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I’m not sure how I feel about the death of Osama bin Laden. I’m very glad he can no longer bring harm, but I’m pensive & mournful about the harm his followers & sympathizers, as well as his detractors & enemies, have already caused & will continue to cause.
I came in to work this morning, turned on NPR, & the first words I heard were about really bad things happening in New York & Washington, DC. My first thought was, “They’re retaliating already?!!!” until I realized, no, NPR is replaying some of its broadcast from 9/11. The words I heard were, in fact, probably the very same words I heard on that Tuesday morning in 2001 that gave me my first news of that event. I was going to say that “dreadful” event, but no adjective encompasses what happened that day, & what it did & is still doing to us. I mean “us” in the big sense: not just Americans (& of course the people who died that day were of many nationalities), but all the world.
So much death & stupidity has proceeded from that one day, catalyzed by that one man, who was so tremendously successful at unleashing the murderousness & hatred of so many. Too bad there are so people equally closed & fanatic in their chosen cause, equally intent on killing, equally locked into destructive & murderous cycles of retaliaton & counter-retaliation. It would be nice if all the killing & stupidity would end with the death of this one man. But it won’t.
Pres. Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death (via Slate):
The night before last, Saturday night, I spent some time watching video of that night’s remarks by President Obama remarks — one might say, his comedy stylings — as well as those of Seth Myers at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. I thought Pres. Obama was the funnier of the two — and he was devastating in his takedown of Donald Trump & birtherism. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. Here it is, via CSpan:
The only false note for me was the use of “The Lion King” as Obama’s birth video…but that’s only because it seemed to me a direct ripoff of The Daily Show’s use of “The Lion King” on August 28, 2008 during the Democratic convention in 2008, though in that case not for “birther” reasons.
The most memorable comment about Trump:
But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. [laughter] For example — no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice — [laughter] — at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf. [Laughter.] You fired Gary Busey. [Laughter.] And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. [Laughter and applause.] Well handled, sir. [Laughter.] Well handled.
What’s really striking now, in hindsight, is that Obama made these comments even as the operation to capture or kill bin Laden was already underway, following the President’s go-ahead last Friday morning. Andrew Sullivan last night:
And the steadiness under pressure, well, let’s just say: The cat is cool. The poker face of the man has for the last few weeks been pretty damn impressive. Just because he’s calm doesn’t mean he isn’t lethal. And imagine what must have been going through his mind as he was getting closer and closer to this just as Donald Trump was doing performance art with a birth certificate.
I don’t like Pres. Obama on everything. I’ve been disappointed by a lot. But, y’know, mostly I think the stuff I’m disappointed about is because being President of the U.S. is, yes, a powerful office for any man (or, one day, woman) to hold, but it’s also an office that owns whoever holds it as much or even more than s/he owns it. The office of POTUS is one nexus, if a very powerful one, in a large & complex system, & there’s only so much that one person can do in that position even wielding such power.
So there’s much Obama has been unable to do. There’s been much he’s wanted to change that obstacles in the system have prevented him from changing. There’s realities he’s had to accept that I’m sure he wishes he didn’t have to. (As was interestingly acknowledged in his response to some of Seth Myers’ comments at the press dinner the other night.) And yet, how much he’s accomplished in spite of those obstacles. If one must have a president, he’s a damn good one. I’m so glad it’s him in this office, rather than one of these walking jokes that even the most “viable” of the Republican candidates — not to mention the last election’s losers — are proving to be.
Well handled, sir. Well handled.
Excellent post Mel – and I agree completely with the mixed bag of feelings. I’d intended to add a comment but have Fox News running in the background and now need to share my horror at the talking heads currently advocating the villainization of Pakistani’s leaders because ‘obviously they knew he was there – they were sheltering him…’ and are now demanding accountability.
Does these people learn nothing? Is there no Republican who understands diplomacy? Is every Republican in America a former high school bully? One talking head praised our president for doing a great job and commented how this is going to affirm his Commander in Chief credentials, to have so cooly and calmly gone about this task and demonstrated great leadership abilities.
A responding comment from a second talking head made the claim that Obama (it shits me that none of them ever use his title) ‘had to beef up his military creds because the Republicans shamed him in the 2008 campaign for not having any. (So by proxy this is THEIR win eh?)
I’m so tired of the bully tactics… I just want my elected officials to go to work – and the unelected unofficials to shut up and let them.
And most of the talking heads anyway are just pundits who get paid to yap all day in order to keep the 24-hour “news” (noise) stations going. They don’t necessarily know squat. Especially those on Fox.
Lots of mixed feelings. I am feeling cautious, about what is up on the next plan for world ‘security’. Pakistan would not be a country to engage in the way Iran and Afghanistan have been engaged. Pakistan has some semblence of nuclear capabilities and already there has been some conflict of an armed sort between U.S. and Pakistan.
One wonders if the Japanese melt down of their Nuclear plant was all of us witnessing again the apathy that exists around the fallout of nukes, and could be a possibility that Global powers that be, may be willing to engage on this level. We will see.
All the while I’ve been reading a book that talks about how this increased militarism of the US has had the excuse of being a ‘security’ force, and so the lines of Nation states, and the use of Police, versus Armies has become very blurry, and almost non-existent. Where the enemy is more like an aura, so increased violence becomes legitimate, while civil rights and the ideas of nation states use of international law for war crimes disappears in meaning and ability to respond to the increased violence that is for ‘security’.
Global peace, is not. There is war everywhere, and we are increasingly becoming a more ‘secure’ country, which is not the same as democracy. Military re-enforces hierarchies, and that is a steep problem here. The Joint Terrorist Task Force was just voted in here in Portland, along with another version of Downtown Drug-Free Zones, that were labeled as violating civil rights because of racial profiling. The homeless sweeps started this morning up near Dignity Village, which in Portland is far north away from everything. What happened was one of the villagers were pulled over on his bicycle for no reason we can tell, but he unfortunately had an unpaid fine that he has been unable to pay, which is common among poor people who lack jobs, and people who are targeted in criminal ways through sit/lie laws, a modern version of the Ugly Laws. So he is gonna sit in jail, for what? Riding his bike in peace in the morning. Yeah, the sweeps have begun, the city is gonna pretty itself up for the Rose Festival.
I don’t think the Roses like this, this don’t smell like Roses.