The Death of an Enemy

America's relation with Osama is a stinking history. In Obama's speech, he conveniently left out that before Osama was our enemy, he was our ally, that the weapons we gave him and his cohorts to combat the Soviets were later to be used against us. Then we invade the Middle East, fight for ten years, slaughter thousands, to find one miserable wretch. He will be replaced, and the American government will continue its endless war to repeatedly eliminate the top man. Warmongers thrive on bogeymen, or, as George Orwell so named him, Emmanuel Goldsteins, the man concocted by Big Brother to give a center of hate for the masses in order to control them.

Now, they have buried Osama at sea. My suspicions concerning the veracity of this kill are even greater now. The American government has been wrong (i.e. lied) before about the deaths of targets, and I wouldn't put them above doing it this time. The number one proof that THE Osama bin Laden is no more is now residing in Davy Jones' Locker.

This is, again, a rank history of events. The terrorists (rather, those foreign terrorists) do not, for the most part, want to destroy us because of our liberty and prosperity. Osama may have particularly nihilistic reasons for his actions, but the only way he was able to recruit common people was to entice them with solid, pragmatic reasons for the U.S. is the enemy. Most of these can be boiled down to this: our government meddles, violently or otherwise, in their affairs. Just as we would never tolerate some other entity fixing and even controlling our business, so to do they not appreciate it. Our impossible War against Terrorism (rather, foreign terrorists) is the most meddlesome affair yet, and the only thing it has accomplished is a deepening of resentment and destruction-lusting hatred among peoples who otherwise would, most likely, like us.

I do not rejoice the death of Osama bin Laden. It will not end anything. As the American government has been dealt blow after blow, this will be used to give it some momentary reprieve, a curtain of success to hide the wretched fraud hiding behind it. He will be replaced with some other Public Enemy #1; the blogger Lew Rockwell posted some comments from a Darien Sumner on a blog, one of which was that the invasion of Libya made a little more sense, since Gadhafi can now be the new Osama for a while. I will be ecstatic when the American Empire recedes to its own shores and, at least, resumes being the American Republic.

Now for a thing of (relevant) beauty. In my last concert at Webster University, the choirs and orchestra performed Ralph Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem, which was written between the World Wars. It was quite a bizarre experience singing this piece, then coming home to learn that Osama was dead. Anyway, this is the gorgeous third movement, "Reconciliation," with text by Walt Whitman.