News broke that today, Osama Bin Laden was killed and buried at sea. Celebrations commence around the world. Justice has been done to those who were killed on 11/9. (I’m British, the date comes before the month thank you very much.) Interestingly, this is becoming comparable to the date when Hitler was also pronounced dead. Coincidence? I’ll leave that to you to decide. These dates are becoming a little bit fishy for my likings.
Social networking news feeds have suddenly come alive in exam season (please see the previous blog post for more information), some of my favourite humorous statuses include, “Bin Laden’s twitter informs me he’s gone for a swim,” (Thank you Miss Mehzabeen Patel); ☑ “Saddam Hussein ☑ Osama Bin Laden ☐ Justin Bieber....” (Very grateful Mr Jhon Valencia); “Osama Bin Laden is dead!!!! The longest hide ‘n’ seek game comes to an end...” (Much obliged Miss Pari Tailor) and finally “Does this mean I can bring shampoo with me to the airport now?” (Appreciate it Mr Anish Vekaria). Groups such as “So, Osamba Bin Laden is finally dead. Shall we have another bank holiday?” and “A prince gets married, the bad guy is dead. It’s a real Disney weekend.” are quickly becoming highly popular.
On to the more serious concerns though, supposedly: "He was buried at sea according to Islamic traditions, US officials said, seemingly in a bid to prevent his grave becoming a shrine." Makes sense. Correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding of this is that in Islam you are to be buried in a place where you shan’t be dug up. But come on now, where’s the proof? They conveniently decided not to photograph/conduct any DNA tests/capture him for questioning. Where is the evidence I hear many people scream. Obama’s word simply will not suffice. When Saddam was captured there was a video, albeit a dark and bad quality video, of his execution made available for everyone to see for verification. Surely, you would want to question him? Make an example of him? Just show that you actually did capture him?
It seems likely that this event will support Obama’s pledge for a second term in presidency as his promises to transform the health care system aren’t as reliable. (In hindsight I found this quote: In February, 2004, an Iranian state radio claimed Osama Bin Laden had been captured in Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan “a long time ago.” Pentagon and Pakistani officials denied the report. “Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda manoeuvring in the presidential election,” the radio report said.)
While we’re on that point. How can the American government justify spending almost HALF their discretionary spending on their department of defence?!
Interesting also note that the American expenditure on military comparatively to the rest of the world: (The diagram alone explains more than my words will be able to impact)
The USA is responsible for 46.5%, almost half, of the world total, on military spending. That’s INSANE.
I mean, you can kinda see what’s gonna happen next. Security on high alert, yet another terrorist attack to avenge Bin Laden’s death. Quickly followed by another man replacing him on the most wanted list and another excuse for the US to spend incredible amounts of money on wars despite being in so much debt from the recession... Conspiracy theories are already coming to surface, 11/9 is already considered to be an inside job, talks of the emergency number in the US, 911 and 9/11 being suspicious are resurfacing... (Thanks Farcel Rabess) Talks of Obama being the best option for America because he caught Osama, he can catch the next bad guy... But I don’t wanna get into all that or I’ll be here writing until Christmas.
Funnily enough, “your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.”Some 2752 people were killed on 11th September and people 52 on 7th July. Compare that to THREE MILLION PEOPLE dying from HIV/AIDS in 2003 alone. Can you imagine how much difference $663.7 billion a year could make to this?! Or alternatively even a fraction of this expense spent on the 513,000,000 people without safe drinking water could save millions of lives. The 1.2 billion people living off of $1 or less a day could have that budget increased by $1.5, more than doubled (664/365/1.2)! I ask you, is this spending really justified on the revenge of the lives of less than 3000 people that were taken...? Here are some more mind-boggling statements considering worldwide statistics for terrorist fatalities:
“More fatalities occur "each day" from auto accidents then occur from terrorism for the "whole year".
More fatalities occur worldwide each year from animal attacks then occur from terrorism.
More fatalities occur each year from falling down stairs (falling down) then occur from terrorism.
More fatalities occur "each day" from medical malpractice then occur from terrorism for the "whole year”.
430,000 Americans are killed by cigarettes EVERY YEAR. (The equivalent of 9/11 repeated every two days forever.)”
The figures are so out of proportion. Take a look at this chart detailing causes of deaths:
All I’m saying is that the largest cause of death in America is heart disease, more than six hundred thousand people died from it in 2004, surely suffers from it deserve a higher allocation of the budget. No doubt that discussions, rumours and talks will continue. Will we ever learn the truth?
-K
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Didn't know about the statistics. Wow. :O Not surprised though.
ReplyDeleteThe world is depressing.
It's terrible Zubair.. =(
ReplyDeleteI was so shocked after reading some of the figures. Expected but still shocking...
"The world is depressing." - I second that.
K, it feels like every time I read a new blog post, I have a new favourite!! I COULD NOT AGREE MORE WITH THIS POST, all of it!!!! all these people out celebrating, with US flags etc, and every politician hailing it one great victory, we the Good have triumphed over The Bad etc, wtf? I *HATE* the hypocrisy of it, it makes me sooo angry!!! Like our armies haven't murdered people abroad, haven't caused victims' families to mourn dead, haven't committed horrendous 'crimes against humanity' yet we come off all high and mighty after we supposedly 'defeat one of the biggest terrorists' and thereby 'make the world safer' -yet as you rightly point out K, this doesn't take into account that someone else will just take over this spot [it's not like we have a shortage of terrorists/tyrants in the world] and while this happens, some of the enemies we've made by, oh I dunno, illegally invading Iraq, getting our noses all involved in Afghanistan, killing Gaddafi's son just yesterday etc and now supposedly killing Bin Laden may decide to come give us a taste of our own medicine. I mean, BB is telling me that CIA director Leon Panetta has said al-Qaeda would "almost certainly" try to avenge the death of Bin Laden. So of course, we'll continue to spend ridiculous amounts of money on defence while ignoring other and arguably more urgent needs.... The world really is depressing, I third it.
ReplyDeleteJoaquin, I'm glad you enjoy my posts so much! =]
ReplyDeleteIt's all a bit silly. It's just going round in circles. Nothing is actually achieved, its just gonna start all over again! This war on terror will never cease.
Yup, the number of innocent people the US/UK soldiers killed in order to capture Bin Laden will never be published. Someone, somewhere will deffo be taking over.. and this excuse to be 'fighting' *cough extracting oil* from the middle east will resume.
As someone on Fb said, They've 'killed'(don't really believe it yet) a person, not the ideology.
ReplyDelete^Well said. I agree.
ReplyDeleteUmmmm... I'm gonna be a bit of a party pooper here I think, but someone's gotta do it. I mean, for starters they did actually take Osama's DNA and compare it to his late sister's (although that would probably just tell us they're siblings, it seems he had a lot of those), AND they do have pictures and a video of the burial, but didn't release them as yet because there's concern about the reaction.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, the spending on combating terrorism. For one, I certainly agree that security expenditure is completely out of proportion, military expenditure is so much higher than everything else it's not even funny. However, it should be quite obvious that national security is much more the job of the government than combating obesity (which is honestly a result of individual choice). Not that there is nothing that can be done but many of these things that are major causes of death are down to people. You can't tell me a smoker is a victim of tobacco companies - no one is forced to smoke, and I also don't believe government spending will do much about people falling down stairs or other places. Gravity works, people will fall. It's not pleasant but there is no help.
Governments could - and SHOULD in my humble opinion - probably put some extra effort on development, would probably even help with national security. But at the end of the day governments in the western world are strongly influenced by public choices and public opinion. Americans love their security, which is partly why the New York attacks were so devastating - the first attack on the US on their own soil from outside in centuries. Which is why Bush became so popular as soon as he showed Americans he cares about their security and he is ready to go to war. It is unthinkable to ban Americans from owning guns... I could go on forever.
Bottom line: as long as the majority of people care more about their own security and terrorism than about HIV in Africa, the choice is clear. And terror will win, because of the shark dilemma: One shark poses little real danger to swimmers, but it will keep them out of the sea on a long stretch of coastline because they're afraid. It's visible and it makes nice cable headlines.
That's just the problem though, governments are 'strongly influenced by public opinion' yet it's what they portray through the media and/or their statements that can influence people's opinions and how safe they feel -and government's should be more honest and open about the reality of risk posed by terrorism and the reality of the government's ability to deal with it in the way it has been doing. Of course the govt's job is to 'make us more secure' but this is different to making us *feel* falsely secure or by playing up to our fears which I think they do too much. The 'war on terror' is, by nature, too vague and open-ended to ever win outright, we'll be fighting it forever at this rate, there's no set identifiable target which you can kill and then relax; as long as the ideologies underlying it persist, we'll be under some sort of threat and governments shouldn't pretend they can magically make us 100% secure by throwing money into the military.
ReplyDeleteThere are better ways of trying to achieve security and one of them is to fight head on the ideology and the circumstances which breed it in this country; the other is to sort out our foreign policy and to stop backing American foreign policy- sure those are harder to achieve, more politically problematic maybe, but surely the effort would be worth it if in the long run we can eliminate the circumstances which breed or fuel anti-west ideology - and have a cleaner conscience with regards to our foreign policy too. Bin Laden may be dead but I for one don't think that makes me all that much suffer and I think governments should stop pretending that it does. Bush may also have 'gone to war' but I'm not sure it actually made Americans objectively safer - may have just made them *feel* safer. Maybe that's just me, but I am just highly sceptical of the way 'national security' seems to play to people's perhaps exagerrated fears and thereby justify what may otherwise be unjustifiable.
PS K: Oh yeah forgot to mention in my original post, I'm no expert but I also thought the sea burial was dodgy and the justification given for it was outright bullshit coz under Islamic customs yes you are supposed to bury the body asap but not in the sea right!? As far as I was aware you aren't supposed to do that except in v limited and extreme circumstances. I'm not saying I think it shows that he *didn't* die lol, but more that there may be somethinh about the circumstances of the death which would damage the reputation of the US forces if they were to be discovered in an autopsy or something like, I dunno, extraneous wounds perhaps suggesting more violence than necessary etc - of course all of that is just pure speculation though.
ReplyDeleteAnd lastly: I loved this from Robert Fisk's article on it: Justice," Barack Obama called his death. In the old days, of course, "justice" meant due process, a court, a hearing, a defence, a trial. Like the sons of Saddam, Bin Laden was gunned down. Sure, he never wanted to be taken alive – and there were buckets of blood in the room in which he died.
But a court would have worried more people than Bin Laden. After all, he might have talked about his contacts with the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, or about his cosy meetings in Islamabad with Prince Turki, Saudi Arabia's head of intelligence. Just as Saddam – who was tried for the murder of a mere 153 people rather than thousands of gassed Kurds – was hanged before he had the chance to tell us about the gas components that came from America, his friendship with Donald Rumsfeld, the US military assistance he received when he invaded Iran in 1980. "
^ That's what I mean, our hypocrisy just makes me sick. He may have been a man who did some horrific things but we really should stop spouting all this 'justice' stuff and acting we have some sort of moral high ground.
I wanna begin by saying thank you BOTH for commenting and raising a very interesting discussion.
ReplyDeleteMatthias – Okay fair play, they did a DNA test, and took pictures of the video burial; why has this not been made a central point in the news until now. I’m still waiting to see them... People in general want to see it despite ‘concerns of the reaction,’ and quite simply they will not rest until they do so. The spread of that bloody scam on Facebook about it can prove that whatever the case, I’m not alone in wanting ocular evidence. Concern about the reaction, what of a body been thrown into water with some weights attached. Really? There are far more disturbing things available on the internet should anyone want to see... There are plenty of pictures of dead bodies all over the internet. Provided they placed warnings before people hit the play button/viewed the images, it would have prevented this current hype and demands for proof.
With regards to national security, yeah, citizens need to be kept safe and all that jazz, but that’s what the figures are for. The sheer likelihood of something like that happening are so slim considering past figures, yeah you could argue they’re investments are paying off but I don’t think you get what my point entirely. Those statements and trivial facts were there to serve a purpose, to highlight the extent to which the chances of actually being at risk from a terrorist attack are so small and have been escalated by the media. In reality, whether someone is obese is some what a choice yes, (not always, there are medical conditions) but other things like cancer which are not a choice are SO MUCH more likely to harm people, and this is where the ‘spare’ money should be spent.
As Martin Luther King rightly said: "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that". Me personally, I just wish there wasn’t so much damn irony in celebrating the death of a person who celebrated the death of others. The solution (In my petty opinion): The same way the media made the people feel unsafe because of the attacks, it can promote things like trust, show people the GOOD happening, show them there is no reason to have a bloody gun and not every Asian person is a threat to the country. Surely there’s a political way to fight they shark dilemma. Target the defensive culture. Put the maths on the news. Change the way people think, that sounds sinister, but what I mean to say is show them there is nothing to be scared of. Get the influential people in the country to support the campaign. The way people hang on to the every word of Obama and others, USE IT! Look at the places all over the developing world where exposure to risk is great yet people are so genuinely happy and not scared. Being scared will in fact demonstrate that the terrorists have done their job. Surely, that’s not what Americans or anyone for that matter, wants.
Joaquin – 1 word. WOW. I totally agree with you. It is the government that can mould people’s perception of anything and everything. ‘and governments should be more honest and open about the reality of risk posed by terrorism and the reality of the government's ability to deal with it in the way it has been doing.’ – I second this. I also agree with the point about the war of terror going on forever needlessly. It’s just so stupid. They fuel the fear, they spend crazy amounts of money (implying there is such a big threat that HALF the discretionary income needs to be splashed – reinforcing and magnifying what it is essentially a tiny risk) which fuels the fear all over again. Vicious cycle much?
ReplyDelete‘There are better ways of trying to achieve security and one of them is to fight head on the ideology and the circumstances which breed it in this country... we can eliminate the circumstances which breed or fuel anti-west ideology’ – AGREED!! Also regarding Bush, it somehow seems as though the American government is exploiting fear in people to assist their political standing. Perhaps I’m being a bit extreme in saying that. But come on now. Bush and Obama both were a bit questionable with their impact as president. All of a sudden they do something to make people feel ‘safer’ and woah. Suddenly they’re back in the running for presidency. Coincidence?
With regards to the sea burial, I am also under the impression that that is highly suspicious, any follower of the religion I’ve spoken to about it are also using words such as ‘bullshit’ to express their opinions. Wiki tells me: ‘If a person dies at sea and it is not possible to bring the body back to land before decay, burial at sea is allowed.’ OR ‘Also, if an enemy may dig up the grave to mutilate the body, it is also allowed to bury the deceased at sea to avoid mutilation.’
'There may be something about the circumstances of the death which would damage the reputation of the US forces if they were to be discovered in an autopsy or something like, I dunno, extraneous wounds perhaps suggesting more violence than necessary etc' – I LOVE HOW YOU CASUALLY JUST MAKE YOUR POINT LIKE THIS. Very well put Miss Lawyer.
Your quote made me think though, what is one frail old man gonna do when he’s taken on by what 30 trained soldiers? (I think it was 30?) I’m certain should they have wished they could have got him alive. But then who am I to say. I’m hardly a war strategist. To me, it’s not justice, the way he was killed and not trialled, that was REVENGE.