Good Riddance

I was originally going to call this post Random Opinions, but I realized I had so much on Osama Bin Laden that I might as well put all of those together. The downside of being a procrastinator is, of course, that this is all old news, but I am just going to put it out there anyway.

First of all, I have no qualms whatsoever about the death. I feel it was completely justified. What he had already done previously was more than enough to be worthy of death, he was actively planning ways to bring more destruction, and while it really just seems lucky that there was resistance offered to justify killing rather than capturing, capturing would have been awful. Trials and sentences can be great, but I just imagine the rescue attempts, and demonstrations, and his increased demagoguery since he is no longer trying to stay hidden, and I think it is much better that such a can of worms was never opened. For that reason, I am also fine with burial at see, avoiding a new shrine, and it was nice that we followed Muslim customs.

Also, I have no problem with Pakistan not getting advance notice. There seem to be some good reasons for that. It is not normally how you treat an ally, but if you have doubts about how helpful your ally really is, well, it just makes good sense, and I can't help but think it would have been better if the one vehicle hadn't crashed so that no prisoners had been left in Pakistan. At least we got to take the computers.

For those who are critical of the operation, I disagree based on the reasons already given, and to Fidel Castro specifically, there is no way you can take the moral high ground on this one buddy. And I say as someone who feels that US policy on Cuba is wrong-headed and harmful, but no, you are just wrong and a hypocrite.

There are other things that do bother me of course. I understand, but do not agree, with the people who were celebrating it. I mean, we were appalled by the people celebrating the Twin Towers falling down, and yes, cheering the deaths of thousands who were just going about their day is worse than cheering the death of one mass-murderer and a handful of his help, but it still just seems tacky and low.

I also disagree with the people who were so quick to criticize the president. This happened in two ways. One was people saying that he was taking all the credit and glorifying himself. I disagree on that. I thought he seemed pretty balanced in crediting the different people involved. There were definitely some "I" statements, but I think a lot of that is the acceptance of the ultimate responsibility. For those who would criticize the raid happening at all, or how it was done, or that any respect to religious beliefs was paid regarding the burial, for all of that the buck does stop with the commander in chief, and he knows that, and if the information had been wrong, and he approved the raid anyway, that would have been a disaster and that would have been his responsibility too, so that does have to be acknowledged.

The other thing was I saw a bunch of Facebook statuses that the president didn't kill bin Laden, it was a soldier, and he was trying to cut their wages. No. The threatened government shutdown was coming from the Republican side. That is so twisted it is not even funny.

Less bothersome, but still kind of irritating, was the editing of the situation room picture by a Hasidic newspaper. Not being able to show any pictures of women ever, because they are too tempting for the men, is a horrible policy anyway, but if you must stick with that, then you just don't get to show the pictures. Sure, there's some serious loss there of impact and understanding, but the editing is a loss of integrity.

However, I do not have a problem with the code name Geronimo. First of all, part of code names is that they should not be immediately recognizable. So if it were codename "Hitler", "Arab Scum", or "Ultimate Evil", it would not be a very good code name. I really don't think it casts any aspersions on Geronimo himself. Both men were hunted for a long time, though for vastly different reasons, so it is not a completely unreasonable comparison in that sense. If you really need to take offense at something, and crusade against it, there are much better options.

33 minutes walking outside
1 Nephi 1-8