Rant on.

 

For those who are living in the dark and yet somehow reading my obscure little blog, Osama bin Laden is dead.  As announced by President Obama, ten years of searching for the Al-Qaeda terrorist leader culminated in intelligence which found him in a military compound in Pakistan.

 

I don’t like saying it, but I am glad this man has been killed.  I am not a big fan of anyone’s death, but there are exceptions to every rule.  Osama and his terrorist organization were responsible for the 9/11 attacks among countless other operations against civilian targets.  Al-Qaeda has suffered a serious blow with his death, and many are hoping it is a death blow.  I doubt that it is, but we can hope that without bin Laden the group falls apart.

 

There are a couple of important aspects to this situation which I think people are either going to overlook or put the wrong emphasis on.  The first is to think of this as an attack or strike against the Islam religion.  This is not the case.  Osama was a Muslim, but he did not represent it.  His faction was a radical part of it, much like the Westboro Baptist Church is a radical part of Christianity.  True, the latter has not committed acts of terrorism, but they have otherwise been just as hateful as bin Laden’s lot in their own way.  The point is, neither Osama does not represent the whole of the Islamic faith anymore than Rev. Phelps represents the whole of Christianity.

 

Along a similar line is bin Laden’s burial at sea within a day of his death.  This was done in accordance with his religious beliefs.  I fear many people will be angry at this, that he was accorded any respect in death, much less a Muslim tradition.  Too many people still unfairly associate that religion with terrorism.  Muslims, as a whole and in general, do not support terrorist acts.  Christians, as a whole and in general, are not hateful people.  There are exceptions to both of these statements, and they seem to get the most press.

 

President Obama was careful to make note of this, pointing out how Osama killed quite a few Muslims in his reign of terror.  Bin Laden was an indiscriminate murderer.  He saw to the deaths of citizens whose country provided him with safe harbor.  He was found in Pakistan, and many Pakistanis died at his orders.  Pakistan’s government, as I understand it, did help in locating bin Laden, so while that country did hide him for awhile, they also ultimately rooted him out for U.S. military forces.

 

So the bad man is dead.  It is not the end of bad men; there are plenty left in the world.  It’s not even the end of Al-Qaeda, I suspect.  That organization still has plenty of members and a few leaders ready to continue Osama’s murderous job.  His death is a significant blow, and hopefully it rings a death knell for the organization at large.  Thank you, President Obama, for making the difficult decision to act upon the intelligence you received and order bin Laden’s death.  And thank you for vowing to keep up the good fight.

 

Rant off.