Feb 21, 2011

Osama bin Laden Won

By Mike Burrows / gonzotimes.com
Osama bin Laden Won

And he continues to kick our asses posthumously. That’s right, he’s been dead for eleven fucking years and we’re still on orange alert. After years of dialysis and a less than comfortable lifestyle, despite his wealth, in December 2001 Osama bin Laden died in the mountains of Tora Bora and was buried in an unmarked grave, according to Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan knew bin Laden took two dialysis machines into Afghanistan. “One was specifically for his own personal use.” “I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a … kidney patient,” Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in an interview with CNN.

Even Donald Rumsfeld admitted signs of Bin Laden after mid December 2001 “were probably not valid.” I recently watched a show on HISTORY channel dedicated to bin Laden wherein a retired CIA agent assigned to the bin Laden task force emphatically stated that there had been no verifiable sightings of the man since November of 2001. He further went on to say that in his thirty years in the intelligence community he had never seen anyone “drop off the face of the earth” and “did not believe it was possible given today’s covert monitoring technology” (spy satellites, drones, etc.). Are you getting the picture here? He’s dead and the American Intelligence community knows it. So why is the U.S. keeping Bin Laden “alive”?

Three words. Military industrial complex. Look folks, when you’ve got hundreds of billions of dollars worth of kill-toys, you gotta use em. Why? So you can build new, more expensive kill-toys. This is the reality of it; Lockheed and Boeing aren’t getting paid for jets that are already flying around in the air. Those jets and high tech weapons need to get worn out, obsolete and replaced with newer better kill-toys undoubtedly as a response to some kind of cutting edge Afghani/Muslim war technology that nobody is aware of.  Are you kidding me? The only decent weapons they have were given to them by us to fight the USSR during the Cold War, and other than throwing black rocks at night… Afghanistan has no stealth technology.

As I said earlier we are still on orange alert, or is it yellow alert today? I don’t know and you probably don’t either. Why? Because it’s meaningless hype created by a country who’s main export is war. Of course it’s a yellow or orange or pink alert! Got to keep people scared so they won’t make any noises about cutting back on the military budgets, especially during times of financial crisis…like the current one. Now, when I visit my elderly mother with Alzheimer’s, I have to submit to letting an L.A. gang member in an Airport Security uniform (usually), stare at my and my girlfriend’s privates so we may be allowed to board the plane. Alternately, we can be felt up by said gang members.  Man, do I feel safe now.

We are not at war with Afghanistan. We are at war with a concept, terror. How in God’s name can you possibly win a war against a concept? You can’t. And that’s the whole point. We never win, we never go off some color of alert, we never stop war-ing, we never interrupt the military industrial complex and we never feel safe. Largely because of a 10 foot tall Muslim fanatic with bad kidneys who’s been dead for 11 years.  I, for one, am tired of having my ass kicked by a dead guy.

The world hasn’t changed; we have. As a nation we buy into the specter of terrorism and unquestioningly do what ever we are told.  We’ve willingly surrendered hard fought rights that we may never recover (the Patriot act was renewed, in part, a couple of days before this writing) and tolerate any ridiculous inconveniences we are subjected to because of the very real fear of arrest. There have been so many studies showing that our current heightened/intolerable airport security does nothing to make us safer that space prohibits me from quoting them all. Now you need a passport to go to Mexico…WTF? We as a nation have become scared little bunnies willing to suffer any humiliation for fear that the big bad Osama might eat us.

Recently I’ve watched Egyptians fearlessly stand up against a tyrannical dicatator/president. I couldn’t help comparing the bravery of Egyptian protesters to the cowardly apathy that exists in this country. Clearly, Americans are too obsessed with their iPhones and Honda Accords to be concerned with their civil rights being eroded. Also, as a country we’re not too smart. Example; Wisconsin state workers go on strike because their governor is trying to bust the unions under the guise of balancing their state budget. With out doubt there are many among them that voted for the Republican/Tea party candidates that are now busting their union. What did they expect? Republicans traditionally hate unions, or anything at all that might benefit Johnny Punchclock & Sally Housecoat. You reap what you sow. Idiots!

Osama bin Laden won; now what do we do? Well for one, we can insist that Congress repeal the Patriot Act (is that Orwellian or what?). We could stop putting up with the ridiculous requirements forced upon us should we need to travel. We could in no uncertain terms let Washington know that we view the “Terror Alert Status” as a tool of fear and oppression. Americans must make it crystal clear that unless the Government can prove that there is an imminent threat to our sovereignty we will not go to war. We must not violate the Versailles Treaty any longer by means of aggressive war or torture if we wish to be taken seriously as a nation and not hated. Finally, we have to admit some painful truths to ourselves. First, you can’t win a war against terror because it’s a concept.  And second, Osama bin Laden is dead, and you cannot kill a guy who’s already dead, no matter how much you hate him.

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