Bin Laden: Obama’s Waterloo?

they created Hollywood and all the fantasia of the unconscious that goes with it.
Less than a decade ago, footballer OJ Simpson went down the annals of history for just that – after allegedly killing his white ex-wife and friend, he was escorted by police in the famous Bronco chase, before he had the trial of the century.

In the US where civil liberties and freedom of the press reign “supreme”, TV viewers can also be exposed to live coverage of procedures before serial killers are executed, despite their loathe of capital punishment.
When American forces captured Saddam Hussein after a long hunt, the statement by America’s chief administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer, “Ladies and gentlemen – we got him” was immortalised. For months, images of the Iraq leader became the staple diet on TV and the Internet – his beard and teeth included.

OSAMA, OBAMA: RELATED STORIES AND ANALYSIS

The world expected even more for the most wanted terrorist of the 21st century – Osama Bin Laden. But if events of the past fortnight are anything to go by, then all we can conclude is, “Catharsis and, God forbid”. People expected the usual high drama that characterises the American way of doing things, but they are sorely disappointed.

First, it was the way Bin Laden’s death was announced. At 11:35pm (Eastern Time), on Labour Day, 1 May 2011, president Barack H Obama made the following address in the East Room of the White House:
“Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children”.

What a time to announce things of the dark world, and also proclaim “victory” over an enemy sought for the past ten years. This was also well calculated I assume, considering the different time zones in the US.
President Obama added, “It was nearly 10-years-ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history.

“The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory – hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction . . . Nearly 3 000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts”.

He appealed to their emotions: “On September 11 . . . people came together. We offered our neighbours a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

“We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda – an organisation headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against Al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies…”

” . . . And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against Al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.”

He also told the world that a small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability, and that no Americans were harmed. “They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body…”

After the well-said speech and the show of compassion that followed, maybe, there was that hope that the world would buy all this stuff hook, line and sinker.
But, two weeks after the “act of chivalry” by the Navy Seals, reputable analysts are peering at every word that president Obama said, and coming up with more questions than others, for his words are the only body of evidence they have at their disposal.

Why? Because the crime scene was tampered with, and the body is missing, with some claiming that the real Osama Bin Laden died in 2001.
If this was a trump card or backlash against Donald Trump, then there are lots of questions that have to be answered beyond producing the long birth certificate.

Then, what followed when the world was told that Osama Bin Laden’s body was buried at the sea, barely 24 hours after he had been killed.
Beyond the rhetoric, people are coming up with conspiracy theories that the US president has to address if his credibility has to remain “intact”.

If this deed was indeed done, “show us the body”. Pictures or promises of pictures are not enough. People also want the actual crime scene, and evidence that whoever was killed on May 1 was the sought-after Osama Bin Laden, the man who spawned new theories on terror and national security.

People want the same kind of proof that Donald Trump asked for, which in the end forced Obama to release his long birth certificate, years after making the following assertion: “Contrary to the rumours that you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here to save the planet earth”.

People like Howard Kurtz who think that the Osama affair was a Trump backlash which would make it difficult for the showman to make a comeback should reflect on this, “By taunting the tycoon with jokes and taking out Osama, the president muscled Donald Trump out of the news”.

This might give Trump more fire power, especially if he wants Obama out of office. If he embarrassed him on the birth certificate issue, what can stop him from going another step?

Osama continues to be in the news, because there is no body to prove that the Navy Seals indeed took him in?
So far, the only evidence the world is talking about regarding Osama’s killing is what president Obama said, and some images on TV of a burning house somewhere the media says is Pakistan.

Reacting to this dumb squib, www.abc.net.au <http://www.abc.net.au> said, history is poised to repeat itself. “As with John F Kennedy, whose brain was stolen, his car washed off its blood, film of his autopsy made to vanish, his alleged assassin murdered and that assassin’s evidence unrecorded, burnt or discarded, we have here, now, a significant body, the corpse of the world’s most wanted man, ‘buried at sea’.

“Why do this? Why even think of it, when identifying him forensically was critical to the peace of the Arab and Muslim world?”
The capture of Osama Bin Laden and parading him to the world was a moment for Obama to “shine” and really put his second term’s campaign into motion, but with each passing day, it looks like the White House is facing a long summer. But we say in Shona, “Chawagona hapana, jeri reBindura”.

They will create more enemies elsewhere, wars included, but erasing the Bin Laden fiasco will be difficult, except maybe to Americans whose emotions on May 1 were gripped by that address, as they never bothered to ask, “Hey Mr president, but where is Osama Bin Laden’s body? Why allow extra judicial killing, when he should have been tried? Is this the change we can trust?”

That midnight address by Obama sounded more like Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, after Caesar’s assassination.

The masses were angry, and a revolt was impending, so, Mark Antony the master of rhetoric simply said, “I’ve come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”. But with each statement he heaped praises on Caesar, in the process, whipping up emotions until the masses rose against the assassins.

If due process had been followed, people, the world over would have just said, “good riddance”.
But, with each passing day, as analysts perforate Obama’s assertions, they are actually telling the American president that he has turned Osama into a martyr, by default.

They are also saying that like George W Bush who shredded the American constitution with his war on terror because of Osama Bin Laden, Obama had done exactly that, and went a step further, shredding all the conventions that bind the United Nations.

The Navy Seals are a highly skilled force. They obviously hit their target after gathering lots of intelligence information. But, if Osama was with his family, and unarmed too, why that duration of fighting, especially if orders were to do him in?

And interestingly now, why do they need access to Osama’s wives? If they killed him, it means that they rounded up everyone in the house.
Why do they also need Osama’s children to corroborate their assertions about how they killed their father?

This indeed will be a long summer, and a backlash on Donald Trump might prove very costly for a president who is seeking re-election.
As one report said, “For president Barack Obama, the test now is in the telling. The White House has struggled to craft its account of the audacious raid that killed Osama Bin Laden for both a jubilant American public and a sceptical Moslem world, correcting parts of its narrative, withholding others and, after internal debate, deciding not to release photos that could be considered too provocative.”

But, will it work? Maybe in the world of make-believe? Much as the Internet has created a global village, perceptions matter, and these are not perceptions guided by a monolithic cultural lifestyle based on fantasy.

Facebook or no Facebook, we share different value systems. Terrorism is abhorrent, and no terrorist anywhere deserves cheer-leading, but there should be a line drawn on how far those who “govern us” can go in their quest to create a one world system on a people who don’t need it.
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