The Death of Osama

Justice, not vengeance, was served upon Osama Bin Laden this week. It was delivered not by missile or automated drone. It was presented personally by the finest fighting force ever assembled. It was enforced by members of the United States military.

As our nations’ commander-in–chief, President Obama acted with full constitutional authority in his deployment of the mission.

Yet there are politicians and media outlets that are questioning both the legality of the act and the political  advantages to be garnered as the result of this military action.

Such queries are obscene, for they show both an ignorance of the history and the constitutionality of our war against those who have attacked us.

Osama bin Laden was not solely an enemy of the United States for the acts of horror committed against this nation on September 11th, 2001. He had already perpetrated a wanton act of war almost a year previously.

On October 12, 2000 the U.S.S. Cole, a United States naval vessel on active duty was attacked and seventeen United States naval personnel were murdered by members of bin Ladens’ terrorist group of cowards. What is considered an act of war if it is not an attack on a countries active duty military? The debate can be held whether the American administration in power at the time was either cowardly or treasonous in their failure to appropriately respond to this aggression, but an act of war it was; that fact is undisputable and any defense that attempts to classify it as an act that  requires litigation is both ignorant and treasonous. The constitution denotes that the president shall be the commander in chief of the armed forces.  In the aftermath of September 11^th, we may have begun our assault on those who had attacked us, but we were undeniably already in a state of war. For the first time in our history, however, we were not engaging an enemy that held a flag, an opponent that could sign an armistice. The war on terror, despite euphemisms to the contrary, is indeed a war. All the obfuscations attempted to deny that are ludicrous on their face. We must remember that  the events of this week that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden were set in motion the moment the explosion rocked the USS Cole and the lives of our servicemen were taken from us.

The mission to bring justice to bin Laden was not an assassination, it was not murder, as many in the political and media realms would want us to believe. He was a casualty of war, a combatant in the conflict that he initiated.

To the more insidious point of calibrating the political gains and losses, those perpetuating such discussions should be ashamed. The American losses to terror were not marked as being associated with any particular political affiliation. They were killed because they were Americans, and our outrage was based not on losing any members of a political party, but because our fellow citizens were taken from us, and we understood the random nature of that fact and collectively knew that it was only  but for the grace of God that it was not us who were innocent causalities of a deranged group of anarchists.

We can act upon those political purveyors of this kind of trash by voting them out at the next election. We can act upon those in the media who are peddling this filth by turning off the TV and letting the sponsors of those programs know we do not support the ideology that allows for the politicking of death and the undermining of our constitutional right to self defense.