I had no intention of opening up the Osama file, but it is such news around here. Pretty much everyone has bin following the story since it broke early in the week. I myself was watching some US program when the show cut away to Geraldo, and for the life of me I thought it was a joke. The headline that ran across the screen stated...
Usama Bin Ladin, dead!
I mean, first of all, the spelling didn't jive and then of course, it was Geraldo. I could easily be forgiven thinking it was some kind of National Enquirer type comedy skit.
Like millions, I watched the events unfold before me on September 11, 2001. That morning I received a call from my American friend, Diane in Minneapolis, urging me to turn on the TV set asap. ... seeing the smoke billowing from the first tower, listening to a frantic broadcaster, shaking my head in disbelief just as the aircraft came across the screen in an arc which carried it into the 2nd tower.
Really it was like an Awnold movie.
I said at the time when the US went into Afghanistan, the military show of determination was almost a given... but surely, if they ever caught the masterminds at the top of Al Qaeda, it would be from intelligence and ultimately a covert operation. I remember vividly thinking that there was no way, Bin Laden would be taken alive. As much as certain elements of the USA would have preferred to have him before the courts in either New York or the Hague, that would have given him a soap box to stand on. Nope...he would be given no quarter, executed on the spot, whether from a Predator or an M16. As for himself, why would he give up? This way he lives on in legend to his followers and will inspire them for many years to come. Do you remember when Saddam was found in that rat hole... I rest my case.
Either way, although many would disagree with me... I see no glory in killing. Having said that, show me a serial killer of innocent children, and I may be persuaded to pull the trigger.
This whole thing brings to mind the power of video/television. On the Western front between 1914 and 1918 tens of thousands of men were killed on a single day of a single battle. The Marne, Vimy Ridge, the Somme... hundreds of thousands died. No one knew at the time... not in London or Paris or Ottawa. Today, I get an early morning phone call from another country, and in a second I am watching the situation unfold, live!
In the early days, when something went 'viral', it was usually an influenza epidemic!
Reminds me of a 1986 Yamaha ATV dealer show in Fredricton NB. It was the morning after the showing and several of us were sitting in the hotel restaurant having breakfast. The space shuttle Challenger was lifting off that day on the 25th shuttle mission, and we like everyone in the room was glued to the Television sets. Barely a minute passed from ignition, when the commentator* from mission control command center, calm as can be, in a monotone voice announces, "Houston, we've had a major malfunction..." This while plumes of thick white smoke arc across the blue sky of the screen in front of us. It was over in a split second, no one on board would have even guessed what fate awaited them. *(Of course he would have been watching an instrument panel, not a TV screen) I suspect that had he been watching the screen he would have said what several of us did at that instant...
'Holy S__t... did you see what just happened!!!'
Thinking back to last Sunday, half a world away in a suburb of Islamabad, I suspect that Osama knew exactly what was coming when all hell broke loose... I think he ultimately welcomed the bullet that killed him.
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