Bin Laden is Dead

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/02/bin.laden.hunt/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

By now, this should not be news to anyone who comes by to read this post. So I won't bother talking about the details of the raid or it's results.

The thing on my mind at the moment is to first give huge amounts of credit to the men and women who worked the intelligence. The men and women who spent countless hours in Afghanistan studying everyone and anything to find the clues. I also want to give huge amounts of credit to the men and women who trained countless hours and worked in unison to carry out the raid.

What I will not give credit to, is any politician who is actively (self) serving at this time. The President (and Vice President) who signed the papers authorizing this manhunt are now retired. A lot of the men and women who served in Congress and voted to authorize this manhunt are no longer in office.

I give only a little credit to those politicians from so many years ago who signed the paperwork that said we will hunt down the man who everyone said was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Their lives were not in danger. They did not have to sort that tons of paperwork and listen to countless hours of interviews and interrogations trying to sort out the truth from lies. They had their cushy jobs, their leather chairs, their staff serving almost every whim, and lots and lots of corporations and rich people throwing money at them for favorable votes.

As for today's politicians (and I especially include the President). They inherited the manhunt, but their whole participation was to hear about it. They didn't provide any intelligence. They didn't do any ground work. There merely sat in their comfy chairs and said yes or no to what others wanted to do.

Saying yes to an operational plan that someone else designed does not give our current President any credit for Bin Laden's death. Giving a speech to a cheering crowd and saying Justice has been done, does not make him "the man". It does make him very lucky, but politically - I didn't vote for him before, and I have seen nothing that would incline me to change that vote. The economy still has not shown any significant improvement. The national debt is still way beyond what it should be, and has shown no signs of turn around. His social policies are way more about socialism and government control than they are about freedoms in this nation.

Now about that statement regarding "justice is done". Only in small part. Bin Laden did commit a criminal act that I believe warranted the death penalty. I believe justice would have been served by his capture, trial, and execution (should he be found guilty of the charges) would have served justice much better. I think for him to be seen around the world as a criminal and a prisoner and executed as such would have served justice far better than for him to go down in a firefight where he may now be seen as a Martyr to a cause.

Justice will be served when the full organization (including any governments) renounce their beliefs that they are right and others are wrong, and that anyone who is wrong should be punished by death. Justice will be served when those organizations have either been fully defeated or have learned the lesson to respect humanity.

There is so much more I could say. I have never hidden my feelings about the attacks carried out on 9/11, or what I feel about those behind the attacks.

For now, I hope people will keep their eyes open regarding politics. Vote for someone because that person has similar beliefs, and not vote for someone who just happened to be lucky enough to be sitting in the chair when a criminal was killed by our forces.