Sunday, May 8, 2011

Calling all Trolls: Osama Bin Laden Really Is Dead

I am getting tired of the trolls who are running around the internet ( and the real world too) trying to make the facts fit their distorted picture of reality.  Personally, I am with Bill Maher on this one.  I wish all the conspiracy theorists and nut jobs would just calm down and get their stories straight. Here are a few of the nuttier scenarios floating around at the moment.

1. He's Not Really Dead  Osama Bin Laden really is dead.  He really was buried at sea and Obama was right not to release the pictures of his corpse.  There is no plot here so get over it.  The guy won't be showing up anywhere soon  and his being still alive is about as likely as September 11th was planned by the Bush family or Americans never walked on the moon.  If you believe this nonsense you might also believe that Bin Laden was killed in 2001 and the United States has had his body frozen since then and just staged the whole Pakistan thing..

2.The Government of Pakistan Colluded in Hiding Bin Laden Get a grip. I'm sure there were some payoffs and some folks who knew and were paid to keep their mouths shut or who kept the secret for ideological reasons or who just wanted to stay out of trouble--- but really, Pakistan has suffered more at the hands of Bin Laden than most countries. The government may be riddled with corruption, but there was clearly no offical desire to hide Bin Laden.  Remember who assassinated the last prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto?. Let's not be so quick to pass the buck.  We are the people who only had 36 special ops tracking Bin Laden in ToraBora back in 2001 and we are the folks who let him get away.

2A  Variations on this theme include, the big bad USA should not have invaded sovereign Pakistani territory to take out Bin Laden but should have left it to Pakistan.  yeah, sure, and  let the most corrupt intelligence service in the world blow the deal ? sure that would have been great.  Lets hand this off to the folks who spent at least five years not knowing Bin Laden was even there and who asserted over and over again that he was in a cave in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden didn't worry about invading the sovereign territory of the United States on 9/11, or that of Spain or England or Pakistan itself, for that matter, to mount terrorist operations-- and then of course there was Iraq. But let's not go there-- we were the invaders and the occupiers and perhaps a case could be made for Al Quaeda  bringing in all those foreign fighters.  The point is we are dealing with trans national terrorism not with nation states here.  We had a perfect right to go get Bin Laden where he was, and most of the world, including much of Pakistan, is glad the guy is gone.

3. Obama Is Taking Too Much Credit  There is a lot of teeth gnashing going on in right wing and teaparty circles. A narcissistic president with Socialist/Nazi/ Fascist leanings ( make up your minds, guys) is how these folks want to see Obama and since reality does not square with their vision, they need  to  rewrite history-- won't be the first time. These folks want to credit George Bush, the guy who parachuted onto an aircraft carrier and announced " Mission Accomplished" with the Bin Laden take down.   Huh? As Bill Maher says:
  
“How many Muslims does a black guy have to kill in one weekend before crackers climb down off his ass?”

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