Just before I fell asleep last night I heard Osama Bin Laden was dead. All I have to offer is "What took so long?!"
Not that I want to take any of the relief or celebration from those who have been touched by the damage done by this man, but it is not over. Someone will fill his shoes. I sure hope it does not take 10 more bleeping years to catch him.
It will never be over. 9/11 changed America in many ways and we will never be the same.
I think this quote says a lot.
In an analysis of the impact of Osama bin Laden on the U.S., the
CBC's senior
Washington correspondent
Neil Macdonald has written, "In many ways, Osama bin Laden died the victor.... The United States became a
meaner, more paranoid, more impoverished place.... Thousands of people were locked up on flimsy pretexts and held for months without trial. Muslims learned to live with hard stares and suspicion. They were pulled off flights for the sin of having prayed publicly. Gradually, the Muslim world began to believe it was at war. One can only imagine bin Laden's delight.
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"
Congress passed the
grotesquely named Patriot Act, removing
civil liberties that took centuries to earn....
National security, rather than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness became the fundamental determinant.... A national media seized by a shameful fit of
jingoism whipped up an already fear-stricken population.
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"
Telecommunications companies were press-ganged into participating in
illegal wiretap operations against American citizens.
Habeas corpus was ignored; the White House arrogated to itself the power to pronounce an American citizen an 'enemy combatant,' stripped of legal rights or due process. Government secrecy and classification of information expanded exponentially.
At the president's direction,
White House lawyers concocted specious legal arguments allowing government agents to practise
torture. They also began kidnapping people off foreign streets, sometimes the wrong people altogether, and
shipping them off to regimes that didn't bother at all with legal opinions.
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"But bin Laden didn't just prod Americans into disregarding their own laws and principles when dealing with their real and supposed enemies; he goaded them into turning on each other.... Those who opposed going to
war in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with
9/11, were portrayed as
unpatriotic haters of America. The
cleavage between right and left, red and blue, urban and rural, became deeper than at any time in modern history.
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"Setting aside the trillions expended in Iraq and
Afghanistan,
we have bin Laden to thank for a lot of today’s economic misery.... But it was the loss of America’s liberties, the sacrifice of individual freedom, and the breakdown of its
rule of law that was bin Laden’s greatest triumph."
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I want to blame George W. Bush and his administration for allowing this to happen.
For letting bin Laden's family board a plane and leave this country on 9/12.
For NOT blowing the mountain off the face of the earth when we knew bin Laden was hiding in a cave 9 years ago.
For starting a war with the wrong country.
For the lives of so many young men and women lost.
For the abuse of the American people by dividing us instead of uniting us.
For stripping us of our civil right to privacy.
For using bin Laden and his followers to create a United States of America that is scared and angry at ourselves, our neighbors, and our own government.
I read somewhere that terrorism is not so much the action but the effect is has down the line.
The Bush administration did exactly what the bin Laden wanted. Scared the shit out of us to the point we turned on ourselves.
Even though bin Laden's body is covered in whale shit, he changed the greatest nation in the world forever.
This will never be over. My country will never fully recover from the actions or lack of actions caused by our own government in response to 9/11.
A 22 year-old man is listed