Osama - Are We Doing Ourselves Any Favours?

There’s nothing like an internationally hated dead guy to push Skinny and Baldy’s honeymoon out of the news cycle - and that’s a good thing.

But, because you expect nothing less (or more) of me, I have some things to say about dead terrorists.

One of the things that sickened us in the West at the time of 9/11, was certain groups getting out and celebrating in the streets at the destruction of the Twin Towers. I can understand why Americans are happy at the symbolic importance of getting the bad-guy, but it would’ve been so much classier if they’d just been cool about it and not behaved in exactly the same way.

Much better would be, “Yep. Got him. Took a while, but we knew we would. We used seals in helicopters. Should have seen it. Balancing the balls on their noses, clapping their flippers, killin’ bad guys. Cool.”

That’s how we’re really going to beat extremism and religious fanaticism, by being classier and not taking ourselves too seriously. Have you ever noticed how heavy religious types, the ones who can talk poorly educated people into blowing themselves up, are always such wowsers? They take themselves too seriously. You have to, if you’re going to kill in the name of your invisible sky fairy. We shouldn’t do it too.

So Americans, while you’re out there yelling “Oo Ess Aye” like that, be aware that you’re drawing attention to the score-line, which would so far have to be in the bad guy’s favour. How many military casualties - six thousand or so? How many civilian casualties? I hate to think. I don’t even know if there’s a reliable number. At the same time, while prosecuting the War on Terror, the West has resorted to nastier and nastier tactics. No one has been improved by any of this.

Burial at sea: A fancy way of saying chucking stuff overboard. It also means that we are going to have sightings of “the real Osama” for the rest of our lives. I read yesterday this was done because there wasn’t any country that’d take him for burial. How many countries did they ask? What’s wrong with taking him back to the US and allowing anyone who’s not convinced to come and have a look? While you’re at it, charge admission. Nothing would annoy the type of people who blow up civilians to make a religious point more, than turning their martyr into a C-grade theme park. Then, when you’re all done, rubberize him and turn him into a hatstand for the Oval Office. Or, then take him back out to sea and chuck him overboard.

I can’t see that killing Osama will do anything to Al Qaeda. It’s like trying to get rid of all professional gardeners by killing Jim of Jim’s Mowers. I’m pretty certain Jim isn’t driving all those trucks and trailers around by himself. (If you were to believe the press on the subject, Jim and Osama occupy similar positions in the Pantheon of Evil, too.)

Finally, I would like to castigate a few of our local media types in person, if I got the chance. Channel 9’s News for last night airing a photo of the dead Osama -  that has been circulating on the net for the last two years (excellent research) - and the Telegraph for today’s cover, front and back. The headline on page one “Evil Dead” is topped by the gloating, fake obituary on the back surrounded in black ink.

You have the right, within reason, to do whatever you want, that’s one of the cool things about our culture. But please, try and make us proud of what we’ve won when we do actually prevail.