Puerile, Political and Pathetic

The USA is still the best place in the world to live, to innovate and to build a business because the USA is the biggest market. The USA which could have ‘had it all’ with the collapse of communism but instead is becoming increasingly puerile, political and pathetic.
As the nation waited for Obama on his hour delayed announcement at 11.30 pm on Sunday night, May 1st after Osama was killed, it was obvious as always that the reason we were waiting was for speech writers to hone the speech to give Obama the best political outcome irrespective of truth or anything else. It was obvious that much of what he and his administration then said was dishonest with the sole purpose of making Obama look as good as possible so that he would be re-elected in 2012.
No one in the media picked up on his dishonesty and instead parroted and embellished the same pathetic theme with such headlines as ‘We are the champions’ and Obama 1, Osama 0. Our enemies always have to be depicted as cowards, being shielded by women while we are always heroic.
Contrary to the spin, it was not a courageous decision of Obama. The truth is that we should have carried out the raid that we did soon after we knew a senior al-Qaeda leader was in residence there last August. We are lucky that Osama is no longer involved in field operations of al-Qaeda and so was not moving around. Since he had no external electronic communications, he was a sitting duck. It was a simple operation with no risk. The worst possible outcome would have been the deaths of a few USA special services personnel. That was most unlikely since the Osama compound was very lightly defended, with no prospects of reinforcements.
The Obama administration said that the raid was conducted in conjunction/agreement of Pakistan. That was clearly a lie. The helicopters went in under Pakistani radar and it was easy as the Pakistanis did not have any overt contact with Osama and so could not help when his compound was attacked. Indeed the mission could have been accomplished without them even knowing about it except that the US forces made unnecessary noise.
The Obama administration looking on with real time TV was another farce. The intent of that was to get footage for the next election. Obama as Commander-in-Chief directing operations will be aired ad nauseam. It was pathetic.
The killing of Osama after ten years is not a U.S. success story. The reason that we did not do it earlier was because we believed our own propaganda that he was living in a cave and we cannot cope with the thought that Pakistan is playing a double game. How dumb are we?
Obama is not courageous. He is the ultimate nervous wimp who has no clue and is way out of his depth. Everything Obama does is on the basis of least risk to him politically. As a consequence, almost everything that he does is a mistake.
Osama was unarmed when shot. Obama lied to cover up the fact that he did not want to capture him alive as he would not know how to handle it and is terrified of international law and international opinion.
The burial at sea “according to Islamic custom” was a pathetic attempt not to upset Muslims. If an unrepentant mass killer was buried by Muslims according to their incorrect understanding of Christian burial practices, we would see it as a gross insult to Christianity.
Our blunderings are never ending. Contrary to Wimp USA of to-day, people worldwide actually respected the last great US General, George Scott. They even respected Patton.
As to the significance of Osama himself in to-day’s world, that is grossly distorted. We repeatedly say that he was the mastermind of 9.11. The facts are that Osama was the founder of al-Qaeda. His great beef against the USA was our interference in Islamic countries and in particular having our troops in Saudi Arabia. He was not the architect of 9.11; his followers (mainly Saudis) were, based in Germany. As a consequence of him being number one on the US most wanted list, he gave up any operational involvement after 9.11 and since then has just issued the same type of tired videos. Al-Qaeda to-day is decentralized and worldwide. Many recruits come from all the Muslim countries particularly in the Middle East, but also Pakistanis born in the UK and similar Islamists from other countries, notably Europe but also from the USA.
Al-Qaeda fighters poured into Iraq after we deposed Saddam and fought on the side of Iraqi Sunnis opposed to the USA. In so doing they antagonized the Shiites including Iran which is now the major threat in the world. To-day al-Qaeda is much diminished in the eyes of the Muslim world. The so called Arab Spring has little to do with al-Qaeda. Their biggest beef is lack of economic opportunity, but all the other terrorist groups (Hamas, Hezbollah and a resurgence of the Muslim brotherhood) that have spawned as a consequence of the successes of al-Qaeda (and weak resolve of the USA) are of increasing strength in these rebel movements and in countries such as Iran. They are the real problem going forward, other than the bigger threat of what might happen to the nuclear arsenal and technology of Pakistan and the imminent Iranian nuclear capability.
The significance of Osama is a small part of what it was in 2001 except if one is on a domestic flight and then how anyone in the USA can think that Osama did not win, is beyond me.
What is the explanation of the USA chest thumping and self-adulation following the killing of Osama? Could it be that while the USA proclaims its superiority in everything, it actually has a massive inferiority complex? Politically, the USA is no better than much of the rest of the world and our values are declining. USA elections are bought with money from special interests. As a consequence, Obama just serves himself and these special interests.
The USA is still the most powerful nation by far - for some time longer. The Obama speech should have been an honest account of the operation itself, with praise for the CIA and Special Forces. Instead Obama shamelessly claimed the spotlight and the credit. Obama said “I instructed Panetta to make hunting down Osama his most important priority.” Other than being an absurd comment since Osama was already ‘the most wanted’, Panetta had, and we still have, much more urgent unresolved problems as I hope Obama knows – or does he know or care?