Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?

– Paul Craig Roberts

“Today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country.”

– Barack Obama

Assuming he died due to the US/”International” “effort”, Bin Laden’s death will simply bolster Al Qaeda recruitment to avenge the fallen hero. Would that end the wars or bring back all the innocent people slaughtered in them? Nope. Now if he didn’t die because of “the troops”, or if the suspicion is true that the figure “Osama Bin Laden” was a fabrication in any way to begin with, then the joke’s on the West.

Of what relevance is this?

Up until several hours ago, nobody had really given a flying rat’s ass  about Bin Laden since about 9 years ago. There were and will always be those kooks who believe everything the government says, and there were and always will be the hardcore anti-government conspiracy theorists, but even the average political joe was beginning to doubt the reasons that “we” were over “there”. At the very least, the frame of reasoning had changed so that the US was now “helping protect and rebuild Iraq” while the war in Afghanistan was to get rid of Mafia-esque drug dealing warlords (we will not discuss the truth value of such beliefs in this post). It wasn’t about getting “revenge” or “justice” or anything to do with defending America’s pride anymore – it was about helping others.

Now, the dialogue can go back in the other direction.

In addition to the fact that these wars will no longer be a guaranteed stain on the United States*, it also means that means that Obama will almost certainly win reelection. He’ll be able to hint at and almost say things like, “Remember when I killed Bin Laden?”, as though he was personally responsible for it and we should all bend at the knee to give homage to Our Dear Leader. The best part though is that most voters will believe it. Honestly, we at enxk believed only in theory that such people existed. Now, we have evidence to confirm our theory**. Here are a few, but if you can find an idiot here, you can find the same idiotic idea repeated elsewhere:

“Two full terms of the Bush regime and we didn’t even come close to finding Osama bin Laden. Obama doesn’t even finish his first term and Osama’s already dead. Ain’t that a bitch, Bush?”

– A facebook status

“No doubt, the Republicans will say that President Bush laid the groundwork for the capture and death of Bin Laden. However, it will largely be perceived as an empty argument. Sunday’s success is because Obama gave laser focus to the mission, rather engaging in a tangential war in Iraq. He invested in deep intelligence, rather than from-the-hip militarism.”

– Meredith Bagby, Huffpost World

“Rather than”?

Oh yeah huh.

“10 years, 2 wars, 919,967 deaths, and $1,188,263,000,000 later, we managed to kill one person.”

It began as a crusade with high fanfare, it was shadily continued in various seemingly random directions to some discomfort, and now that the direction has come back to [one of] the beginning[s], closure is felt at last and high fanfare has begun for a final time. Is that just how it’s going to be? Should it just be fine and dandy, and thus because all seems well the presidency for the past 3 years should seem fine too?

Do you think anything has really changed, when it’s a given that their command structure is not anything like the traditional hierarchical military system the rest of the world has?

enxk’s overall position is the following:

“OHSHIT BIN LADEN DIED! *hops on facebook*”

The other perspective we could go is Alex Jones style, but enxk doesn’t feel that it’s a reasonable use of time to search for ways we’re already being fucked over. Useful indeed, is the information found – but worth our time, energy, and focus? Not really. Nothing wrong with people disagreeing with us, of course: that’s why there is division of labor and a market. We appreciate those who inform us that sodium fluoride, the stuff they pour in the public water, is actually poison – but we’ll take care of other things. Mass original research isn’t our strong point. We’re good at modeling the evidence that is already in existence.

There’s also the other possibility that Bin Laden’s death and the “obviously imminent” “blowback” will get you more cops and feels if you’re a TSA agent, or give more cops and feels if you’re not, and of course any other “regulation” the government attempts to pass which we all know is just more involuntary control and monitoring over everyone. Nothing special really, it’s not like 99% of all laws are for that purpose – it’s just that a big one might be coming sometime soon.

In related news, the United States is in the market for a new boogeyman. Preferably brown, and with a foreign-yet-not-exotic sounding name.

*Assume that in an alternate timeline, Bin Laden was never found. What would happen? The war would eventually fizzle out due to lack of funding or manpower or materiel, and everyone would return home. Looking at it in a different way, it would mean that the great crusade came to naught, and no holy land was reclaimed. The United States of America, in culture known as the greatest country to ever come into existence and the one which everyone knows is imperialist and the strongest militarily (for now), could not after eternity find a single man. How shameful would that be? With all the power the USFG has, they would have made up a Bin Laden to kill to prevent that from happening. Which, in all likelihood, could have been what actually happened. After all, the USFG helped create Al Qaeda in Pakistan (i.e. they could have set up a deal), and they hurriedly buried Bin Laden at sea (Pakistan’s capital is not exactly close to sea)… well. It’s quite possible.

Oh yeah, where they found him is rather funny. Next to a hospital, a police station, and a military academy? enxk attempts to refrain from unintelligent babble, but: herp derp.

**Not that we needed confirmation. Theories are approximations, as long as the approximation itself is on the general right track – i.e. that the evidence is similar to some given degree – it can always be developed to be more and more accurate. “Confirmation” is simply the low low chance that a model turns out to be almost identical to a real-world example.

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