Some Guy Who’s Not Osama Bin Laden Was Hanged Tonight
According to the New York Times, Osama Bin Laden was not hanged tonight for his leadership in killing more than 3,000 Americans in the past decade.
Some other fellows were. One was hung after being convicted of killing 148 citizens of the country he ruled, 24 years ago. He was also awaiting trial for killing thousands of others - perhaps as many as 200,000 over the course of his rule - though tens of thousands were active in violent efforts to depose him.
The man, dubbed ‘Not Osama’ by my sources, was last implicated in those killings at least seven years before a massive war was launched by a group of a couple of dozen politicians and political analysts in the US. Their objective to topple his government and capture him was achieved three years ago, at a cost of several hundred lives of mostly US troops and less than 30,000 mostly Iraqi civilians and troops.
My source indicates the US group - led by the son of a US President who previously had supported arming the newly dead guy as late as 1990 - was “terribly sorry so many Iraqi civilians had to die to capture the bad man”, adding “we really didn’t mean to.”
Since the bad man’s capture, the US group spent the next three years provoking civil disorder that led to the deaths of more than 2,000 additional mostly US troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly civilians, including women, children and babies.
The US group, per my unnamed source said “they didn’t mean that either” and they were ‘double-dog sorry” for that.
Efforts to determine where Osama Bin Laden was and why he was not hanged led to repeated “no comments” from every government source I’ve contacted.
When I asked my principal source why the bad man they hanged could not have been done without the torture and slaughter of hundreds of thousands guilty of nothing through the process they’ve dubbed as ‘war’, he replied: “Tradition. Ritual human sacrifice has been both a familial and cultural practice that they honor at least once per decade.”
As to why it was necessary to maintain the ritual slaughter of hundreds of thousands three years after the bad man’s capture, my source explained: “We call it the ‘Betty Ford syndrome.’ When you’ve dealt with a chronic pain for years, you get addicted to the painkillers, even after the pain is gone.”
So will it continue after the bad man is buried?
“Oh sure. That was established three decades ago, when we lost Vietnam. We won every major battle and killed between 1 and 2 million of ‘em, yet they declared themselves victors. We’ve determined that 2.5 million is what it’ll take before all the other bad guys concede that we’re badder than them.”
I asked, “you mean, like Osama?”
He looked at me quizzically: “I’m sorry. Who?”
Update: Martin Lewis adds his hymn to the post-death victory dance.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:01 am
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December 30th, 2006 at 4:10 am
Very good take on it, Kevin. Saddam Hussein was a monster, but so are a lot of dictators around the world who are still alive and are still in America’s good graces. Saddam Hussein was a proxy, executed out of frustration, perhaps, or just because he was there.
December 30th, 2006 at 9:13 am
…or, perhaps, it might have had something to do with the upwards of 1 million people he murdered?
Moral relativism rocks!
December 30th, 2006 at 9:54 am
See a sarcastic visual of George Bush playing a round of “Hangman”…here:
www.thoughttheater.com
December 30th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Craven: I presume your ‘millions’ include the Iranians he killed in a war our government promoted and supported. The one where Ayatollah Khomeini had millions of young boys advancing in human waves to certain slaughter as a means of depleting the Iraq troops’ ammunition supplies.
That blood is on the hands of many; confining it to Saddam’s certainly is moral relativity.
His death had only to do with vengeance. Killing a captive prisoner has never been advanced in any moral tome worth pursuing.
December 30th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Kevin, you’re right. We should never have taken the life of the benevolent leader Hussein. He was, after all, probably just “misunderstood”.
Perhaps if Oprah had invited him to jump on her couch, he would have gotten in touch with his inner self and exorcised the “wounded child” who never scored well in the “plays nicely with others” section of his school report card.
Tens of thousands of gassed Kurds and Shiites - killed for nothing more than the sheer thrill of it - will no doubt agree.
December 30th, 2006 at 11:19 am
The title of this article should be “Some guy who’s not Osama Bin Laden, but who did brutalize and murder hundereds of thousands of innocent people, got his just desserts at the end of a rope tonight”.
Let the whining, hand wringing, and the obligatory blaming of Bush and America for something or other commence!
December 30th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Craven & Chris: I guess the talking points have been set. Whining, handwringing, misunderstood inner child.
Where have I read that before? On every blog covering this topic. How original. And how off-topic.
Why didn’t our troops just kill him when they discovered him? Seriously, can you explain that?
December 30th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Write it all off as “talking points”, that way you don’t have to acknowledge the greater points. How original. DailyKos would be proud.
As to your question, the vigilante in me might agree with the underlying premise that we should’ve simply offed the bastard when we found him. The justice seeking side of me knows that the civilized world will accept the results of this due process much moreso than they would have accepted a “find ‘em and kill ‘em” process.
America made a statement with this entire process. America acknowledges the sovereignty and validity of the new Iraqi government.
The new Iraqi government itself made a statement with this trial. Iraq is capable of meting out justice in a fair way, giving even the most brutal dictator the right to a fair trial.
But we won’t be hearing that in the media in the next few days. Instead we’ll hear various attempts at minimizing and discrediting the significance of this event. Because the media is, after all, “fair and balanced.”
December 30th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
We had a chance to stop Saddam Hussein’s genocide back in the 1980’s… Oh wait — that’s when we were selling arms to him. Maybe Donald Rumsfeld should have taken him out with a lethal joybuzzer when they shook hands.
Moral relativism strikes again.
December 30th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
That which you call “the civilized world” offers me little hope if it considers this any more just than simply offing him in the spider hole.
A moment’s vigilanteism is not something I condone, but it certainly is preferable to a long drawn out process of vengeful injustice, meted out in a way that continues to escalate division and death.
Not only does it reek of injustice, but it proves ineffective strategically.
Unless division and death is the goal.
Consider this.
December 30th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Clearly the discussion has shifted into the debating of nuances. So let’s zoom out to the 40,000′ level.
A brutal dictator was arrested, tried, found guilty, and executed. The bad guys lose once again.
Film at 11.
December 31st, 2006 at 8:06 am
[…] The ’sphere has reacted in mixed fashion. The left talks about how it either doesn’t matter or makes light of it, as though any person’s death is inconsequential. The right seems to be fairly matter-of-fact about the event. The gist of it summed up nicely at Protein Wisdom: Was his public execution justified? Of course it was. Will his death halt the insurgency? Of course it will not—though I believe it will have a greater impact than many opinion shapers are allowing, particularly insofar as it provides a kind of psychological relief for the many Shia oppressed and brutalized by the thuggish Ba’athist regime. […]
December 31st, 2006 at 1:53 pm
It matters not that the current insurgency is presently still alive. That will pass. But — Sadam’s execution sends a signal to the next guy who tries on the hat of Iraqi strongman.
December 31st, 2006 at 3:02 pm
The world is a better place without Saddam.
December 31st, 2006 at 3:12 pm
The world is a better place without lots of cruel bastards, certainly, but if we’re going to practice eliminationism, we ought to be a bit more efficient about it, because killing a few hundred thousand people to take out a few bastards is likely to make many think we’re pretty heartless bastards, too.
December 31st, 2006 at 6:18 pm
A few hundred thousand per cruel bastard is a not unreasonable price to pay, and society knows it. The last time this happened (Adolf Hitler) the price was scores of millions. Nobody thought we were heartless bastards then.
January 1st, 2007 at 12:21 pm
“That which you call ‘the civilized world’ offers me little hope if it considers this any more just than simply offing him in the spider hole.” Are you completely morally stupid? So, you would rather live in a society that kills criminals who peacefully surrender, rather than trying them in a court of law pursuant to established rules? Is this the same Left that screams when a cop roughs up an obviously guilty suspect? If it is a street criminal — even a murderer, it’s horrible to hit him a few extra times. [And, I agree — it is bad.] But, for Saddam, the Left would rather kill him right away. Of course, it is silly to try to find any consistency except hatred of the United States and every decent thing it stands for.
January 1st, 2007 at 4:49 pm
The left has a problem acknowledging any single sign of success in Iraq.
Politics before principles, in keeping with their long-standing belief system.
January 1st, 2007 at 10:00 pm
I am not The Left, Watergate, I’m one guy. I was railing about our collusion with Saddam 20 years ago, and wanted no part of him then, when he was our government’s proxy warrior.
Contrary to your perception, my complaint is not about my country or its citizens, both of which ARE the US, by my definition. My complaint is with our government, especially when its foreign policies fail to meet standards that it should. Please, get that difference clear.
As to shooting him in the spider hole, my first preference is a fair trial, such as was done with the Nazi leaders. This trial and execution was not even close to any standard that defines justice.
Beyond that, if there is a way to eliminate mass murdering leaders like Saddam, without executing 100,000+ of his mostly innocent subjects in the process, I’m going to favor it over the longstanding approaches, which are completely inhumane.
But as I said, I doubt that’s reflective of many on the Left. So please direct your criticisms at me for my opinions.
January 1st, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Yeah Craven, I’ll mention that success when it’s visible. So far, the capture of Saddam pretty much stands alone.
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:58 am
I noticed someone here mentioned OUR forces killing babies.. Funny, seems like when you libs do it, it’s called abortion and its perfectly ok.
Gott Strafe Liberal Hypocrites.
January 2nd, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Libs like me will also ban commenters who start injecting side issues like abortion into the topic at hand. We’re cold, cruel and heartless that way, because we believe women have the same rights as men do to control their bodies.
And when we see it used as an old standby to disrupt entirely separate debates, we consider it to be a weak, childish ploy by people so certain of their moral superiority that I simply have to surrender to their perfectness, then banish them forever while thinking about their naked mommies.
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:09 am
Disrupting your liberal hate-fest is the furthest thing from my mind. My point is, not to be a hypocrite. You accuse our soldiers of killing babies, and yet you condone abortions. You apparently condemn killing a mass murderer in Hussein, and yet back someone who fantasizes about strangling someone as an infant in Cindy Sheehan. Where are your priorities here, ladies and gentlemen? And for the record before the inevitable red tag of being banned from here is handed to me, Abortion is not control of a woman’s body. It’s the murder of a human being. You only have a right so long as it does not interfere with someone else’s right. Abortion is a violation of the baby’s right to live. And if Fetuses could vote, Democrats would be pro-life.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:31 am
If fetuses could vote, horses could certainly fly.
And my objection to capital punishment, my objection to silencing a witness to inter-government dealmaking, my objection to the failure of trial processes to meet global standards, my objection to violations of the Geneva Conventions that require government leaders to face international tribunals, and my opposition to deliberate attempts to provoke more sectarian killings are all quite different topics from women’s rights, winged horses and voting fetuses.
Please go hijack somebody else’s discussion. If you can’t heed the rules I set on the blog I pay for, you’re as welcome as any other rude person I encounter, which is to say, you’re NOT.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
My point is, the Democrats will literally promise anyone anything to get votes. But back on topic.
Witness to what?! Might I suggest a looser fit for that tin-foil hat? As for capital punishment, It’s less expensive and far more just than allowing Saddam to cool his heels in prison on the tax money of the same people he spent the last few years terrorizing? He kills an ungodly amount of his OWN people, and his PUNISHMENT is to continue to leech off their hard-earned money for the rest of his life? What kind of crackhead justice is that? As for International tribunals, the Trial of Saddam is an Iraqi matter. We would not have appreciated if the UN had stepped in during Clinton’s impeachment, despite the fact that he should, in fact, have been impeached. No, I’m not trying to hijack this discussion, merely using Clinton as an example. Saddam committed crimes against Iraqis and should have been, and was tried by those same Iraqis.
It’s a poor day for freedom and national sovereignty when citizens cannot even be trusted to put their own criminals on trial.
And you keep coming back to women’s rights.
You seem to miss the point here. The point is, that Democrats and liberals in general will condemn one group for doing exactly what they themselves do. That’s not government by the people, and most undemocratic. At best it’s a government headed by an aristocracy, and the worst a dictatorship. Ban me if you like, I’ve said my peace.