Disclaimer: People incapable of impartially reading something without getting their opinions in the way are encouraged to NOT READ the following. Any angered/impassioned lambasting of my existence shall be met with the rudest retorts that my meandering mind can generate. Whether or not it coincides with yours, you can NOT boo me for having an opinion!
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For the last few days since Osama Bin Laden was killed, I have been debating with myself whether I really want to write and publish this blogpost. I was not sure if my own thoughts were clear enough and whether such blatant opinions need to be made public at all. Today, I read something that convinced me I should. So here goes..
THE CONFESSION
I have never really hated Osama Bin Laden. Since I saw the live footage of the WTC twin towers and Pentagon burning, to this very moment, I have never felt that surge of anger that a lot of people feel or have felt against him at some point of time. I could never see 'evil' on his face. I could never bring myself to blindly believe all the labels and adjectives that were attributed to him. If anything, I almost admired Osama Bin Laden. I always thought that born under better circumstances, he would have made such a great scientist, sociologist or philosopher. There's good reason why I say so. While my opinion about his motives and the means of accomplishing them has wavered over time, there was and is no denying the tremendous genius of the man who stood right in the face of 'the greatest nation on earth'. The ten years gone by during which the US relentlessly pursued him and yet ended up with just dead ends have only served to prove this. I have often wondered how he managed to walk with titanium balls that big.
The above sentiments apart, unlike so many people in so many parts of the world, I am still in no mood to celebrate Osama Bin Laden's death, for multiple reasons:
THE ARGUMENT
1) What's glorious about the willful killing of a fellow human being, no matter who they are and what they did?
2) Its all a big game of perception management. In the media, we are mostly fed only one side of the story, which follows the golden rule: 'He who has the gold makes the rules!'. But sitting in the cozy safety of our homes, its genuinely difficult to appreciate what the people in some other part of the world are really facing on a daily basis. Try listening to this:
Makes 'One man's terrorist is another man's martyr' make some sense, doesn't it?
3) As the real happenings of 'Operation Geronimo' emerge as the White House 'revises' several key details, it is becoming increasingly clear that this was a planned political assassination. No attempt was made to capture the target alive. Keep in mind that there was no 'firefight', as Osama Bin Laden was unarmed, and also that he did not use any woman as a human shield. Obama's speech was just perception management eyewash.
4) The entire operation also stands in multiple breach of elementary norms of international law. Whats there to celebrate about the blatant breach of the sovereignty of any country by another? And who's to say that this will not happen to mine in the future? The US will undoubtedly get away with it too, simply because there IS no one to stand up to them. The disbalance of power only makes me worried, not gleeful.
The following assume the Osama was 'evil':
5) The vengeful repercussions of Osama's killing are bound to show up sooner or later, and your guess is just as good as mine as to what form they will show up in. Given the brilliant mind that he was, I'm willing to bet that he'd already chalked out a plan of action to be followed post his death.
6) Osama managed to pull the US into a dead-end ground war on multiple fronts, which cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. The hits taken by the US economy ever since George W. Bush declared a 'war on terrorism' show that it is a pyrrhic victory for the US, if at all a victory. Now with the death of Osama, the americans feel a sense of closure, and the war between the most powerful country in the world and a handful of terrorists, after ten years, can only truthfully be said to have ended on a draw. Really seems like a victory for Osama, if you ask me.
7) For a while now, Osama was being seen as more and more of a symbolic figurehead representing the multi-pronged extremism across the globe, with minimal direct operational command of Al Qaida. The world's most wanted and most dangerous terrorist, captured alive and kept rotting in a jail would have been symbolic victory to the US. The US could not have gifted a more 'glorious' and 'inspirational' end to Osama by killing him and making him a martyr dying for his cause.
And in closing, a quote from Noam Chomsky: "If this world believes in the Nuremberg Principles on which the Nazis were taken to trial for its crime against humanity through their tyranny post-world war II, all American presidents should be taken to trial following the same principles."
Tell me what you think.
Luv-n-luck,
Av
