When a terrorist dies, is it OK to gloat?

[Ian]

I also don't think we should have honored his religious traditions in burial. We ought to have disposed of the body on our time, in whatever manner we saw fit. Let the next religious nutter know that he won't be "honored" in his demise. By following the religious requirements, we implicitly acknowledged that he was a man to be respected. He wasn't.

I don't know about that. Magnanimity in victory is a way to draw people to your side, or at least to keep them from having a new excuse to become enraged at your callousness. To a great many muslims who would otherwise want nothing to do with jihad, deliberately disrespecting Osama's dead body would've been infuriating (to a few blowhards it is anyway; I hear there's griping about the sort of cloth used to drape his body, etc.). It's not about respecting Bin Laden at all, it's about making a show of respect to Islam. Respecting the burial concerns of muslims, and showing ourselves to magnanimous and civil in the process, is not only a smart calculation to mitigate the public relations damage, it's the way a civilized victor behaves.

But if any of the crew of the USS Carl Vinson felt like spitting in the water after his body went in and the cameras went away, that's their prerogative too.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://www.theage.com.au/world/bali-bom ... -5ko7.html

I don't recall any gloating in Australia or Indonesia when the Bali bombers were executed.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Did you celebrate the end of WWII?

The end of a war IS a victory for someone.

Winners can take a moment to gloat. And then get on with building the peace.
The death of one man, no matter how evil, does not mark any victory in this battle as yet.

If "you" refers to Australia, then I'm sure they did.
And when the War on Terror is over, I'll join the party.
What will the end of this war look like though?

Did Australia cheer when Hitler died? When Mussolini got hung by his heels? When Berlin fell? A lot of you seem to be holding the US to a different standard than your own country.

[Coito ergo sum]

I also don't think we should have honored his religious traditions in burial. We ought to have disposed of the body on our time, in whatever manner we saw fit. Let the next religious nutter know that he won't be "honored" in his demise. By following the religious requirements, we implicitly acknowledged that he was a man to be respected. He wasn't.

I don't know about that. Magnanimity in victory is a way to draw people to your side, or at least to keep them from having a new excuse to become enraged at your callousness. To a great many muslims who would otherwise want nothing to do with jihad, deliberately disrespecting Osama's dead body would've been infuriating (to a few blowhards it is anyway; I hear there's griping about the sort of cloth used to drape his body, etc.). It's not about respecting Bin Laden at all, it's about making a show of respect to Islam. Respecting the burial concerns of muslims, and showing ourselves to magnanimous and civil in the process, is not only a smart calculation to mitigate the public relations damage, it's the way a civilized victor behaves.

But if any of the crew of the USS Carl Vinson felt like spitting in the water after his body went in and the cameras went away, that's their prerogative too.

It hasn't worked, obviously. The "Muslim world" is outraged and enraged at our callousness, despite our kid-gloves handling of his bullet-riddle corpse. Once you double-tap slugs into someone's cranium, whether you're nice to their rotting body isn't going to much assuage the rage of his devotees.

Who are the Muslims that would not have been in Osama's camp before, and wouldn't be infuriated by his execution in the first place, but the straw that breaks the camel's back would be that he wasn't buried in 24 hours (and instead got an autopsy)?

I was under the impression that MOST Muslims thought of him as not a good Muslim - someone who was using the true religion for evil purposes. If that's the case, why would they have much of a problem with whether he was buried on 5/1 or 5/7?

The burial concerns, moreover, are overstated. Like Jews, it's a "preference" or a "rule of thumb" with plenty of room for exceptions. Jews and Muslims don't get enraged when a criminal or crime victim's body is held for autopsy and for evidence. Police departments the world over hold Muslim and Jewish bodies when they are needed for legitimate purposes. This 24 hour burial thing is a great big red herring. I think it was done to prevent examination of the body - it's fish food now - and nobody will ever know if the shots were to the back of the head...

[Coito ergo sum]

http://www.theage.com.au/world/bali-bom ... -5ko7.html

I don't recall any gloating in Australia or Indonesia when the Bali bombers were executed.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Did you celebrate the end of WWII?

The end of a war IS a victory for someone.

Winners can take a moment to gloat. And then get on with building the peace.
The death of one man, no matter how evil, does not mark any victory in this battle as yet.

If "you" refers to Australia, then I'm sure they did.
And when the War on Terror is over, I'll join the party.
What will the end of this war look like though?

Did Australia cheer when Hitler died? When Mussolini got hung by his heels? When Berlin fell? A lot of you seem to be holding the US to a different standard than your own country.

It's self-righteous snobbery.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://www.theage.com.au/world/bali-bom ... -5ko7.html

I don't recall any gloating in Australia or Indonesia when the Bali bombers were executed.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Did you celebrate the end of WWII?

The end of a war IS a victory for someone.

Winners can take a moment to gloat. And then get on with building the peace.
The death of one man, no matter how evil, does not mark any victory in this battle as yet.

If "you" refers to Australia, then I'm sure they did.
And when the War on Terror is over, I'll join the party.
What will the end of this war look like though?

Did Australia cheer when Hitler died? When Mussolini got hung by his heels? When Berlin fell? A lot of you seem to be holding the US to a different standard than your own country.

It's self-righteous snobbery.

Actually, I blame Santayana.

[Ian]

I also don't think we should have honored his religious traditions in burial. We ought to have disposed of the body on our time, in whatever manner we saw fit. Let the next religious nutter know that he won't be "honored" in his demise. By following the religious requirements, we implicitly acknowledged that he was a man to be respected. He wasn't.

I don't know about that. Magnanimity in victory is a way to draw people to your side, or at least to keep them from having a new excuse to become enraged at your callousness. To a great many muslims who would otherwise want nothing to do with jihad, deliberately disrespecting Osama's dead body would've been infuriating (to a few blowhards it is anyway; I hear there's griping about the sort of cloth used to drape his body, etc.). It's not about respecting Bin Laden at all, it's about making a show of respect to Islam. Respecting the burial concerns of muslims, and showing ourselves to magnanimous and civil in the process, is not only a smart calculation to mitigate the public relations damage, it's the way a civilized victor behaves.

But if any of the crew of the USS Carl Vinson felt like spitting in the water after his body went in and the cameras went away, that's their prerogative too.

It hasn't worked, obviously. The "Muslim world" is outraged and enraged at our callousness, despite our kid-gloves handling of his bullet-riddle corpse. Once you double-tap slugs into someone's cranium, whether you're nice to their rotting body isn't going to much assuage the rage of his devotees.

Who are the Muslims that would not have been in Osama's camp before, and wouldn't be infuriated by his execution in the first place, but the straw that breaks the camel's back would be that he wasn't buried in 24 hours (and instead got an autopsy)?

I was under the impression that MOST Muslims thought of him as not a good Muslim - someone who was using the true religion for evil purposes. If that's the case, why would they have much of a problem with whether he was buried on 5/1 or 5/7?

The burial concerns, moreover, are overstated. Like Jews, it's a "preference" or a "rule of thumb" with plenty of room for exceptions. Jews and Muslims don't get enraged when a criminal or crime victim's body is held for autopsy and for evidence. Police departments the world over hold Muslim and Jewish bodies when they are needed for legitimate purposes. This 24 hour burial thing is a great big red herring. I think it was done to prevent examination of the body - it's fish food now - and nobody will ever know if the shots were to the back of the head...

Nobody's yet in a place to say how well it has really worked. Bin Laden's devotees aren't the ones anyone cares about offending. And a few corpses in police department morgues don't matter much either. This is an extremely high-profile situation, one that'll be remembered for a long time. The people to worry about are all the fence-sitters (and I have little doubt that there's a ton of them) whose suspicions about America, as a place that really is at war with Islam itself, would've been greatly strengthened without a show of concern for islamic burial practices. I give us a big E for effort.

[Coito ergo sum]

Those that AREN'T his devotees aren't going to get offended by him being kept on ice for a while. They don't think he's a good Muslim anyway, and they supposedly thought that he was using peaceful Islam for nefarious purposes.

I think the dirty secret is that we are in a culture war with the Islamic world. Enlightenment western culture and Islamic theocratic culture are irreconcilably at odds. They can't breathe the same air, unless somehow the constant attempts of Islam to squelch competing religions and secular government is stopped. If you stop Islam's primacy and separate Islam from state, you ARE warring against Islam, since the bulk of its adherents think that Islam should have primacy and should be the State religion and government should be an arm of Islam.

[Coito ergo sum]

This will take care of any attempts to assuage Muslim sensitivities....

The maker of this t-shirt made $120,000 in two days.



All this martial imagery, of course, is decidedly lacking in "civility."

[Ian]

Those that AREN'T his devotees aren't going to get offended by him being kept on ice for a while. They don't think he's a good Muslim anyway, and they supposedly thought that he was using peaceful Islam for nefarious purposes.

My point is not that we made a show of respecting Bin Laden. My point is that we made a show of respecting Islamic tradition. I disagree that those muslims who did not like Bin Laden wouldn't have cared one way or the other what we did with his corpse. Many would've cared.

I think the dirty secret is that we are in a culture war with the Islamic world. Enlightenment western culture and Islamic theocratic culture are irreconcilably at odds. They can't breathe the same air, unless somehow the constant attempts of Islam to squelch competing religions and secular government is stopped. If you stop Islam's primacy and separate Islam from state, you ARE warring against Islam, since the bulk of its adherents think that Islam should have primacy and should be the State religion and government should be an arm of Islam.

A very good point to the underlying causes of all this. But the last thing we'd want to do is let the entire muslim world believe that their religion itself is precisely why we're at odds with a few of them. That's how the few turn into many. Besides, it's not entirely correct. The vast majority of the muslim world lives in countries whose governments are not officially joined at the hip with its religious leaders. So long as it stays that way, the west is not really at war with Islam itself.

[Ian]

This will take care of any attempts to assuage Muslim sensitivities....

The maker of this t-shirt made $120,000 in two days.

All this martial imagery, of course, is decidedly lacking in "civility."

The annoying price of free speech and a free market.
If those were being sold directly by Uncle Sam at the local post office, that'd be a much different matter.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

This will take care of any attempts to assuage Muslim sensitivities....

The maker of this t-shirt made $120,000 in two days.

All this martial imagery, of course, is decidedly lacking in "civility."

The annoying price of free speech and a free market.
If those were being sold directly by Uncle Sam at the local post office, that'd be a much different matter.

Wouldn't that make a GREAT commemorative stamp?

[Coito ergo sum]

Those that AREN'T his devotees aren't going to get offended by him being kept on ice for a while. They don't think he's a good Muslim anyway, and they supposedly thought that he was using peaceful Islam for nefarious purposes.

My point is not that we made a show of respecting Bin Laden. My point is that we made a show of respecting Islamic tradition. I disagree that those muslims who did not like Bin Laden wouldn't have cared one way or the other what we did with his corpse. Many would've cared.

So, they wouldn't care that we busted caps in his head without a trial, and trod our western boots on a Muslim country's soil without asking, and killed other Muslims in the process...but, they would care that we waited 25 or more hours to dump his bullet-riddled corpse in the sea? I am skeptical of that.

And, it's like the bullshit about not fighting on Ramadan. That was all the rage a few years back when people started chirping about how "disrespectful" it would be to Islam to war on Ramadan. As soon as it was pointed out that Muslims wage war all the time on Ramadan, everyone shut up about it because it became clear that it was just a stupid argument to get the Americans to start wringing their hands. Here, we know that this is not some immutable tradition that is never broken or that is a sign of disrespect to the corpse. It's a custom designed to get the corpse in the ground before it starts to stink. When there is reason to keep it on ice for a while, it's perfectly fine under Islam to keep the corpse around.

I think the dirty secret is that we are in a culture war with the Islamic world. Enlightenment western culture and Islamic theocratic culture are irreconcilably at odds. They can't breathe the same air, unless somehow the constant attempts of Islam to squelch competing religions and secular government is stopped. If you stop Islam's primacy and separate Islam from state, you ARE warring against Islam, since the bulk of its adherents think that Islam should have primacy and should be the State religion and government should be an arm of Islam.

A very good point to the underlying causes of all this. But the last thing we'd want to do is let the entire muslim world believe that their religion itself is precisely why we're at odds with a few of them. That's how the few turn into many. Besides, it's not entirely correct. The vast majority of the muslim world lives in countries whose governments are not officially joined at the hip with its religious leaders. So long as it stays that way, the west is not really at war with Islam itself.

Enough of them already believe that. It's already many. It's certainly not "few."

[Coito ergo sum]

This will take care of any attempts to assuage Muslim sensitivities....

The maker of this t-shirt made $120,000 in two days.

All this martial imagery, of course, is decidedly lacking in "civility."

The annoying price of free speech and a free market.
If those were being sold directly by Uncle Sam at the local post office, that'd be a much different matter.

And, it should be the annoying price of a free and open government that they publish the photos. This paternalistic "I decline to release them" bullshit is ridiculous. Release the fucking photos. We paid for them, and there is no national security issue at the moment. He's already dead, and no methods, etc., are being protected. The Islamic world, incidentally, generally doesn't distinguish between private publication and government publication. Hence the disconnect over Danish newspapers, when the Muslim world was incredulous that the Danes couldn't just force newspapers not to publish cartoons.

[Coito ergo sum]

This will take care of any attempts to assuage Muslim sensitivities....

The maker of this t-shirt made $120,000 in two days.

All this martial imagery, of course, is decidedly lacking in "civility."

The annoying price of free speech and a free market.
If those were being sold directly by Uncle Sam at the local post office, that'd be a much different matter.

Wouldn't that make a GREAT commemorative stamp?

'zilla, you are being decidedly insensitive to Muslims....

[laklak]

This will take care of any attempts to assuage Muslim sensitivities....

The maker of this t-shirt made $120,000 in two days.

All this martial imagery, of course, is decidedly lacking in "civility."

I just fucking LOVE capitalism.

Wish I'd thought of it.