Of course, in keeping with child-like scawling cartoonist cum child-like wailing commentator Ted Rall’s modus operandi, it’s a golden shower as he rains on Obama, the troops, the throngs of youths in the streets of DC and New York and America in general;
Yet another screw-up for the U.S., which fell into Bin Laden’s trap after 9/11. To Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups, the United States and the West is enemy #2. Their biggest foe is pro-American Muslim dictators and autocrats, and the apathy and indifference among Muslims that allows them to remain in power.
As with most actions carried out by small terrorist groups against enemies with superior manpower and weaponry, the operations attributed to Bin Laden—the bombings of the U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998 and the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, and 9/11—were intended to provoke the U.S. into overreacting, thus exposing it as the monster he said it was. The invasions of two Muslim countries, Guantánamo, torture, Abu Ghraib, the secret prisons and disappearances and all the rest neatly fit into Osama Bin Laden’s narrative, proving his point more succinctly than a zillion fatwas faxed into Al Jazeera.
Everything about Bin Laden’s killing squares with the jihadi narrative.
The operation violated the sovereignty of a Muslim country, a constant complaint of radical jihadis. Armed commandos lawlessly invaded Pakistan. Infidel soldiers shot up a house and crashed a helicopter down the street from a military academy. Pakistanis see American drone planes buzzing around overhead, invading their airspace without the thinnest veneer of legality; American missiles blow up houses indiscriminately. Taking out Bin Laden without asking Pakistan’s government for permission is an act of war to which the country’s poverty permits no response. It’s yet another humiliation, another triumph of might over right.
It’s sad that Rall has forgotten about the tragedy of 9-11, but in his rush to demonstrate his moral superiority, he forgets some of the most tragic events of the past twenty years to make his blunt point;
Islam teaches combatants to respect their enemies. The death of an opponent is tragic, sometimes a tragic necessity, but never trivial, never a subject for joking. A vanquished enemy should be dispatched quickly, presumably to be chastised by Allah for his wickedness in the afterlife, but he is never to be mocked. A Muslim should not enjoy war or combat, nor gloat when victorious. When the powerful crush the weak, as was the case with the U.S. killing of Bin Laden, dancing around like a beefy hunk of steroids spiking the football at the touchdown line makes one look small.
Apparently, Islamic teachings include dragging American corpses through the streets (like in Somalia and Fallujah) and beheading helpless non-combatants – a practice bin Laden encouraged among his subordinates, apparently. Rall also forgets the public, televised prancing on the “Arab Street” when the twin towers collapsed. I don’t remember him condemning those events.
Rall is and always has been a total moron who thinks he can get away with any irreverent behavior as long as he cloaks it in “critical thinking”. But, in order to critically think, he needs an organ with which he can think – obviously the brain he has is broken beyond repair.
Thanks to TSO for the link.
