Osama Bin Eaten

A week ago, the United States Navy tossed...uh, buried the corpse of Osama Bin Laden in the ocean. But no sooner had the sharks devoured all six foot four of him did the hand wringing and second guessing begin.

It started on Facebook when many took issue with the "excessive" rejoicing of our nation's college students.

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness:only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Oh please, spare me the sanctimony.

Woody Allen had the more appropriate quote, "Nazis are going to march in NJ. We should get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them."

I mean seriously, can we dispose ourselves of this notion that Osama bin Laden's life was as precious as any other? It wasn't. That thing needed some axiomatic killing. Had he been given one more breath of oxygen he would have spent it planning and plotting the death of thousands, no, millions, of innocent people, whose only crime was not submitting to his perverse death cult.

And while I don't find it necessary to chant U.S.A. in the streets until 4:00 AM (mostly because I have to drive the kids to school in the morning) I don't begrudge those exuberant college students one bit. They have spent half their lives under the constant threat of cowardly terrorism.

Why shouldn't they celebrate Osama's death? And why shouldn't we be proud of the President and the meticulous planning and execution of this dangerous mission? And shouldn't we all be standing up for the men and women who serve in the intelligence community and the Navy Seals?

Hell, I'm still rejoicing. You can accuse me of binary thinking. Or being un-nuanced about the matter, but the truth is I'm still giddy knowing that justice has been served.

Some say we should have captured him alive and put him on trial, not unlike the way the Israelis captured Eichmann. By making him take the stand, they argued, all the world would witness the horrors of the Holocaust. And no one would ever question its veracity ever again. That worked out well, didn't it?

I understand the notion of the moral high ground. I just think it's highly overrated.

Besides, what Osama and Al Qaeda did, and continues to do, are not criminal acts, they are acts of war. They don't require evidence gathering or any Mirandizing, they require night-vision goggles, large caliber weaponry and titanium-fanged attack dogs.

They're not innocent until proven guilty. They're guilty until we make them dead.

The latest wrinkle in this story is the President's decision not to release the photo's of Osama's corpse. I'm a big believer in Occam's razor, so if conspiracists want to believe one thing, I most likely believe the other. I trust the President, I trust the Seals, I trust the people who say they have seen the photos and that he is in fact dead.

I have a hard time however with Obama's explanation that the photos might inflame the Muslim world. I have an even harder time with our ceaseless capitulation to unending Muslim sensitivities. How ironic that the reason we can't see a picture of the world's most wanted dead terrorist is the same reason why we could not view an episode of South Park.

Let's be honest here. You could inflame the Muslim world with a picture of someone eating a ham sandwich. That might also inflame the Jewish world, but they're less likely to fly a plane into a building.

Where were these precious Muslim sensitivities when the Taliban blew up the ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan? Where were these sensitivities when Palestinians danced in the streets on September 11, 2001? Where were these sensitivities when they aired the beheading of "The Jew" Daniel Pearl?

One more note. Those of you you who are worried that the raid on Osama's compound will result in a retaliatory attack, are under the mistaken belief that Al Qaeda follows some kind of rational tit-for-tat doctrine. They don't. Bin Laden and Zawahiri were disciples of Sayyid Qutb, of the original Muslim Brotherhood. Qutb suggested The West was a fabrication of man made law and thus an affront to Islamic values. In fact, because of our over-sexualized women and the fact that we listen to "Negro music", he posited we were worthy of an attack at ALL times, provoked or unprovoked.

When all is said and done, we don't need photos of dead terrorists.
We just need more dead terrorists.