Category Archives: Osama bin Laden

The cuddly Osama

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From here:

Here’s how the new head of al-Qaeda remembers Osama bin Laden: A sensitive man who cried when his friends lost family members, remained close to his children despite the hard life of an international jihadist, and fondly remembered — by name — the 19 men who carried out the deadliest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil.

[…..]

“People don’t know that this man was tender, gentle, kind, with refined feelings, even when life was hard,” al-Zawahri said, wearing a white robe and turban and sitting in front of a green curtain. “We never saw a man like him.”

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget that Hitler slept with his dead sister’s teddy bear, Stalin sung in the choir at theological school, and Mao Tse-Tung was a poet and calligrapher.

The Anglican Church in bin Laden’s neighbourhood

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From here:

Located in the heart of Abbottabad is St. Luke’s Anglican Church, a historic Gothic chapel that holds between 250 and 300 people during Sunday services.

I expect Osama occasionally used to slip in to a Sunday service for ecumenical dialogue.

 

Bin corrupted by the West Laden

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It seems he was watching pornography in his hideaway – when he wasn’t watching himself, that is.

From here:

(Reuters) – A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said on Friday.

The pornography recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on condition of anonymity.

While this may seem not just grossly hypocritical but thoroughly odd, it actually isn’t: Muslim countries are full of men eagerly searching for “sex” on the Internet, presumably because it’s in keeping with Islam’s penchant for regarding women as objects:

According to Google Trends, over all years for which data has been gathered, seven out of the top ten countries searching for the word ’sex’ on the internet are Muslim Countries. In order of viewing, these Muslim countries are : Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Indonesia and Iran.

The Anglican Journal comes to grips with bin Laden’s death

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And, apparently, it’s really all about “overcoming our rage”.

Here:

For most Americans, and for many people in the free world, the death of Osama bin Laden was cause for celebration…….

Feelings of anger, hatred and revenge are not uncommon to people at times of social and religious upheaval. When the foundations begin to shake, when established certainties are put in doubt, when innocent people are cruelly murdered and when a nation is besieged, the natural reaction is to hate those who hurt us, to strike back at those who attack us. We may think of ourselves as tolerant, reasonable people, but in the face of horrific violence we can easily turn into people of rage

Nicolosi goes on to compare the supposed “rage” that Americans feel towards bin Laden to Psalm 137:9, “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!”.

He has things backwards. The “rage” that has spawned the indiscriminate murder of innocents is the rage of Islamists; the West has taken extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties.

Another point that Nicolosi makes is this:

Third, unless we are prepared to accept the kind of violence described in Psalm 137, our task today is to enter into dialogue with Islam rather than to demonize it.

Nicolosi obviously takes the view that Islam, rather than radical Islam, is the problem. It remains to be seen whether he is correct or not, but I have little doubt that Nicolosi would be squirming in anguish if he realised that he has placed himself in the same camp as Geert Wilders.

Either way, whether Islam or Islamism is the problem, thinking that “enter[ing] into dialogue” will solve anything is a delusional fantasy.

Why was an unarmed bin Laden killed?

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Yesterday I was talking to a friend whose politics make mine look thoroughly leftist about bin Laden’s death; he was adamant that shooting an unarmed man is always wrong. He was unconvinced by any argument of the possibility of a concealed suicide belt or that, in the heat of the moment, the safe thing to do was shoot first.

No doubt a live bin Laden would have provided useful intelligence when interrogated but, according to this, if the US had captured him, they wouldn’t have known what to do with him. Ironically, liberals who want to treat terrorists as criminals have contributed to a don’t ask, don’t tell, shoot first policy:

Apparently the possibility of capturing him was an afterthought, and understandably: We have so hamstrung our ability to interrogate and then expeditiously try and execute terrorists that bin Laden would have been a liability almost as soon as the euphoria over his capture passed.

Bizarrely, when it comes to high-level terrorists, our policy isn’t “to shoot first and ask questions later”; it’s to shoot precisely so we don’t have to ask questions. If we had custody of bin Laden, we literally wouldn’t know what to do with him. Everyone would have to live in fear of Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcing a scheme to make him a Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–style showcase for our civilian justice system. In 2009 congressional testimony, Holder notoriously waffled on whether bin Laden would be read his Miranda rights upon capture.

In an ideal world, the Navy SEALs would have been given the order to take bin Laden alive, if possible. He would have been taken to a secret location for interrogation and waterboarded if necessary to break him quickly. Every possible lead would have been wrung from him and hunted down. When he was no longer of use, he’d have been put before a military commission and executed.

 

And now for something completely different: an Anglican clergyman who thinks bin Laden should have been “stamped out”

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From here:

a LEADING Lancashire clergyman has spoken of his “surprise” after the Archbishop of Canterbury criticised the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Fr Timothy Lipscomb, vicar of Preston, claims the al-Qaeda leader needed “stamping out” and congratulated US special forces for killing the terrorist who was believed to have ordered the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington that killed thousands of people. His comments come after Dr Rowan Williams, head of the 80-million strong Anglican Communion, said the killing of the unarmed terrorist left him with an “uncomfortable feeling.”…….

He said: “The fact of the matter is that bin Laden was a murderer and needed to be stamped out. It might not sound very Christian but it is true.

“I am a big supporter of the Archbishop’s but I was very surprised by his comments on this matter. He is a very intelligent man but maybe he sometimes has difficulty in expressing what he really means.”

A person who has difficulty expressing what he “really means” is usually signifying that he doesn’t know what he really means. I think Rowan Williams knew exactly what he meant in this case.

Killing bin Laden: there’s an app for that

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For those whose appetite for retribution was insufficiently satiated by the thought of someone else putting a hole in Osama’s head, Kuma Games has released a game that allows you to do it yourself.

I’m going to email it to Thomas Mulcair in the hope that it helps him come to grips with what happened: although there is always the worry that Mulcair’s tenuous grip on reality will confuse him to the point that he will start announcing that he was the one who killed bin Laden.

Rowan Williams, reportedly, is “very uncomfortable” with the game.

After months of surveillance and growing amounts of Intel, 79 Navy SEALs aboard two US Black Hawks and two more Chinooks cross into Pakistan under the cloak of darkness. The commandos quickly breech a secret compound, one designed for defense and manned by al Qaeda killers. In forty minutes and a rain of hot lead, a decades-long, worldwide manhunt for Osama Bin Laden will be ended… by you.

Click Here To Download Kuma War II

 

Tom Wright descends into moral fog

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From here:

Consider the following scenario. A group of Irish republican terrorists carries out a bombing raid in London. People are killed and wounded. The group escapes, first to Ireland, then to the US, where they disappear into the sympathetic hinterland of a country where IRA leaders have in the past been welcomed at the White House. Britain cannot extradite them, because of the gross imbalance of the relevant treaty. So far, this seems plausible enough.

But now imagine that the British government, seeing the murderers escape justice, sends an aircraft carrier (always supposing we’ve still got any) to the Nova Scotia coast. From there, unannounced, two helicopters fly in under the radar to the Boston suburb where the terrorists are holed up. They carry out a daring raid, killing the (unarmed) leaders and making their escape. Westminster celebrates; Washington is furious.

What’s the difference between this and the recent events in Pakistan? Answer: American exceptionalism. America is subject to different rules to the rest of the world. By what right? Who says?

Tom Wright seems more interested in the process that leads to justice than the act of justice itself – a bit like a Dilbert cartoon that I had pinned to my office wall for a number of years saying, “We take pride in our processes”. Presumably Wright would have been more content to have bin Laden tried by due process, found innocent and released than be the recipient of a summarily delivered hole in the head.

Judging by his selective quotation of Scripture and inane view that cultural and national values are morally equal, it’s hard to believe that Tom Wright hasn’t allowed anti-Americanism to cloud his judgement.

Temporal justice is never perfect: Tom Wright’s version of it amplifies its imperfections to the point of vacuity.

 

Why polygamy is bad for women

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When a man has many wives, they become disposable. Particularly when the man is a poltroon.

From here:

Osama bin Laden used one of his wives as a human shield during the firefight with U.S. forces at the compound in Pakistan where he was killed, the White House’s counterterrorism chief said Monday.

Was killing Osama bin Laden good?

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From here:

“This is a good day for America,” U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday, a day after announcing American forces killed Osama bin Laden in a spectacular lightning raid in Pakistan.

“The world is a better place” with bin Laden dead, Obama said after a ceremony at the White House to honour members of the military.

Those sentiments were widely echoed around the world.

It may have been a good day for America, but was killing Osama: a good act; neither good nor evil, just necessary; evil but a lesser evil than leaving him alive; or just evil?

Predictably, Hamas has decided that killing Osama was wrong, so we can immediately rule that out.

Some Christians seem to be worried that the cries of “USA USA” by rejoicing Americans is a sign that this chanting Western mob is in the same league as the chanting Arab mob that exulted in the devastation of 9/11. While I myself feel little inclination to run around in the street waving my arms in the air no matter what the celebration, this comparison is facile since one mob is celebrating mass murder and the other the death of a mass murderer. Insofar as earthly justice exists at all, the killing of a mass murderer surely falls easily into the category of justice.

So I think killing bin Laden was necessary and a lesser evil than leaving him alive because it served justice. But was it good? I suspect St. Paul would say it was: “The King is God’s minister to do good. If you do evil, be afraid, for he does not wield the sword in vain. He is God’s minister, the avenger of evil deeds.” (Romans 13:3-4).

Western Christianity has become too embarrassed – too nice perhaps – to confront evil; not to confront it, though, it to be complicit in it.

So should Christians rejoice in bin Laden’s death?

I don’t see why not.

A Christian might protest at this point that Jesus tells us we must forgive those who have wronged us. And, of course we must – or, at least we must try. A person whose life has been decimated by bin Laden should, if he is a Christian, do his best to forgive him – even while recognising that he should die. One thing we cannot do, though, is forgive a person on the behalf of someone else; for most of us whose lives have been more or less untouched by bin Laden, to say we forgive him is to indulge in a sentimental, meaningless, vicarious, mealy-mouthed kind of forgiveness to which we are not entitled. It is enough for us simply to be glad he is dead.

I think Sen. Lindsey Graham’s reaction was about right: “we got the bastard.”