Ding Dong, Osama is Dead

[Elinor]

Hmmm... now why would they do that? Is the Obama administration clever enough to come up with a totally new bad guy to keep up public support for the next year or so?

Although the U.S. government was unaware of it at the time, bin Laden was already actively working against it.

Ahem, I have my doubts. Perhaps it's true, but I can hardly imagine the US government was actually unaware of bin Laden's anti-western leanings (and with the US at the head of all things western the natural conclusion would be... Right.)

Ramzi Yousef, would later be revealed to have close ties to al Qaeda.

I could easily be wrong again, but if 9-11 had happened in the '50s or '60s (maybe even '70s) wouldn't Mr. Yousef be "revealed to have close ties to Communists"?

Also, why has it taken over a decade to unearth this guy? He's one man against multiple nations (and who knows who all is/was against him in his own lands...). You'd think they could have worked this out sooner. But there I'm getting dangerously close to conspiracy theories, and I'd rather not go there (too much anyway). I prefer to just have a healthy suspicion of the government - whether it's republican, democrat, libertarian, or whatever else there is.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. I haven't read anything other than this article about this moment in history, so I wouldn't call my opinion well-rounded. But I do think that there's some historical precedence here. I mean, c'mon! Think of the cliches "history repeats itself" and "there's nothing new under the sun." They wouldn't be cliches if there wasn't some reason to use them over and over and over again. Just sayin'.

I've done enough study recently about modern history to know that the US will ALWAYS need a bad guy (unless something incredibly drastic happens, and I'm not seeing that come about any time soon). If bin Laden is dead, who is going to be next?

I have my doubts that the United States' troubles with the Middle East extremists are really over. Bin Laden was just the international face and voice for them; they're still there. If any one of them has organizational powers, he could take control in no time. Of course, there might be more than one with organizational powers, and then they'd have to fight it out amongst themselves, which may, indeed, free the US from Islamic extremists for a good long while. Maybe.

Okay, I'm done now. Sorry, this moment appealed to my history-major-in-the-making. :p

EDIT - BTW, I have nothing at all against any branch of the US military. I think they're great, and I really appreciate everything they do to keep us safe here in the states. I'm a bit pessimistic about the government right now though (just read through Common Sense by Thomas Paine and a bunch of other stuff about what the founders intended by the Revolutionary War, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution...).