist wars in three other Muslim nations. The endless imperial wars that were begun by using the attacks of 9/11 as an excuse are enormously unpopular,but perhaps this news will boost the popularity of the wars that have no end because this is somehow "proof" that it's all been worth it. I think that to the contrary this demonstrates that by focusing on actually getting the job of getting rid of Al Qaida with intelligence and special forces since the beginning we could have saved trillions of dollars and countless human lives.

Despite it's unpopularity with the people, the policy of our rulers remains full bore imperial warfare against the amorphous and moving target of worldwide terrorism and on occupying any Muslim nation we designate as not being sufficiently against terrorism. There plainly is no limit to the amount of money and lives we will expend to carry out the wet dream of the military industrial complex that is endless war on a worldwide scale. This will continue to keep our malignant arms and weapons industries humming along, sucking up needed resources that could be used to employ our 20 millions of unemployed Americans. Perhaps this news is going to be used to bamboozle people into thinking that because we got this one, horrible, evil son of a bitch that somehow means we're "winning" now and we will win the whole thing if only we don't withdraw our troops, if only we continue to pursue the same doomed policies and strategies of the past 10 years in Afghanistan.

Our economy remains in tatters with little prospect for recovering in the next 4-5 years let alone the next 4-5 months. We have a craven, bellicose and meglomaniacal/authoritarian Republican Party trying to undermine the future of the nation by sacrificing it on the altar of a fantasy world reality that never was nor will be. They prefer instead to try and get the rest of the nation to drink their kool aid and follow them off the cliff of deficit reduction in order to destroy any chance for job creation over the last part of Obama's first term. I think the nation is in real peril but not from terrorists. No. The real peril comes from the total and complete disconnect between the interests of the ruling elites of this nation and those of the vast majority of our citizens.

I don't think there's any question at all that the general war of occupation and attrition we are fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan played little or no part in the operation that led to Bin Laden's death. In fact, had we not stubbornly insisted on pursuing the same losing strategy the Pentagon clung to once before in Vietnam we could have put lots more resources toward this. Lost amidst all the gossip and speculation of the past 24 hours is the real issue of how our imperial military is sucking the life out of our economy, dooming the next generation to a less prosperous and less secure life. There have been a few courageous members of Congress meekly suggesting that this event necessitates the withdrawal of troops from AfPak, but only a few. I am afraid that this latest big development will only serve as a useful tool that those who love war will use to buy more time for themselves and their failed policy of war, war and more war.

Martin Luther King, Jr. fought against what he called the triple evils of racism, militarism, and poverty. You cannot pick and choose among those three and hope to defeat even one of them. Racism and poverty feed and breed militarism and militarism breeds racism and poverty. The three go hand in hand you see. We have worked on fighting racism in this country and met with some success. We have made little effort to combat poverty in the past 40 years. And since King's death we have only increased our reliance upon militarism.

Instead of talking about how "the fight is not over" against the now dead Bin Laden and his now completely fractured Al Qaeda we need to be talking about putting an end to the malignancy of militarism that has grown up in this nation since the end of World War II and that has caused little but heartache for our people. We can begin by expediting the withdrawal of US troops from AfPak as soon as humanly possible and bringing our other wars in Iraq, Yemen and Somalia also to an end. We need desperately to redirect the vast resources we've diverted for decades to the militarist agenda back to the needs of our people here at home who have suffered now for 35 years and more with stagnant wages, disappearing benefits and pensions, and massive job losses especially since the economic collapse began in 2007. But our politicians will never stand up to the inexcusably bloated military if our people do not absolutely demand that they do so.

I pray that with the now vanished justification for much of the police state that has been introduced in our country since 2001 the people will begin to come out of their Cold War like fog and demand our political and business leaders start doing something to create good jobs. But you won't see that being discussed on cable TV shows. No siree Bob! The ruling elite have no time for such trivial matters as employing the nation's workers so they can educate and feed their families, pay their exorbitant medical insurance premiums and all the while do so while operating vehicles the fuel for which is going to skyrocket in the very near future, etc... The first step in putting our country back on track is to stand up and demand an end to the growing influence of the militarist element in our government and then to begin the proper defunding of the wasteful, bloated Pentagon and its endless wars of occupation throughout the Muslim world.