Eight years ago the then American President knew for sure that Osama bin Ladin was guilty of the passenger plane attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon. So kill him.
Except he may be dead or alive, but is now not even mentioned. Al Qaeda still gets press. It is we are led to believe a secret, criminal organization that can be bombed out of existence by murdering people in Afghanistan, where once upon a time Ossie lived in a cave, before like many other locals going over the border to another cave. Of course for the locals it going to visit the relos as you do, and it makes greater sense in that society of relationships rather than, like ours, a society of transactions. We are argue about the efficiency of each, and the suitability of the institution of the nation state might be for each case.
The wars against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan have been famous successes, bulls eyes each. If they are not about imperialism then they as completely brain dead as they have been barbaric. Then again, when barbarism reigns, Pyhrric victories are very best.
Obama, is right about many things. War is a necessity it seems for the military-industrial complex. It might even be observed that war and socialism are necessary for that most important part of the economy, under the radar of the drone murder platforms, it might be observed it is socialism for the few. Obama, in his health care speech to Congress noted that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had not been costed.
Nobody in the West, where the sun never rises, and moonshine holds permanent sway, took any notice of what Ossie was saying, or could understand what he was saying. And it does not seem have mattered to either.
There are some interesting questions: How is an organization such as al Qaeda to made ineffective? Why was not Osama bin Laden captured and indicted in a recognized international court?
As always having the right friends can help business. Daniel Tencer at Raw Story reports:
Nawaz Sharif, a two-time former prime minister of Pakistan and current head of one of the country’s major political parties, has met with Osama bin Laden on numerous occasions, and it was in fact the al Qaeda leader who developed the relationship between Sharif and the Saudi royal family, says a former Pakistani intelligence official.
According to the Times of India, “bin Laden introduced Nawaz Sharif to the Saudi royal family in the late 1980s and during a meeting the former premier had asked the al Qaeda chief to provide employment to Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia.”
The claim was made by Khalid Khawaja, a former member of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s spy agency. In a follow-up article published in the Times of India Wednesday, Khawaja adds that Sharif and bin Laden have met five times so far.
Sharif, who heads the Pakistani Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, denies the allegation, calling it “meaningless.”
For his part, Khawaja, the former ISI agent, says he has himself met with bin Laden more than 100 times, but “not after the 9/11 incident.”
An incident? I thought it was the shot that killed the Archduke, the day that changed the world. More generally the singular event that was wholly disconnected from process, or even the structure of relationships. As the sage observed, the action was in the reaction.
Like all of us, Osama will have spend a final day alive, and dissolve into the biosphere. That might even have happened. Maybe were this confirmed, the killing could stop – or is that too much to expect?
ELSEWHERE:
Then there are the people who are caught up in the events and lose people close to them. I try not to preference one set of people over another, and remember they are tragic for everybody. Manhattan, Federal Tribal Areas or anywhere else makes no difference.
Robert Scheer’s 911 article described the consequences of “wrathful retaliation”.