Bin Laden Dead
 

Killed by US action. The US has his body. Obama to speak soon. Wow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/wo...killed.html?hp

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Yeah, its been crazy on the web.

But huge news.

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Huge boost for Obama.

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Is anyone else ready to watch this now?

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Neat.
Now create world peace and lower gas prices.

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For those who didn't see the speech

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Owned.

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When is the movie coming out?

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Too bad George W. Bush already blew the aircraft carrier and 'mission accomplished' banner budget. As well as the rest of your guys' money.

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Well at least no one made this political...:rolleyes:

Anyway, hats off the the President for giving the go ahead for committing to an action deep in Pakistan. With so many stories of American military mistakes and stagnation, its good to see a military action where the good guys live, the bad guys die, and everything goes as planned.

Navy Seals, bitches.

And yes, I'm waiting for the movie.

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Evidently they have footage of the attack.

I bet they'll use it as the intro video for Modern Warfare 3.

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It was amazing to see all the people in DC and at Ground Zero last night....it's hard to believe (IMO) that people still have hung onto to the actions of ONE guy. I mean....since 9/11....2 wars....a trillion+ spent....over 900,000+ dead...Patriot Act....TSA ass rape....

To say the least, a lot has changed in 10 years. I wonder if (and we can reflect on this some years into the future I am sure) the events of the past 10 years really did hinge on one act of terrorism driven by an organization lead by Osama, or if the pieces would have fallen into place anyway due to larger political issues.

Anyway, I always enjoy these brief moments of American unity where everyone gets together and celebrates how great it is to be an American. I hope this signifies a turning point for our country over the next 10 years.

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^ The last brief moment of American unity was right after 9/11...and look how well that turned out.

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Prof: If you don't want me to make things political through my joking/seriousness, then get out of the politics forum. USA! USA! USA!

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I personally think Osama Bin Laden stole Obama's birth certificate.

It's the only logical explanation.

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Well, that's the thing. Immediately following 9-11, there was a lot of hatred for Al Qaeda. Perhaps some of it was misguided...but hindsight is 20/20. When we went to war I would say it was a pretty 50-50 thing with a lot of people not wanting to go. But we had a solid scapegoat....terrorists. So now that there is no Osama Bin Laden, I suspect that the populace will be less enthusiastic about the war (which is also misguided o_O).

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Interesting article on the effect of Bin Laden on America.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2...bin-laden.html

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Yup. This articles hits the nail on the head and kind of reflects the direction I was pointing my last two posts. After consideration, I don't think you can have a free society and never have terrorism. But accepting that implication hurts. It's not ideal, and my guess is that most people don't want to hear it. Hence...the past 10 years.

So then it becomes a policy debate around "where is the middle ground." What has the increased airport security, or the wars, or the Patriot Act really done to stop terrorism? And, how much have those measures helped compared to how much they have hurt us.

I think it will be under misguided pretense that many people will believe that we have absolved terrorism by dethroning Osama. We have crushed the Al Queda! My biggest concern at this point is that people won't actually learn from the history of the past 10 years, and lord knows if you don't learn from the past you inevitably repeat it.

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Osama Bin laden is killed, and within one page of posts, not 24 hours later, it becomes about how awful America is. Amazing. Can't there be one day, one happy day, where people can just objectively admit America did something right without having to compulsively slap a "but" at the end?

America could cure cancer and we'd see posts about how unfair America is to malignant tumors.

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But isn't freedom of opinion the most worthwhile America stands for?

:p

Sorry couldnt help but fan the fire hee hee

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In the eyes of Al Qaeda the good guys die and the bad guys won.

I dont think American forces are going to leave Iraq now either.
At least at the end of WW1 they left Germany, and that turned out fine.

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And a rapist believes his victims "asked for it". Hitler believed Jews were pests to be exterminated for the good of the world. Evil always believes it is justified.

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Thats true, I quite frequently think im justified.

What did they do with Bin Ladens body anyways?
I heard they "buried" it at sea.

And dont add periods to the end of my quotes, thats tampering of personal documents.

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Way to lose a multi-million dollar helicopter in the Op. LOLZ :lolz:




:crazy:

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It's preserved in amber in Paraguay, next to Hitler's brain.

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Along with dinosaur DNA inside a mosquito. :p

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Ok, just to get this straight I am in no way a fan of ANYTHING Osama did.



But does anybody find it a little strange to turn on the news and see crowds of people cheering over the death of a person?

I understand how he was the most hated person of the past decade and all that, but it still blows my mind to see thousands of people chanting because somebody died.

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I definitely find it weird, and I've been torn between happiness and pure macabre-ness of it all. It feels very unnatural to celebrate the death of anything.

But I just think back to 9/11. The fear and terror all those people must have felt moments before they died, and what their families had to endure afterwords...and I just can't bring myself to feel anything but happiness that he was killed.

I think it's a dichotomy of human nature - we want vengeance but death is an unnatural thing to be happy about. In the end I guess it comes out to how human you really think he was. I think the people who completely reject the idea that someone could be happy about his death don't fully understand the atrocities he committed.

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I think the thing to do is be happy that he can't be responsible for any more deaths.

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No.



I haven't seen any footage but I found many of the celebration photos to be rather revolting. I can understand celebrating if you lost a loved one on that day (as I would have if it had happened a day earlier) but most of this is blind patriotism. Then again I'm also not a sports fan. I liken this to shouting "we did it" when your team wins and all your did was sit on the couch eating cheetos.

I can also see celebrating if he was killed shortly after 9/11 but since then hundreds of thousands of civilians died at the US's hands. One should be contemplative rather than celebratory.

And imagine how much better off our country would be if we stopped trying to police the world and used all that money for our own benefit? (Our drop in education compared to most other developed nations pisses me off more than anything.)

We're 4.5% of the world's population now btw.

Basically, if you knew someone who died as a result one of Al Qaeda's attacks, celebrate however you like. Otherwise, kindly shut it. We're screwing ourselves over more than any terrorist organization directly did.

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While this is off-topic, I'll address it:

We spend more per student than all but one other country (Luxembourg, I believe). Money has nothing to do with it. The fact is our education system is broken because its become a bloated employment service. where the inmates run the asylum.

Back on topic:

For those who think this is just another opportunity to criticize America, well, God bless you and I'll leave it at that. If you can't just admit that there was ONE thing that we did so obviously right, then there is nothing anyone could say to dissuade you. Good news seems to infuriate those that think this way.

As for those who find it odd to take pleasure in another man's death, I sympathize, but I'll let Mark Twain put into words:

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

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Don't get me wrong, it's good bin Laden was taken out. But we didn't do anything. It was a group of CIA agents who finally nailed down where he was after a decade of our country needlessly killing hundreds of thousands of innocents. Which is why I feel we shouldn't be patting ourselves on the back (or rather shouting and running around stupidly with American flags) and instead have some perspective on everything that led up to this.

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1) As a tax paying citizen we provide the ability for the CIA and Navy Seals to exist.

2) We didn't kill hundreds of thousands of innocents. Not even close. Those numbers that are often quoted are a combination of the small percentage of collateral (and regrettable) casualties caused by military activity and the high percentage of innocents killed by those we were fighting through IEDs, suicide bombings, tribal warfare, etc. People who want to persuade you that the war was evil claim that the US is just as much at fault for the actions of our enemies as they are, so they give us credit for all of it. There was a post about this a few years ago if I remember correctly...

3) Keep in mind we have no clue if we would have ever gotten Bin Laden without the war, establishing a "beach head" of sorts, capturing enemies and interrogating them, etc. The currently accepted theory in the media is that the intelligence that helped find Bin Laden came from Guantanamo, another morally ambiguous activity.

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Which makes me feel sick knowing my tax dollars helped kill so many.

And even if those numbers aren't as high (as a result of direct US killings), it was all to kill one sick man. Other than some relief to the families he took from and a morale boost, what else did his death bring? How many less would be dead if the US didn't feel the need to go balls out trying to get to him? Pretty much every other half-baked terrorist plot by al-Qaeda was foiled since 9/11. And not because of all the strict new regulations either.

To your #3: Does that mean then, those wars were all for nothing since we had the leads to his capture so close to home all that time? That sounds even worse to me.

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You're misremembering the rationale for going to war in the first place. Even to Bush Bin laden was only a target. One of many. The war was against state-sponsored terrorism. Agree or disagree with it, that is how it was presented and approved.

The successes had nothing to do with interrogations or wiretapping? And you're sure of this? If so, you have high-ranking sources I am unaware of.

Only a handful of detainees were from terror-cells in the US. Most were captured in the Middle East during military operations. Again, without the war we have no idea whether or not we would have ever captured Bin Laden.

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And according to Bush we invaded Iraq because of WMDs. I don't give credence to Bush's rationale for anything.

The foiled ones I was referring to were the those the public knows about. They directly affected security measures though, what with the limit on liquids, removal of shoes, etc. But you're right, I don't know about what might have been countless others.

Once again, one guilty dude's death vs [insert number here] of innocents.

The past is past. Was just saying it would be better to reflect on what brought us to this point and tread more carefully than we have been, instead of mindlessly chanting "USA USA".

I don't have anymore time today to post. Have yourself some pie.

P.S. I would like to have a thread on education in the future if just so I can learn why things are the way they are.

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I can't speak on behalf of all populations, but recently I have been researching the hell out of programs like Teach for America (I had some interest). I also am involved in research in a lab where some focus is on the education deficit amongst inner-city populations, and specifically Black and Latino youth. As with most things there are multiple ways to tell the story. One influential factor seems to be lack of parental involvement. Since a lot of inner-city families are poor, parents work 2 or 3 jobs. The parents are never home so kids never get support at home from the parents. Support from parents at home has been shown to be CRUCIAL in fostering positive learning. There are other issues too. For example, someone in my lab is looking at Latino populations. Within that population there is a strong tendency for parents to have the belief that the school is completely responsible for educating their kids. This does not create a supportive environment in the home, which in turn might lead to doing worse in school.

There are other issues too. One theory (controversial) is that there are strong anti-white feelings within parts of the black community. If "being educated" equals "being white" there is a tendency within the black population for blacks to look down upon peers who are educated.

It's just a multitude of socio-economic factors fucking everyone over, at least in the poorer communities.

I think that is a BIG part of it. There are a million and one broad scale issues, issues specifically applicable to the way that the USA does education. And that is where Prof probably should take over.

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I was referring to Afghanistan. You are correct about Iraq.

Again, I reject the supposition of your argument, so there is little to argue about here. We are talking about two different things.

In the long run, of course, but I think America can share a brief shared sigh of relief before the "boo birds" start chirping. Its just not good form, IMO.

Pie is delicious, but I'm on Atkins... great... now I want pie.

Oh wow, that could take days and it goes all the way back to FDR and the red-lining of districts during the days of the NRA.

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You hit the nail on the head. Thomas Sowell actually does a great job of explaining how events unfold to create subsidies for lowered expectations and performance (fast forward to 2:30, but the whole dialogue is good):



During the Great Depression families were paid more assistance if they did not have a male head of household. Also, the NRA sent workers to jobs far away from their families. Add to the this the endemic racism prevalent in the government at the time and you have your modern ghettos where black workers were housed in the worst areas and segregated. Meanwhile, at home, an entire generation of African American children were growing up without a father figure.

Ever wonder why white poverty is concentrated in the mid-west and black poverty is concentrated in urban areas? ITS NOT A MISTAKE. It's what happens when your government stops serving you and starts controlling you.