Tag Archive

I don’t necessarily believe in “closure,” but I do believe in the short-term cathartic power of vengeance.

But, more than anything, this to me seems horribly anticlimactic.  Shot in the head in a villa, nearly 10 years after he perpetrated one of the great crimes in US history.  Those saying this is “V-E Day” are deluding themselves; there are no Articles of Surrender, no terms, no occupation.  At best, we can hope that the gradual fracturing of Al Qaeda as an organized force that’s been underway since 2007 accelerates.  But I’ll be damned if I know what happens next.

Imagine if this had happened in Tora Bora in December, 2001, as the last embers of the WTC were flickering out.  That would have been justice.  That would have called for a sober but appropriate celebration.  That might have even offered some “closure.”

This?  The old Klingon proverb goes that “revenge is a dish best served cold.”  And I’m glad that US military justice has finally reached its target.  But this feels so cold, so removed from the crime, so laden with a decade’s worth of vicious internecine political fighting in the US, that it’s hard for me to simply say “well done.”  It’s more like Robert Redford at the end of The Candidate – “what do we do now?”