Let's Get to the Real Debate

 Bin Laden's dead. Should we get out of Afghanistan?


I am commenting on an article written by Fred Kaplan, a columnist at Slate.com. Mr. Kaplan is known as a hawk. 


Now, to the article…


“…the war in Afghanistan has never been entirely about killing or capturing Bin Laden."


It wasn't? Bush lied about something else?


"It's a big deal that he's been killed. Al-Qaida has lost not merely a figurehead but its political and spiritual leader, the seemingly invincible embodiment of its whole mythic narrative. But the organization and its dream aren't dead; its franchise managers, however splintered and paranoid, can still wreak much damage.”


Before people like you came along, OBL was a loser hiding out in a cave in Tora Bora. But, people like you had to invest him with such tripe as, "...not merely a figurehead but its political and spiritual leader."


While nimrods like you have been investing heavily in the fear mongering trade, OBL has gone from hanging out in caves to a 'compound' in Abbottabad where he watched porn flicks. This is who you describe as the "invincible embodiment" of the whole myth. Your 'invincible embodiment' was sitting on his ass, on his mud floor studying for his next jihad by screening 'Debbie Does Kandahar" over and over again, just to make sure he got a good look at her technique.


OBL's death isn’t a big deal. Some people refuse to believe that OBL’s role in anything that Al Qaeda has done since 9/11 has been pretty much limited to making ant-American videos and shouting ‘Death to America.’ He was a nobody that the west clung to so as to justify starting two wars in the Middle East. OBL was much more important in the creation of the “National security” state, simply because he was an unknown.


As an unknown it was possible for the government to do anything they wanted, while pointing to the specter of OBL. I am not sure what they are going to do now that their scapegoat is no longer an unknown.


“More to the point, Afghanistan, in its current state, would very likely tumble into anarchy or civil war without the binding presence (however tenuous) of U.S. and NATO troops—and thus serve, again, as a sanctuary for terrorists.”

And we should care about this, why?


You invest OBL with powers of a 'super-terrorist' and then you say nothing much is going to change since his death. The minor leaguers will just step up their game and it will back to business as usual. 


So, which is it - is he 'super-terrorist' who is the "...invincible embodiment..." or is he some old guy sitting on the floor, farting and watching porn? You can't have it both ways, but, somehow, I believe you are going to try. Fear mongering is like that.


You seem to believe that we can, somehow, force our way of life on the Afghanis, least the country become lousy with terrorists. If that is what we are doing, why aren’t we garrisoning most of the countries in the Middle-east and a few in Africa. They are, already, harboring "terrorists". So, why don’t we send a couple of cruise missiles over Jordan to get their attention? Better yet, why don’t we stop buying oil from the Saudis. That would really shut them up.

“Of particular concern here are the most-militant jihadists, who could turn the lawless terrain into a cross-border expanse from which to plan and execute their ambitions in nuclear-armed Pakistan.”


Okay, nice way you worked in "nuclear-armed Pakistan" into the whole doomsday scenario. Too bad what you said is just the wet dream of some guy who works for the CIA. In the basement. Emptying trash into the incinerator.


You are, sort, of like the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. Their entire doctrine, strategy and tactics were based on the belief that there would be one huge fleet encounter with American and Japanese navies engaged in a pitched battle, sending dump truck sized shells back and forth until one side was destroyed or withdrew in defeat. That's why they attacked Pearl Harbor, to kill battleships. Aircraft carriers were just a bonus; or not, because they weren't in port that day.


In your version of this nightmare, you are sure that a mass of Taliban are going to come running full-out towards an American base where they will be gunned down in an orderly, military manner. And afterwords, a gracious people will tolerate the occupation of their country and the senseless slaughter of their citizens. After all, we brought all the guns, so we get to make all the rules. And, of course, the Afghanis know how much to trust invading armies. It's always worked out so well for them in the past.


“The killing of Bin Laden would have momentous impact on the Afghan war—and on world politics—if some Pakistani leaders used the occasion to force systemic institutional reforms.”


Okay, so OBL wasn't important, it was that his death should have been used to "...force systemic institutional reforms." Yeah, that makes sense. OBL was just a blunt tool to force another ancient culture into adopting a world view the US/NATO can relate to.


"Many countries' leaders would be compelled to make vast changes if it were suddenly revealed that they'd been harboring the world's most wanted mass murderer for five years”


Where are these many countries you speak of?


The Mossad penetrated Argentina and kidnapped Adolf Eichmann in 1960. He had been living there since the end of WWII. He used false papers to enter and stay in the country. Eichmann collaborated with Reinhard Heydrich to solve the ‘Jewish question’ in Nazi Germany. This puts the blood of six million Jews on Eichmann’s hands. Eichmann was one of the most infamous mass murderers in history. 


So, why didn’t Argentina complain to the UN or to the Israeli government about what amounted to an act of war against a sovereign nation? Because they weren’t really interested in abetting an individual responsible for killing 6 million Jews.


And what did Argentina do after the Israelis kidnapped Eichmann? Nothing. 


The Pakistani government isn’t going to, all of the sudden, decide they have to be accountable to the rest of the world. They aren’t accountable. They have been harboring “terrorists” for a lot longer than OBL has been around. And they will go on harboring them now that OBL is dead. That is, if you define terrorism as one who has to be forced at the end of rifle to adopt your world view.


Pakistan didn't want to be responsible for what OBL did or what he stood for. Like Argentines, the Pakastanis weren't interested in hiding a mass murderer in their midst. So, the Pakistanis let the Americans solve their problem.


“—and that a foreign power can mount a military raid deep inside its borders without triggering the slightest detection, much less resistance.”


Look at map, Abbottabad isn't 'deep inside" Pakistan's border, it is right on the border.


What a bunch of BS. We BOUGHT our way into Pakistan. The Pakistani government knows who is giving it billions of dollars of aid. We could have detonated a tactical nuclear weapon in Abbottabad, killed everyone, turned the ground into radioactive glass and they wouldn’t have said anything. They know not to bite the hand that feeds them.


And it was not like Pakistan had any interest in saving OBL...


“…in just about any other country on earth, a leader would use this double embarrassment as an opportunity to clean house, chop heads, overhaul rival power networks.”


In other words, become more fascist. Isn’t this what Stalin did after WWII – purges and pogroms? Isn’t that what is happening in the US? This is desirable?


You seem to have trouble with the concept of ‘accountability’. Pakistan has none. They don’t think they need it. They don’t want it. And they sure as hell are not going to be accountable to a non-Muslim nation full of infidels.



“Should India invade (and there have been a few wars between the two countries since the 1947 partition), a friendly Afghanistan would be a strategic reserve. In the meantime, a strong Taliban helps counter India's efforts to create a presence in Afghanistan—in other words, helps to pre-empt India's encirclement of Pakistan.” 


Again, I have to ask why this should matter to the US? 


India and Pakistan and been fighting since Pakistan was created. It didn’t start when, or if, Al Qaeda showed up.


The Taliban are many things, but being an effective military force is not one of them. Most of them aren’t even sure what they are doing, besides joining in the chorus of “Death to America.” The leadership, if there is any, is completely decentralized and would be impossible to control. They have no articulable goals. By their very nature, they are tribal warlords who aren’t going to line up to fight any invaders on behalf of the Pakistanis, much less an Indian attempt to invade Pakistan.


They know that an insurgency will win every time over an army dedicated to direct confrontation. In other words, the Taliban - probably without reading it - understand the tenants of Sun Tzu's Art of War better than we do. They, like the North Vietnamese are in it for the long war. They know that they can drag any foreign army down by refusing to fight on their terms.


Maybe we should run your scenario by a couple of our guests at Camp X-ray and ask them if their ‘jihad’ was ultimately to serve as a fighting reserve for Pakistan.


Let’s make something perfectly clear. Power comes with having nuclear weapons, not using them. They act as a deterrent only as long as you have them. Use them and you are naked in the face of nuclear weapons from the other side – who you have just really pissed off.


Neither India nor Pakistan is going to throw away what they see as their ‘trump card’ over a border war that has been going for fifty years and will continue almost indefinitely into the future.


It does fit into your doomsday scenario, though.


It also begs the question: Pakistan is our ally. We don’t want them to be overrun by the Indians. And, according to you, the Taliban are serving as a strategic reserve against an Indian invasion of Pakistan. So, why are trying to kill the very people you claim are functioning as a reserve army for our ally?


“The death of Osama Bin Laden doesn't alter these factors.”


You’re right. This fantasy you have concocted is just that, a fantasy. A reason for us to stay and fight a non-existent enemy, living among a populace that doesn’t want us there. Who is tired of their friends and neighbors being killed in the effort to bring them a liberal democracy. They don’t like us, because they don’t want to adopt a world view that is consistent with ours. They, rightly, don’t think that it is just or humane for one group of people to make another group of people ‘hew the line’ just because it can.


“But if it matters to U.S. interests how the war ends—whither Afghanistan and its effects on the broader region—then it's a bad idea simply to walk away. And it's fairly clear that the outcome does matter to U.S. interests.”


Do you read history? Do you really believe the US can materially change what is going to happen in Afghanistan’s future? That we, finally, are the invading force that will save them from themselves and get them to embrace a way of life that they are willing to kill and die to avoid?


Whose interests are we talking about protecting? What you are saying is that this war, like every other war, isn’t about anything but RESOURCES. Business. Not political activism. Not humanitarianism. We just want their resources. All wars are about resources. War is just theft writ large.


Look around at your kids and your kids’ friends. Now, tell me that you think these human beings are worth sacrificing so Exxon-Mobil can make an extra ten million in profit?


“So we should exploit this situation, use it as leverage to get Karzai to step up reforms, especially to take meaningful steps toward ending corruption."


The Afghan people elected Karzai once. They let him steal another election with hardly a blink. The only people who were upset that Karzai stole the election were people not in Afghanistan.


Now, you expect Karzai to stop being a kleptocrat and start caring what the US thinks of him?


Where there is no accountability, there is no leverage. It is more beneficial for Karzai to maintain the status quo. The U.S. gives Afghanistan money and Karzai steals it and uses it to consolidate his power. Then he gets to play victim whenever NATO does something he doesn't like – and he, pretty much, doesn’t like anything NATO does. I see no upside for Karzai to quit being the head of a kleptocracy and to suddenly become accountable to his people or to a NATO, that seemingly goes around killing people at their leisure.


"At the same time, commanders and diplomats should exploit whatever fissures Bin Laden's death might have opened up—not just between the various Taliban factions but, more, between the insurgent commanders, who tend to lounge in the shelters of Pakistan, and the foot soldiers bleeding on the battlefields of Afghanistan. It's unclear at this point whether a diplomatic settlement is possible, or what it would look like—but it's time to start seriously crafting its foundations."

In the first part of this article, you claimed that OBL's death wouldn't be that significant. Now you are saying it can be leveraged to, somehow, force a diplomatic solution to a war without any goals and without an exit strategy.

Why would the 'minor leaguers' you describe as being below OBL agree to anything? They are prevailing. They are chasing NATO around Afghanistan, making NATO spend billions of dollars and gallons of blood just to achieve some kind of weird status quo.

They know, for certain, that we do not have the political will to stomach another [insert number of years] in Afghanistan. We have already announced that fact by saying we will start a draw-down of troops this summer and will be gone by 2013.

These people aren't idiots - mostly - they will not agree to a diplomatic solution when they are already winning.


Even if there were to be a diplomatic solution, who would we join with to provide it? That guy who showed up at NATO's doorstep, claiming to be a representative of some of the leaders of the Taliban, but was really just a scam artist?

To posit that killing OBL will influence other Al Qaeda leaders to surface and agree to a diplomatic solution is ludicrous. All the Afghanis have to do is sit around their TVs, watch video porn and complain about the west's decadence. And wait for NATO leave.

They know they can put the west, especially, the US into a panic by not blowing things - i.e.; the Times Square bomb. Why risk direct action against a highly technical and sophisticated army, when you can get rich guys who are losing their homes to foreclosure to do stupid things and take all the heat?


There is no evidence of any discord among the leaders of the Taliban. Why would they give up now, if we are going to be gone in two years? All they have to do is wait us out. And they know that means waiting two years. Would you negotiate a political solution to a war that you are winning?


Let’s take a minute here to reflection how well this whole “peace with honor” thing has worked out. Kissinger negotiated the Paris Peace Accords and ended American involovement in the  Vietnam war. We – including the government of N. Vietnam – more or less agreed to maintain the status quo until a referendum was held to decide about the partitioning of the country.


And, of course, the N. Vietnamese stopped fighting. After all they had agreed to not keep fighting. Why wouldn’t keep their word? Because they didn’t have to. They weren’t accountable to anyone. They could do whatever they wanted – and they wanted to be on tanks that rolled into Saigon and forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon.


I may be cynical, but I really can’t see where the Taliban would be anymore pre-disposed to honor their commitment to a diplomatic solution than the North Vietnamese were.


In fact, I can’t see any upside in it for them. So, why do it?


“…and we will have no leverage if everyone thinks we're getting out quickly.”


Everyone doesn’t just think we are getting out quickly. They know we are getting out quickly. How can a force that will disappear after 2 years leverage anything?


“There are two alternatives to this approach: keep doing what we've been doing and stay there forever while the regional politics continue to stagnate—or just get out and watch it all crumble.”


The ‘crumbling’ of the current corrupt government and the substitution of an Islamic leader is already pre-determined. Once we get out, they will stop making even the most facile attempts to do what they promised to do.


They will revert back to what they have known for thousands of years – inter-tribal warfare, theocracy and corruption on such as massive scale it will dwarf what is happening now.


It appears that Mr. Kaplan lives in an alternate universe where people act exactly as he predicts they will. No matter how unreasonable he is.


He still believes that we can force our world view on the Afghanis by display of military force. He still believes the government of Afghanistan can be bribed or scared into doing the “right thing” by an omnipotent US that, in ten years, has failed to make any sustainable change in Afghanistan.


He still believes that might makes right and everyone who possesses a world view inconsistent with his will fall, if we just ‘rattle our sabers’ loud enough.


Unfortunately for the American/NATO soldiers, sailors and airmen who have died in the fruitless effort to achieve any kind of permanent change, we are not omnipotent.


We have no leverage. We cannot use foreign aid to force a conclusion that we like. We are completely and utterly irrelevant to what Afghanistan will be like after we leave. What little influence we have we have because we bought it.


There is no way for us to influence what will happen in the future. If we stay we will just see more Americans die. And watch billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money circle the drain and disappear into never neverland.


And hawks like Mr. Kaplan need to learn to accept that. Before any more Americans die and before billions of dollars disappear down the rabbit hole.

Identity Theft

You never think it will happen to you. The data you sent to buy that whiz-bang new application over the Internet will never come back to haunt you. You’ve dealt with reputable company. All critical information was transferred through a page under HTTPS protocols.

All’s well and good. 

Or you think all is good. Until ‘the’ call comes. Some unknown voice wanting to ‘confirm’ the personal information you sent to the software company. And the caller identifies themselves as a representative of the software company you just did business with.

You refuse to give them the info they request. They get angry and demand that you provide them with your personal information. This, not being you first rodeo, you refuse to provide the caller with the information he wants and, abruptly, he hangs up.

Then, coincidentally, you go to your online banking webpage and try to log in. The password doesn’t worth. It doesn’t even recognize your login name.

By now, you are starting to put two and two together and coming up with five. The call was an attempted ‘social engineering’ call. Or, as many states call it, a felony. It’s when someone contacts another by phone or other telephone device using a false pretense to get information out of them they are not entitled to.

Of course, this happened on a week-end, so I couldn’t call the bank to cancel credit or debit cards. Or find out if they had hit my credit card accounts.

Monday approaches with some degree of anxiety. First thing I did is call the bank to discuss what happened.

I bank with a relatively small, local bank. They farm out the actual server hosting and online banking software management from another firm, that shall remain nameless.  I never thought about how secure the bank’s online security was. Like most people I know, I just took it for granted without really thinking about it.

When this happened, I started to wonder exactly how well their security would protect my money.

Apparently, pretty well. There had been three attempts at getting into my account. After the third incorrect attempt, the bank’s software locked them out and wouldn’t let them back in. 

I am betting that whomever was attempting to get into my account didn’t realize that the only way to unlock the account was to call the bank and go through some pretty thorough authentication before they would even talk about passwords or unlocking my account.

Then we spent about half an hour looking for any unusual transactions. [I seldom write checks for this very reason.] And figuring out what the account balance was, etc.

After going through all this, both the bank and I were satisfied that the people who had called me, hadn’t managed to get past their security. 

I consider myself a pretty savvy computer users. I have run very large computer networks. I made tons of money certifying that the large network installations I was running were “Y2K” compliant. I’ve read a pelthora of books about online security. I know about people trying ‘social engineering’ by calling people and asking them to confirm information they had no right to have in the first place. 

So, I didn’t give them any information. My bank had a much more robust security system than I thought it did. Even if had told them what they wanted to know, they still wouldn’t have been able to get into the bank’s system.

Changing everything after this attempt was a complete pain in the butt. But, I guess that is life in the 21^st century.

The rules that are out there about computer security tend to be taken pretty lightly – Passwords get written a sticky note and stuck to the bezel of your monitor for everyone to see. You use the same password for multiple accounts. You go years between changing your passwords. You use your birthday, address or telephone numbers for passwords.

And, despite our somewhat lacks attitude about security, most of the time, we get away with it.

I have about a dozen accounts I use on various different systems. All highly secure passwords that get changed often. All written down and stored separately from the computers – then encrypted with PGP.

So, nothing really happened because the bank’s security system kept them out and I wouldn’t answer any questions about my personal data to help them figure out my password at the bank.

But, it was a wakeup call. You can’t afford to get complacent with your passwords and/or to give out your personal data to strangers that call you out of the blue, on a weekend and casually ask you to confirm ‘some details”. (They know, if they can get into the account before Monday, the legitimate card holder can’t tell anyone that their identity might have been stolen. And they have the rest of the weekend to drain your account.)

It isn’t that the bank wouldn’t absorb the loss. They would have. But, even without anyone getting into my bank’s computer, it cost me about 8 hours on the phone. Plus cancelling all my plastic money. I cannot image how long it would have taken to deal with this, if they had gotten in and stole everything.

The moral of the story is that you should take everything your IT gal/guy says about security seriously. If s/he says change passwords, every month and don’t use your dog’s name as your password, s/he isn’t just flapping her/his jaws. In a networked system, where it could effect a large number of users, servers, etc any breach of security could cost thousands of dollars in lost time while your IT guy/gal goes through every component of the system to make sure none were penetrated.

I am not going to say what software company let my personal information get out in the wild. I will give them a chance to make it right and tell me how they are going to fix their system so it can’t get hacked, again. Or, I will stop buying stuff from them.

This is the same attitude any customer should take when dealing with a company, retailer, etc. that insists their system is “safe”.

Everybody’s site is safe, until it isn’t. And even though the bank will go after a hacker, if enough money is involved, it is better for you and your bank if you follow the rules your IT manager lays out. And follow them at home, as well as at work.

[1] The company I bought the software from is on the other side  of the world. They would not, casually, call me up and ask these questions. This was my first tip off that something was wrong. Here it was in the middle of the weekend, but there it was probably mid-day on Monday.

I worked with tech support to handle some problems on another brand of laptop. Their tech support was in the Philippines. The person I talked to was, clearly, not an native English speaker. He couldn’t answer my questions and, instead, explained to me how to set up my computer so he could control it from the Philippines.

Now, depending on how you look at it - this is very cool or very, very scary. 

It was clear the customer service rep in the Philippines had no idea what was going on. He just wandered around in the laptop for about a half an hour, seemingly clicking on whatever he encountered. When he did accidentally discover the reason the trackpad wasn’t working, he didn’t know how to fix it.

So, I took the laptop back and got back the money that paid for it.

OBL

OBL is like the Energizer Bunny, the news articles just keep on rolling in. He's in the emails I get from the NYTimes; the Miami Herald[1]; Salon; & Slate every day.


Being buried with 'news' about OBL makes it difficult to focus on any one particular issue. And of course there is the fallout from the fallout brought to us by the US DoD; DoJ; and the US army. The government is having trouble keeping track of individual departments, who has said what about what and what is being 'leaked' in either verbal or written form. 


So, what is the truth? Who knows? And should anybody care?


The army put Pat Tillman's family through hell in their attempt to 'hero-ize' his death. They did the same thing with Jessica Lynch at the start of this cluster fuck. Now, they are trying hard to make OBL and the rest of the people in the "compound" look like the bad guys and cast the SEALs[2] as heroes. For going into house and shooting unarmed civilians.


And they still cannot get their stories straight.


When things like this happen, I always wonder whether our masters are aware that nothing stops the Internet. Nothing. Not even China. Every thing will, eventually, get put on the Internet. EVERYTHING. Whether it is someone trying to find out what happened to their families to government 'leakers' to information warriors like Julian Assange. And it will NEVER go away and they cannot control it. Sometimes I believe our government thinks it is the Mormon Church - who strictly controls all information about the church - but it is actually, the Laurel & Hardy show. And slapstick is not the thing you look for when considering how our government runs and how our military is deployed. 


Unfortunately, slapstick is what we get... Slapstick that results in murder if you are on the government's hit list - without due process or other constitutional niceties to stop the US government from killing you.


When I was growing up, back in the day when, if you got four channels on your TV if you were lucky and I was learning to type on a forty year old typewriter, my mother told me a truism - that a lie can be half way around the world before the truth can get its boots on. In those times, she was right. A lie could out run the truth. It still can, but the truism has evolved... Now, a lie, a truth, facts or opinions move about the internet at the speed of light. No government or corporation can ever hope to control information that finds its way on the Internet. That means they pretty much can't control anything. And we are left with an information overload that, eventually, we grow weary of. And, then, stop paying attention to.


Which may be exactly what the government wants to happen.


Was the government wrong in what it did? Who knows. The stories change ever hour, sometimes from minute to minute. Or, whenever someone figures out a way to make the other 'side' look bad.


On September eleventh, 1857 a group of Mormons, some dressed as native Americans, massacred 120 men, women and children a place called 'Mountain Meadows'. There is no historical doubt that the massacre was planned and undertaken by Mormons with the full knowledge and consent of Bringham Young who was implicated in the subsequent attempt to cover it up. Then he sacrificed John D. Lee, the leader of the force that committed the massacre, as a scapegoat for  the US government to prosecute and, eventually, to hang.


Why am I talking about the Mountain Meadows Massacre?  It is unlikely that most people have any idea where Mountain Meadows is; how the members of the Fancer-Baker party were killed; and the role of the Mormon Church in those murders. Or how the Church has attempted - and still is attempting - to control information about an event that happened over 150 years ago.


If you talk to a member of the LDS church, you will most likely find that very few know anything about the Mountain Meadows Massacre or the church's subsequent attempt at covering it up. I was to able to draw one member of the Mormon church into discussing the church's role in re-shaping the history of what really happened at Mountain Meadows. His version of the 'facts' was that nobody knows what really happened at Mountain Meadows. 


It is scary, but I think he actually believed what he was saying. This is a good example of how people can made to believe that history is a fairy tale that can be changed at the whim of those who don't like the original version. And, how, if you blow enough bullshit in their faces, people will get tired of listening to you and give up even thinking about it.


In the case currently under review, the Mormon church equates to the US government and Obama is Bringham Young. Both are willing to kill unarmed civilians, without due process of law. Both have concocted outlandish stories to cover up what really happened.


Unfortunately, what is happening inside the government as they try to spin this pretty directly compares to Bringham Young's actions in response to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. 


Unfortunately, we will never know, for certain, what the truth is the case of OBL. And the accounts and the reason for the them is completely obscured. So completely that people will give up on ever knowing the truth and the long term implications of what happened in Abbottabad.


If we cannot know the truth, we cannot think critically about the methods our government uses to kill people and the lengths they will go to cover up the truth. All we've got is a couple of thousand newspaper/Internet reporters flapping their jaws in some kind of frenzy. One information source cannot be outdone by another source's reporting on OBL's potty training.


Result? Information overload. People quit trying to understand what has happened, and what will happen. They just quit trying to figure out what happened and whether it was 'good' or 'bad'. Which may be what our overlords want to happen. Actually, what I think is happening.


I wish I had a clear picture of what happened that night. The truth is, however, that I have heard so much rhetoric that even I, a news junkie of some repute, cannot figure out what happened that night in Abbottabad and what has happened  since. I wish I could go down a list and point out when things happened and why, but the truth is completely overwhelmed by speculation and innuendo.


The government has decided to conduct foreign policy by murdering people without due process. I guess they think, if they kill enough people, our 'enemies' will give up and take up knitting or something. And, apparently, they believe that what they are saying will be accepted by the populace.


Give me a break. Can these people be that clueless? If the answer is 'yes' than we can look forward to assassination as a tool of our foreign policy for quite some time in the future. Until the government sees that what it did was wrong - morally, ethically and legally - there really isn't a good reason for them to stop and think about what they are doing, or going to do.


Don't hold your breath. It will definitely get worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better...


Update: If you are a Mormon, or Mormon apologist, and think I have said things about the church that are demonstrably incorrect please let me know what you think I said that is  false. Please be prepared to produce definitive answers published in peer reviewed publications or books.


The Book of Mormon; the Doctrine and Covenants; et cetera are not - despite what your bishop tells you - primary sources for information. Forgetting their bias, all of these documents have undergone significant revision in order to fit into the history the LDS wants you to believe.


If you produce information that shows I am wrong, I will enter a retraction and an apology.


[1]The Miami Herald has shown the most constraint with their coverage of OBL. They have not allowed stories of cops shooting unarmed people; people shooting armed cops; and the vast number of ways that South Florida politicians are corrupt to be crowded out by 'The OBL story of the day."


[2] What, exactly, the SEALs did, upon who's orders and under who's authority they acted is, like everything else, cloudy. I have no doubt the SEALs acted upon orders from higher ups. That they were given rules of engagement that specified who was a legitimate target and who wasn't. And that they acted in good faith on those orders. But, and here's where it gets kind of murky - were the orders lawful and was it up to the SEALs to question them in accordance with military standards? That's hard to say. Moral choices aren't always clear in the heat of battle. A lot of things don't turnout as planned. 


I have no doubt the SEALs who raided the compound thought their orders were legitimate and that the ROE was appropriate. I, also, doubt that the SEALs are bloodthirsty killers who kill for sport.


Even if they didn't understand the political and human rights questions their action would cause. [Which I think they most probably do.]

The 'Super Terrorist" and Why We Had to Kill Him...

A lot of people are spouting a lot of nationalist BS and rejoicing at the murder of yet another figurehead in the war on terror.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden was state sanctioned murder. Nothing more, nothing less. We need to realize this, before we murder anyone else.

There was no way that Bin Laden could have ever gotten due process if he had been captured. He would have been locked up in Gitmo for the rest of his life and tortured, ad hoc, for years to come because we think he has information about things he couldn't possibly be privy to.

If the president thinks he has the right to order the assassination of an American citizen without benefit of due process, what could Bin Laden expect? We can't 'risk' bringing any one in Gitmo to justice. We don't even try to protect the prisoners' civil rights. Do you think we would have given Bin Laden any more due process than we give the other men in Gitmo? We won't give Bradly Manning due process and he is an American who has not been convicted of  anything.

Trying Bin Laden, if we could manage to find someplace that didn't mind having a terrorist tried in their jurisdiction, would have raised a lot of questions. Questions that no one wants answered. It would have challenged the government's version of  the 9/11 attacks. They would have had to face an entirely new threat - the truth. No one, particularly the government, wants the story to change. And what the people think is completely irrelevant, except as it relates to how many back scatter x-ray machines we can buy; shoes that had to taken off in airports; civil liberties that can and are being infringed upon; billions of dollars of deficit financing that goes to the military-industrial complex; the creation of  a surveillance state; the expansion of the powers of civil law enforcement;  the expansion of American hegemony etc etc. etc.

And let us not forget the imbeciles that work for the TSA who otherwise would have had a hard time finding and keeping a job in fast food.

Bin Laden was the person who made all of these things possible. He is the source of all this. He spooked the herd and caused a stampeded. He was the focus of our hatred. We have a concrete view of who and what he was and we are not particularly interested in changing that. He was the incarnation of pure evil. So, what would have happened if he called our beliefs into question? Challenged our views on what happened on 9/11? And what would have happened if he were to be brought to trial and shown to be a guy who hangs out in a cave, smoking opium? We couldn't have that, so we murdered him. Then we went about waving flags in some kind of bizarre nationalistic pride.

We have so much invested in the myth of Bin Laden, that we couldn't see him as anything but evil incarnate,the monster lying under bed of democracy and our republic, that we couldn't have let him live.

As a people we love the myth that we, as country, are invincible and seek to perpetuate that belief at any cost.

We think Bin Lade was so invincible that we sent an army to kill one man and it still took us ten years to find him. Ten years. Either Bin Laden is really, really, really clever or our military isn't very good at what they do.

We, the American people, elected Bush and Obama and choose to give them the power of life and death without any accountability. And we made two really bad decisions. And in the last ten years, thousands of people have been murdered all over the world as result of those bad decisions. People disagreed with us and choose to assert their right to live as they wanted to. So, like Bin Laden, we killed them. And we think we are the 'good guys'? We are as barbaric as Bin Laden, supposedly, was. If Bin  Laden was responsible for 9/11, he killed about  3,000 people. We have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the middle east in an attempt to force them to live as we do.

Killing people is not a good thing. Unless you work for the government.

Wait a minute, isn't that what Bin Laden did? Yep.

The most significant part of all this is that we didn't need to kill Bin Laden just so we could hang his head on the wall in the White House. The man hadn't done anything in the last ten years. He was completely redundant to Al Qaeda. Now, Al Qaeda carries out small, limited attacks against insignificant targets that have a major political impact. Bin Laden took the long view. Jihadists now are lucky if they can see past their suicide bombs.

There has not, nor will their ever be, another attack like 9/11. Osama Bin Laden may have been the mastermind of criminal act of horrendous proportions. Thing is, the jihadists have realized they can influence the west without any big, grandiose plans. All they have to do is drive a car full of 'explosives' into Times Square and not have it blow up. They don't need to blow up anything. The threat of blowing up something is enough to provoke a frenzy. They can achieve the same, or more, impact by not blowing stuff up as they did when they were blowing stuff up.

We are pissed and affronted by the reality that we don't have the means to protect ourselves from a couple of guys sitting round a campfire in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan who will sacrifice everything to accomplish what they believe is right and moral. Somebody has to be responsible for two wars, countless thousands of people dead and that somebody was Osama Bin Laden. We invested him with superpowers. Able to reach out and plant a bomb in some idiot's shoes and in another idiot's underwear. Was he really that evil before we vested the idea of him being a 'super-terrorist'?

Bin Laden was portrayed as everything that went wrong since 9/11. He was a scapegoat invented by the US government. According to the government, the man was a menace to society. He killed people. He made videos of himself firing scary looking rifles. If he did mastermind the attacks on 9/11, our terrorist mastermind did it while he was living in a cave. And when his political influence ended about a foot outside of his cave.

The question is: What do we do now?

The reason we went into Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden. Well, we got him. So, what do we do now? Get out of Afghanistan? Tell me when to stop laughing. We will be killing people, or facilitating the killing of people, long after the myth of Osama Bin Laden fades into history. We may stop killing people in Afghanistan - the Soviets did - but I can guarantee you that we will find another country where we think it is in their best interests to bomb them back to the stone age.

War, killing, maiming and deficit financing of the military will go on forever. This is the 'Long war'. Today we're getting our asses handed to us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tomorrow, we will, probably, get our asses handed to us in Libya.

The names will change, but the war will remain the same. And it will go on long after my generation is gone. It will, probably, out live our children - those that don't get killed signing up to kill people for money to go to university.

And, for a lot of people who are so shallow that they think celebrating a man's death is a good idea; that is entirely acceptable.

This is not the America I know and love. Not at all.

Buried at Sea...

Within 24 hours? Now we will never know who they killed.

The conspiracy theory nuts will be going ballistic over this.

The 'War on Terror won't end. The people wrongly incarcerated Gitmo won't be freed. We won't get our civil rights back.

And the minimum wage slaves that transferred to the TSA from Burger King will not go away. Even if this actually is Bin Laden's body.

Then there is the whole thing about invading a sovereign nation to pursue somebody that no one has seen in ten years, except on video tape.

No wonder the Pakistanis are pissed. We killed a guy who was hanging out in the Batcave. A totally redundant man who hasn't done anything in ten years?

What is next, we turn the UAVs we have on the Mexican border loose to strike targets and kill people in Mexico. Another sovereign nation who we don't like...

Predator UAV didn't get Osama Bin Laden

Update: 01MAY11 @ 2320 hrs. 


Obama must have made his speech, because more details are coming out about Bin Laden's death. Allegedly, Osama was croaked by a team of Special Forces in Pakistan, (you know, the Laos of Central Asia that we aren't invading). Obama said that Bin Laden was shot in the head.


Swampland reports: Osama Bin Laden Killed; Obama Hails Moment of "Justice". Swampland? I never heard of it, but, apparently, it's part of Time magazine.


Time magazine led with: Death Comes For the Master Terrorist  (1957 – 2011). Time said that Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Time has what it calls "new" photographs of Bin Laden. They look a lot like the "old" photographs of Bin Laden.


ABC News leads with Osama Bin Laden Operation Months in Making. ABC reported that Obama said Bin Laden's death was a "...major milestone in the war against Al Qaeda" and "...justice for the families of the... ..victims of the September 11 attacks."


Fox News leads with Usama Bin Laden Killed in Firefight with U.S. Special Ops Team in Pakistan. "Special Ops" sounds really tough doesn't it?


The BBC led with Al-Qaeda Leader Osama Bin Laden Dead - Barack Obama.


If you can read only one of these articles, read the BBC report.


These reports don't say much about Bin Laden's death, other than he was killed by Special Forces. And that Bin Laden's body was being handled so as to not violate any Muslim burial customs. Why are we doing this? We killed him. If they aren't upset that we killed him, how come they would get upset if we didn't follow Muslin burial customs?


News organizations did say we had Bin Laden's body and they are trying to confirm it is really Bin Laden by DNA analysis. See how convincing my last post was? They are doing exactly what I said to do.. 


Where would they get DNA to compare it to? Has Bin Laden's hairbrush been hiding somewhere in the Library of Congress or the National Archives, perhaps right next to Kennedy's brain?


Even George Bush was happy. Although, I will bet he choked on the words.


But, all is not lost. The War on Terror will still go on. The State Department warned all embassies to prepare for possible retaliation from people who are upset by the killing.


So, Raytheon gets to sell the US a bunch more cruise missiles at $1 million dollars apiece. And KBR will still get to build Subway Sandwich and Burger Kings restaurants in Afghanistan.


If Bin Laden was the mastermind of Al Qaeda, how can they attack after he gets killed? Is it possible that Bin Laden is no longer important? That we just killed a guy who has been hiding in a cave for the last ten years? At best, Bin Laden had more use as an icon for the War on Terror.


I am sorry, but I really don't think this will do anything but improve Obama's approval ratings. I would imagine he hopes that voters will remember this when they go to vote for a president in 2012.


It is the only significant event in Obama's presidency since the Affordable Care Act. Kind of ironic that he won the Nobel Peace Prize and he's done nothing but escalate the war in Afghanistan, keep 50,000 troops in Iraq and is trying to start another war in Libya.


Excuse me, but I am not that impressed. I will be impressed when the MIC, the National Security State and Police State all go away. And everyone is released from Gitmo. And we get all the civil rights back that this war has erased.


In other words, this is symbolic, with no real importance