I give President Obama credit where it's due. Despite campaign promises to get out of the Afghanistan region with all due speed, he quickly realized how important it was to hold firm in the face of a severe threat. Now you would think that the assassination of OBL would be the perfect pretext to withdraw from the region ASAP. But I don't think he will.
I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the reason we remain in Afghanistan is Pakistan. The latter nation possesses nuclear weapons but has millions of Islamic fanatics, including most of the Taliban that used be in Afghanistan. If the radicals take over that country, we and India (a key ally in the region) could be in a lot of trouble. Standing by next door sends an important message to Pakistan that we're ready to act if need be. And that's an important message, given the revolutionary climate currently prevailing in the Middle East.
Heck, even if the current regime stays in power in Pakistan, we could be toast. Evidently, the 3,000 SF home OBL was living in was only 30 miles north of Islamabad and a stone's throw away from a Pakistani military installation. The Pakistan government, or large factions in its military, had to know OBL was there.
Leave it to others to find humor in this. My friend John Pollard reports a great Facebook posting: "Osama should have been caught alive and continuously made to go through airport security for the rest of his life."
As someone who recently received a full 10-minute shakedown by Bahamian airport security in Nassau, I can definitely relate ...
I'm going to write this off the top of my head. I was going to Google " Assassination " to get the specifics on the word. I do know, from memory, that's it's derived from a middle eastern word and it has something to do with killers who were stoned on hashish. Was this an " assassination? " If we're at war with these guys, I think it's the wrong word. Navy Seals were involved yesterday in a battle in the long and maybe never ending war on terrorism. Bin Laden was killed in that battle, a casualty of war.
ReplyDeleteJFK, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X. They were assassinated. Osama? I'm not so sure.
The definition of assassinate is "to kill suddenly or secretively, especially a politically prominent person; murder premeditatedly and treacherously." It might not be a perfect word but I think it mostly fits.
ReplyDeleteYou win this one, Terry. I think I was still thinking about a comment on my blog this week in which my friend from Tampa called the Seals' wet work " Murder. "
ReplyDeleteAssassination is a good word, the right word, for what happened. Murder it wasn't. This was no crime. It was the right thing to do, given the context. That being war.