DING DONG THE SHEIK IS DEAD (go ahead and celebrate, it's okay)

[tharp42]

I got the news the way I get almost any important, shocking news these days:  via text message, while teaching a class.  I glanced at the screen and these three words were seared into my eyes: BIN LADEN DEAD!!!

I stopped my class and quickly relayed the message to my adult students, who were as gobsmacked as me.  When I ran to the teachers' room and

Comments

Bin Laden.

[anonymous]

Didn't they have the chance to kill that fucker years ago? About
bloody time! I'm listening to "Killing an Arab" right now!

[anonymous]

...and thats also what they think when they kill Americans.

Scouse Hindu

[tharp42]

Fair enough, but I don't feel this when we kill "Arabs" or "Muslims." I should hope most Americans don't either... but I understand why people want to party over the death of bin Laden, personally.

I actually never really felt feelings of real towards bin Laden, strangely enough; I've certainly hated people like Bush and these days Donald Trump with a lot more vitriol. I must confess to having had a certain respect for the guy, in that he was a very capable enemy. He was smart and charismatic and certainly had followers, but he also was a total bastard and got what was coming to him, so that makes me happy, in a sense...

[msminpdx]

Thank you. I feel the same way, and the MLK quotation-lobbing is getting saccharine. So's the line of thought that holds that 'we' shouldn't act like 'them' -- the hordes who partied in the streets of many countries when the World Trade Center fell. We shouldn't act like what? Humans? If Americans want to obsess over what messages our behavior sends, we as a people probably need to be reminded that our supposedly higher cultural ideals don't always translate. For the rest of the world to see Americans dancing in the streets might help cement the radical idea that we are people too, not rich, untouchable, and invulnerable supermen who are somehow above it all.

[msminpdx]

"For the rest of the world to see Americans dancing in the streets might help cement the radical idea that we are people too, not rich, untouchable, and invulnerable supermen who are somehow above it all."

En serio? It cements the idea that you are gung-ho, frat-boy style pricks with absolutely no class. In other words, what the rest of the world already thinks of you...z.

Ravi Scouser.

[anonymous]

"So's the line of thought that holds that 'we' shouldn't act like 'them' -- the hordes who partied in the streets of many countries when the World Trade Center fell.", you are obviously a retard,have never been anywhere near the middle east and know absolutely nothing of its people apart from what you have been spoon fed and the fact that when drunk you like to eat kebabs

[tharp42]

To be fair, it's not as if the people of America vacated their homes and took to the streets en mass when they got word of bin Laden's death; what I saw on CNN was more like a couple of hundred college students using the occasion as an excuse to pary. I think our foreign friends overemphasize this fact, so please stop with the collective "you" in this case, as it really makes you look like the retard.

[anonymous]

Great post...nailed my sentiments exactly. Also appreciate your thoughts on mom today...wish she were still here. Perhaps you and I will talk again one day soon.
Love,
Mark