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Huffington Post : Comedy May 2, 2011.
As the world reacted to Sunday night's monumental announcement, it was only a matter of time before one of the news networks made a hasty gaffe.
While there were a few headline FAILS circulating around the Internet last night (curiously, mostly Fox-related) the best one has to be the following Fox 40 screen shot @KyleHudgins Tweeted.
You know, we had almost forgotten how similar the names of our commander-in-chief and our #1 enemy happen to be. Thank you, Fox, for providing us with this helpful reminder!
Rush Limbaugh incredibly and surprisingly Praises President Obama for taking Osama Bin Laden out.
Rush Limbaugh: 'Thank God For President Obama' (VIDEO), Huff Post Media May 2, 2011
Rush Limbaugh said President Obama deserved "congratulation" for the death of Osama bin Laden.
"We need to open the program today by congratulating President Obama," he said on his Monday show. "President Obama has done something extremely effective, and when he does, this needs to be pointed out."
The effectiveness, he said, came from President Obama's decision to send a Special Forces team to kill bin Laden--something he said, citing news reports, that none of the president's military advisers had thought of doing.
"Our military wanted to go in there and just scorch the earth...but President Obama single-handedly understood what was at stake here. He alone understood the need to get DNA to prove the death...it was President Obama single-handedly and alone who came up with the strategy that brought about the effective assassination of Osama bin Laden," he said, adding, "thank God for President Obama."
Of course, Limbaugh also said that it was Obama's continuation of President Bush's military and detention policies that provided the intelligence which led to bin Laden's killing. (He also made the by-now-common gaffe of swtiching Obama's and bin Laden's names around in his sentences.)
But of course Limbaugh argues that Osama was killed because President Obama continued with the torture policies and indefinite detentions at Gitmo etc.
Limbaugh makes fun of what he calls "the deathers' who want the long form Death certificate so it can be proven that Osama Bin Laden was in fact killed.
When I first heard the news about Osama Bin Laden being killed I wondered first how the right in the USA would treat this event since the man they hate President Obama is responsible for getting Osama- Limbaugh after praising Obama then undercuts some of that praise by mentioning that Obama was able to do this in large measure because he continued with the Bush policies and tactics.
It also occurred to me that there might be something amiss by celebrating Osama 's death which is the sort of response that the USA and the West points out that they found disturbing when anti-American Muslims cheered when the Twin Towers were hit or when US troops were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Anyway it appears my feelings of discomfort over celebrating the death of another human being is shared by others.
Jeremy Scahill says he thought it was sickening to see people cheering over Osama Bin Laden's death and chanting USA etc.
We need to remember that since 9/11 hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of terrorist actions and the heavy handed reaction of the USA to 9/11 and its illegitimate invasion and occupation of Iraq and so forth.
During this past decade since 9/11 the USA is no more secure than it was before 9/11 because the USA's approach has been ham-fisted whereas Scahill and others have pointed out from the get go the hunt for Bin Laden should have been approached as a policing matter and not the declaring war on the world as President Bush addressing the world's nations starkly put it "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists". The Bush Regime's attitude just made more enemies for America and undermined the goodwill expressed by America's allies . Even Iran for instance on 9/11 offered to help America to track down and capture Osama Bin Laden but Iran's offer was rejected out of hand . So America instead of being gracious in the acceptance of offers of help from other nations the US was dismissive of any such help once again showing off America's arrogance and hubris .
Democracy Now! Jeremy Scahill on the OBL Mission and Aftermath via Alternet.org
Pamela Gerloff in an article at Huffington Post discusses the psychology of celebrating the death of another human being as not representing our best side as it were.
The Psychology of Revenge: Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's Death by Pamela Gerloff, Huffington Post May 2, 2011
...We are not a peaceful species. Nor are we a peaceful nation. The celebrations of this killing throughout the country draw attention to these facts.
The death of Osama bin Laden gives us an opportunity to ask ourselves: What kind of nation and what kind of species do we want to be? Do we want to become a species that honors life? Do want to become a species that embodies peace? If that is what we want, then we need to start now to examine our own hearts and actions, and begin to consciously evolve in that direction. We could start by not celebrating the killing of another.
It is hard not to think that some of the impulse to celebrate "justice being done" may also contain a certain pleasure in revenge -- not just "closure" but "getting even." The world is not safer with Osama bin Laden's violent demise (threat levels are going up, not down), so no cause for celebration there; evil has not been finally removed from the Earth, so no reason for jubilation on that count. The War on Terror goes on, so there is no closure in that regard. The truth is that "celebrating justice" when one person is killed -- as happens regularly in the gang wars of American cities -- only incites further desire for revenge, which, from "the other side's" viewpoint, is usually called "justice."
Think of it. If a leader in our country were killed by another government in the manner in which Osama bin Laden was killed, as "justice" for his acts of aggression in the War on Terror -- and people from that other country were shown proudly chanting the country's name, singing their national anthem, and demonstrating in the streets -- Americans would likely feel more sickened than joyful, don't you think? The impulse to celebrate a death depends on what side you're on.
We will only have peace when we stop the cycle of jubilation over acts of violence.
Who will stop the cycle? If not us, who? If not you and I, who will it be?
and David Sirota at Salon.com expresses similar reservations about celebrating "death'.
When our enemies do this we condemn it and then see it as acceptable when we do it in regard to the death of one of our enemies.
"USA! USA!" is the wrong response
BY DAVID SIROTA ,Salon.com, may 2, 2011
...However, somber relief was not the dominant emotion presented to America when bin Laden’s death was announced. Instead, the Washington press corps -- helped by a wild-eyed throng outside the White House -- insisted that unbridled euphoria is the appropriate response. And in this we see bin Laden’s more enduring victory -- a victory that will unfortunately last far beyond his passing.
For decades, we have held in contempt those who actively celebrate death. When we’ve seen video footage of foreigners cheering terrorist attacks against America, we have ignored their insistence that they are celebrating merely because we have occupied their nations and killed their people. Instead, we have been rightly disgusted -- not only because they are lauding the death of our innocents, but because, more fundamentally, they are celebrating death itself. That latter part had been anathema to a nation built on the presumption that life is an "unalienable right."
But in the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys. Indeed, an America that once carefully refrained from flaunting gruesome pictures of our victims for fear of engaging in ugly death euphoria now ogles pictures of Uday and Qusay’s corpses, rejoices over images of Saddam Hussein’s hanging and throws a party at news that bin Laden was shot in the head.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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