Our Booyah Moment

We got bin Laden.

High five in the streets. Fist pumps in the bar. Crank up the ticker tape parade. Dispatch six F-14’s to do a flyover above New York City.

We got the big bogeyman.

Finally.

Killed him dead they say. Tested his DNA to prove it.

It only took ten years and thousands of deaths and casualties for the US to kill the world’s most wanted man.

This is a triumph for our crack intelligence community and intrepid troops.

Even if it took ten brutal years.

Now what? Does Al Qaeda fold its tent and slink off into the dusk?

Doubtful. It’s likely there will be reprisals, somewhere, for the killing of bin Laden, just as there will be Pakistanis and Afghans and Iraqi’s willing to die as long as their friends and relatives are being killed by US drone strikes or occupation forces. When it comes to death, people have long memories. Bin Laden may be gone, but Al Qaeda will be with us for a time yet.

Killing begets more killing, but we are blasé about it now, as blasé as bin Laden acted after 9/11. Bin Laden indirectly plotted to kill in spectacular fashion; we kill systematically with our powerful weapons, our eyes that see in the dark and through thick walls.

This really is an amazing development on one level. No, I’m not talking about the breathless reporting from Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams, or the sound bites from Uncle Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton; I’m talking about the fact that the US cedes to itself the authority to assassinate a man on foreign soil. If any nation in the world except Israel – which plays by a different set of rules -- granted itself the same authority, the US would be screaming about the rule of law and sovereign rights.

Hypocrisy is unpleasant. Do as I say, not as I do.

But it goes without saying that the US only kills with the purest motivation and in the name of the highest ideals. Right? Our cause is always righteous, though I wonder what the back-channel traffic on this operation looks like, the secret cables between spies and soldiers, diplomats and politicians. And I wonder what the US had to promise Pakistan in order for the latter to cough up bin Laden? Why now? Why not five, six or ten years ago?

But hey, why be skeptical of the US government and its motives? After all, this is the finest government money can buy and it can be depended on to do the will of its benefactors. This is a “feel good” story, frontier justice meted out to the mastermind of 9/11.

The only surprising thing thus far is that Donald Trump hasn’t claimed responsibility for killing bin Laden.