Reasonable Doubt

The big news today (well, last night, but I can't always get to this immediately) is that the U.S. military special forces finally tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden. This is great news and justice has been done and all is right with the world and U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Oh, wait, that's not what I meant to say about it at all. Everyone else seems pretty thrilled about all this; for my part, I'm skeptical, at least. I mean, it's not like the U.S. government has ever lied to its people or anything (insert massive sarcasm there). I'm not saying that's the case here, but my general assumption is that the government does much more lying than truth-telling, so...maybe this was just something President Obama and his guys drew up to fill in a slow news day and bump up his numbers in the polls. Maybe. That's not particularly an indictment of the president or anything. That wouldn't be drastically different from measures taken by any politician to improve their appearance to the public. That's all politics is now, just a game. Then again, maybe it's legit. Maybe we really did get him, maybe the whole thing went down just as the major news sources are reporting (except for Fox News, which congratulated George W. Bush...I'm pretty sure he didn't have anything to do with whatever happened over there). I guess nobody would ever know the difference, since the whole thing was all "top secret" and happened halfway around the world and they're saying the guy has already been buried at sea. And they say there are pictures which they might release, because it's not like convincing photos can be faked or anything. Really, am I wrong to be so dubious of anything my government tells me?

Let's just suppose, for the sake of argument, that all the news reports are accurate, at least on the major details. Even at that, I'm having a hard time really caring all that much about this. It's interesting that it happened now, after all this time, but on the whole...who really still cares? Does this actually change anything? Nah, not really. And I wouldn't be that excited if it did. I know that this isn't a popular thing to say, even now, but didn't we kind of have it coming? I don't mean that I condone the 9/11 attacks; far from it. What I am saying is, we really should have seen it coming. You know, the whole giving a bunch of weapons to this guy back in the 1980s. And then we act all surprised when he goes after us? Come on man, he was a terrorist back then too! Yeah, that doesn't make him a good guy, and yeah, he deserved probably a lot worse than what his fate ultimately was, but it makes it hard to look at the United States as a wholly undeserving victim, and it makes it hard for me to look at this as a win of any kind.