How Killing bin Laden Makes the World a More Dangerous Place

It has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda. It has to do with legitimizing government assassinations of enemies.

Most of the time, the enemies governments assassinate are not violent. Numerous examples abound, including in the U.S. (Martin Luther King Jr., Terry Santana, the arson murder of John Trudell's family on the same day he led an AIM protest outside FBI HQ in Washington, murders of Puerto Rican Independistas, etc.). The Russians went to Britain to murder Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium. Pinochet, the U.S.-installed and backed butcher of Chile, sent death squads to other Latin American nations, Europe, and the U.S. to murder "enemies" (called "traitors" in twisted fascist-speak). More examples would fill books.

Just as it did with torture, the U.S., by openly sending death squads to murder opponents, which it calls "justice," morally degrades the whole world by lowering the level of civilization. As the lies of the Obama regime are peeled away day by day, it becomes clear this was an assassination. Now they admit that bin Laden was unarmed, and shot through the head, and Paki photos reveal he was apparently shot in bed.

The New York Times and other U.S. media sources keep spreading the lie that there was a 40 minute "firefight," while at the same time if you read the fine print it turns out that ONLY ONE person in the compound fired back, and he was killed at the outset. The rest of the 40 minutes was spent killing 4 defenseless people, including bin Laden and one of his sons, and scooping up computers and data storage devices. They also dropped the "woman used as a human shield" story, a hoary favorite whenever they kill civilians- the Israelis too use that as justification for the mass slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in their periodic punishment attacks.

Just as the "human shield" story was recognizably bogus on its face, so was the "40 minute firefight." There was no mention of large numbers of Al-Qaeda fighters to be the other side of this mythical "firefight." How would even 5 guys with guns hold off a force of 24 (or 79- they keep switching between two numbers) highly trained elite killers for 40 minutes? Just not possible.

Another line is that "bin Laden was the most dangerous man in the world," hence needed to be shot on sight- like he's Bruce Lee or something. Ridiculous, deliberate confounding of two senses of the word "dangerous." He certainly wasn't dangerous in a personal physical sense, like say, Mike Tyson. But I guess we're supposed to visualize bin Laden like a comic book villain, with superhuman power. Just as we're supposed to imagine a 40 minute "firefight" by SEALs against a faceless hoard of Islamic fanatics, a la the Hollywood movie propaganda that is burned into our brains. (And guns never run out of bullets in those fantasies either!)

We also got doubletalk about him not surrendering, Reuters already revealed on the very first day (Monday) that it was a "kill not capture" mission. But the U.S. media just ignored that, allowing liars like chief White House mouthpiece Jay Carney to say the SEALs' orders were to capture him if he surrendered." But CIA boss Leon Panetta, who directed the mission and provided live narration for the edification of the top U.S. Imperialists watching the show, said he didn't think bin Laden had time to say anything. (Obviously not, since he was shot on sight, as per orders.)

This has nothing to do with whether bin Laden "deserved to die." This has to do with murderous governments summarily executing enemies. If they decide YOU'RE an enemy, they could do the same to you. And in fact, they've made many "mistakes" in the "War on Terror." Many times the "wrong" people are killed in night raids in Afghanistan. Drone missiles blow people up on the ground, in vehicles, etc. A Yemeni provincial Governor was blow up by drone driving to a meeting with Al-Qaeda types to try and reach an agreement with them- a meeting authorized by the U.S.-backed tyrant, Saleh. So if they're killing even government officials of allied regimes, you KNOW they make a lot of mistakes.

We already know how bad their vaunted "intel" can be. Since over two-thirds of the Gitmo prisoners were "mistakes" and have been released- remember Donald Rumsfeld called them "the worst of the worst"- you still stupidly believe what people in power tell you?- and the Pakis and Afghans sold hapless victims to the credulous Americans as "Al-Qaeda/Taliban terrorist" for the money, and such atrocities have occurred as the Afghan taxi driver hung from a cell wall in a U.S. dungeon in that country by a "contractor"- some "national security" sadist- who beat his legs to a pulp and left him hanging to die, as documented in the file "Taxi to the Dark Side" and elsewhere- I could go on, but since we know all this, why would you WANT the U.S. or ANY government to have the power of summary execution? Because sometimes they get it right and kill people YOU believe "deserve" to die? But you only believe it because of what you "know" from a mendacious propaganda system, aka "the media."

The progress of thousands of years of struggle to advance human rights is being ripped up. People are no longer entitled to a trial, no longer entitled to have an opportunity to contest evidence against them, in fact no evidence is needed to put them to death, or imprison them for life or however long is desired by their captors, as long as the label "terrorist" is affixed to them. Just as it was affixed to the Al-Jazeera cameraman imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for 6 years while the U.S. military pumped him for info about that hated organization and tried to force him to return to Al-J as a spy. (The U.S. has bombed Al-Jazeera 3 or 4 times, in Kabul and Baghdad, and killed their employees.)

A world where governments no longer feel the need to hide their dirty needs, where government murder is openly celebrated, is a much more dangerous world than the previous one, where governments had to go to the trouble of hiding their murder of their enemies, whether they "deserved" to die or not. No longer is hypocrisy the tribute that vice pays to virtue- although the U.S. still want to have it not both ways, but every which way. (Jay Carney again: bin Laden showed signs of resistance, whatever that means. Like some skinny old man who doesn't get exercised can't be cooled out with a gunbutt to the head or whatever by one of the dozens of supermen SEALs in his room!)

Just so stupid people don't misinterpret this- I don't like bin Laden. He was a vicious, murderous, fanatical, medieval nihilist. But there are people in the government who hate me too- and maybe you. If being hated is sufficient reason to be murdered without trial, an awful lot of people are in danger. So the "war on terror" not only has stripped us of our civil liberties and basic human rights, it has put us in grave danger, from the governments who claim to be protecting us. Because "your own" government has a lot more power over you than any bank of Muslim nuts thousands of miles away. And your chances of being killed by terrorists are a lot lot less than your chances of being killed in a motor vehicle accident. (That's like 40,000 people a year in the U.S., roughly.) Probably less than the chance of being killed in a hurricane or by lightning. Strip out the one anomalous year of 2001, and statistically the chances of a terrorist- the non-state kind- harming you are virtually zero.

The U.S. Government- not to mention other governments- has killed many millions of civilians over the years. Al-Qaeda's a bunch of punks next to them.