AIBU to think that is was quite distateful

[ModreB]

For Obama and effectively the rest of the US Govt to watch live coverage of Bin Laden being shot dead?

At least Hilary Clinton looked pretty horrified here

differentname you worded it perfectly well. Xenia's just being intentionally obtuse for dramatic effect. Well, let's hope it's intentional, anyway.

I can't wait for the answer to CheerfulYank's question. Xenia (or anyone else who'd care to answer), you're the President. You know where bin Laden is, you don't know what kind of arms / weapons he has with him, you don't trust the Pakistani government enough to involve them in pursuing him. What exactly would you have done?

I really would like to know!

It's all well and good to hold ourselves to high ideals, we should and I don't think anyone's denying that. But the world's not entirely black and white, is it, and when you're dealing with an admitted mass murderer who probably cannot be taken safely...well, that's a shade of gray if I ever saw it.

Again, nine children were removed alive from the compound and are being cared for. Again, there was an option to just bomb the place to smithereens and that option was not taken as there were innocent people inside. If the positions were reversed, would either of those things be true? I'd be willing to stake about everything I own on that not being the case.

I have not had the time to read every post here, and if this has already been said, then please forgive me.

However, Obama and his team did NOT watch the video live - they had a live link to Leon Panetta at CIA headquarters who kept them updated on how the raid was unfolding. It was not the kind of distasteful peepshow you are trying to suggest.

I am a brit living here in the US, I moved here 18 months ago for my job.

I have to say that on the whole after the raid on Sunday, I have witnessed very careful, thoughtful comments from friends and colleagues. Yes, some, many of them college students, rushed to the White House and other sites, to chant USA, USA. But that is not a true reflection of the complex and interesting discussion on-going here in the USA. Many of my friends actually went to the Pentagon to visit the memorial there and reflect quietly on the friends and colleagues that they lost in that attack. Others posted on FB about how they feared that this would increase hostility against the USA and how Americans would have to be more cautious in their behaviours.

In fact, personally I have witnessed more distasteful behavior here on MN, especially in the thread a few months ago about the Pentagon attack being a hoax.

I have been incredibly impressed by the level of honesty and transparency that has surrounded this mission. And even surprised, as I would not expect that in the UK, especially if the SAS had been involved in something similar.

Thank you Cloudydays

I'm glad you posted that, spamm . I think that it's a bit lost over here that the crowds that gathered to chant USA USA USA in New York and Washington were largely made up of college students, typically between 18-22 years old.

These are kids who would have been between 8-12 when the 9/11 attacks took place. For most of their living memory, Osama bin Laden has been a name synonymous with grief and terror, a monstrous figure that cast a shadow of fear and anger over their country for the whole of their adolescence and young adulthoods. The Bad Guy. And many of them are probably not very mature, not very sophisticated, easily caught up in the passion of the moment and the desire to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Not because they're American. Because they're young .

I'm not excusing their behaviour (though I don't think it's for me to judge or to excuse, really. They have their feelings and they're entitled to express them), but I do think it's worth pointing out that their 'celebrations' are not, in my view and based on my conversations with friends and family back home, representative the general mood over there. That half-bogus MLK quote went viral on Facebook for a reason. It reflects the way that a lot of people feel.

I wouldn't align myself with the celebrators-and-chanters-in-the-street, but I sympathise with them a hell of a lot more than I do with those who are wringing their hands about Osama missing his day in court, and referring to him (for the love of God) as a "victim" in these events.

Cloudy - I had dinner last night with a friend who is in the HR department of one of the big Universities here in the DC area and we were discussing the fact that many in the crowd at the White House came straight from their campus.

I was dismayed by the celebrations and felt that they were not appropriate. But they in no way reflect the behavior of the majority of the people I have spoken to about this.

Xenia Tue 03-May-11 21:50:30 It's all a stage managed thing and perhaps also illustrates that the Amercians are just a little behind us in terms of development. Large numbers of them believe the planet is only 6000 years old etc. They will in time move towards our level of development but at the moment they do not show themselves in a very good light. They are being led and don't seem to have the brains to avoid being led. Let us hope was can show some of them a better path on this thread.

Xenia Tue 03-May-11 21:50:30

It's all a stage managed thing and perhaps also illustrates that the Asians are just a little behind us in terms of development. Large numbers of them believe the planet is only 6000 years old etc. They will in time move towards our level of development but at the moment they do not show themselves in a very good light. They are being led and don't seem to have the brains to avoid being led. Let us hope was can show some of them a better path on this thread.

Xenia Tue 03-May-11 21:50:30

It's all a stage managed thing and perhaps also illustrates that the women are just a little behind us in terms of development. Large numbers of them believe the planet is only 6000 years old etc. They will in time move towards our level of development but at the moment they do not show themselves in a very good light. They are being led and don't seem to have the brains to avoid being led. Let us hope was can show some of them a better path on this thread.

Would you be OK with the above changes to your post xenia? Why is bullshit about an entire country a very large country with actually quite a lot of people- who have differing views on many things OK?

Shoudl I assume because the vast majority of British people read shite newspapers with poorly written stories created to incite hatred against other religions and races that you are all a bunch of racist morons? Should I also assume because most of these newspapers provide pictures of naked women for their "readers" that everyone approves of sexisim and that the British are behind America in their treatment of women and should be more like us?

no-one is defending him squeaky. but i will NOT rejoice or celebrate the fact that a man was killed in cold-blood instead of being given a trial

Did the victims of the twin towers get a trial?
I thought not.

Honestly tell me how it is different to order and arrange the deaths of Thousands than to order the death of one cowardly man - for the want of a better word.

PMSL @ Xenia.

So that's why there's a party in Glasgow planned to celebrate Bin Laden's death.

here

Or are Scots 'behind', too?

So rich coming from a place so hung up on class, legally sanctions primogeniture and discriminates against Catholics in terms of inheritance in the royal family (guffaw), whose town centres are often no-go zones at weekends due to out of control open drunkeness and whose plumbing is mostly about 100 years behind Europe. That's really, um, enlightened and developed.

excellent posts, spamm, it did seem unlikely that those wanky kids were reflective of the whole of the US. it is a very divided country but i didn't expect to see that in Washington.
to the poster who said that this demonstrates how MN has changed, thank fuck it has. because it would be most revolting to see people hand-wringing over the voluntary death (he could have given himself up and was given fair warning) of someone who ordered the violent deaths of thousands of people. if he'd wanted a trial, he could have had one.

The US has the death penalty. It has a majority of citizens who believe dinosaurs and man lived at the same time and Noah took baby dinosaurs in the arc. These are facts. I can make critical comments about the Scots if anyone wants me to which are true facts . The uK does not have the death penalty. We do not have a G Bay. We believe in the rule of law (on the whole although Labour did a good job at removing rights).

The US will catch us up. It will all be fine.

No one on here can know that OBL was behind deaths. He was never tried. If you think we should act without giong to court on things then go o ut this afternoon and lynch your local paedophile and the beat up the person you think burgled your house. We don't want to live in a world like that.

expat that was a joke about the previous week's disastrous kate and wills party, never intended to actually happen.

he took responsibility for the attacks, xenia. bad joke to make if he was kidding.

12:01AM GMT 11 Nov 2001

OSAMA BIN LADEN has for the first time admitted that his al-Qa'eda group carried out the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Telegraph can reveal.

In a previously undisclosed video which has been circulating for 14 days among his supporters, he confesses that "history should be a witness that we are terrorists. Yes, we kill their innocents".

In the footage, shot in the Afghan mountains at the end of October, a smiling bin Laden goes on to say that the World Trade Centre's twin towers were a "legitimate target" and the pilots who hijacked the planes were "blessed by Allah".

The killing of at least 4,537 people was justified, he claims, because they were "not civilians" but were working for the American system.

'It has a majority of citizens who believe dinosaurs and man lived at the same time and Noah took baby dinosaurs in the arc. These are facts.'

Is is? You or some other qualified study has polled all 400m people and found the majority believe that?

Now you really are taking the piss.

Personally, I don't want to live in your idea of a world, either, Xenia. A place where you think poor people are that way because they somehow deserve it for their personal failings, that women who stay at home with their children are prostitues and where Toryism really is the way forward.

I'd venture to guess the majority of those who perished, too, on Bin Laden's orders, were other Muslims.

Why do people care how a murdering evil bastard was killed?
This is why women should never get too much power, they haven't got a clue. - they'd ask him nicely to give himself up and if he said no ( like he did ) they'd walk away and leave him to it. Or they'd offer him a chance to rehabilitate by doing a course in water colour painting at a nice open prison.

Obama was right - he blew his head off and doesn't give a shit

The reason we care is that once you let the rule of law lapse you are no better than those you slaughter. It means that you could be next, the person imprisoned or killed without trial.

If you think those who send others to kill on their behalf can rightfully be killed without trial then surely you have to allow that anyone black white muslim Christian can come from their own homeland to the country of those who have sent others to kill and murder the leader. I can't find a logical distinction. After WWII because we respected the Geneva Convention we put on trial the remaining Nazis. It is a pity we have gone so far away from those principles that we are content to see hit squads sent abroad to kill which of course is exactly what some of the muslims and Israelis also are doing.

"First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me."

We need to speak out. No right thinking person can think this is right. Not only should justice be done which is usually trial and innocent until proven guilty but also that it is seen to be done and the only justice supposedly seen to be done here is the old kind thankfully most of the planet has rejected - an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth and even that is not clearly done here without a trial. A very sad day.

hang on a minute. he was in a compound with other people. how many soldiers and people standing by should have died to get him out? or should they just have stood back and tried to starve him out, while the muslim world went bananas? how was it possible to apprehend him peacefully, xenia?

They came for poor and vulnerable people, including children, and Xenia voted for them and applauded them . . .

Xenia - I hate to break this to you - but he was the one coming for us.

'Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.'

You're a Tory, and you quoted this?!

Well said, expat and carmina.

Xenia, Aitch has now asked you the same question that CheerfulYank asked you repeatedly yesterday. Enlighten us, please, as you're so far ahead. How would you have handled it?

Im waiting with baited breath xenia for the critical comments that are "true facts" you are going to tell us about the Scots, a nation of 5 million or so individual people. Being one myself am I allowed to disagree with any of the bile that you will surely sprout comments.

How in earth can you make such sweeping statements about Americans?

"The reason we care is that once you let the rule of law lapse you are no better than those you slaughter. It means that you could be next, the person imprisoned or killed without trial" says you......well since Im not planning the mass slaughter of 1000s on innocent people and hiding away for 10 years as the worlds most wanted person, I reckon Im safe.

Yes, you're missing the whole point. We protect the rights of those whose views we hate, believe it or not. This is what is morally good because we never know when we may be in their position. Anyway we are worlds apart on these issues so we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I don't applaud anyone who kills but I do think we all benefit from legal rights and if we aren't careful we will lose them.

Anyway tis done now. Presumably the US will be happy with others doing what they do. I hope they realise how much they have back slided in their standing across the globe because of the way they have been behaving over the last 10 years. Luckily they are becoming a more minor power so it won't much matter but have we got other power bases/states coming to prominence where the rule of law is better protected? I hope we all lobby for that.