I'm not particularly conspiratorially-minded (or AM I?), but this comes one the heels of a disappointing prison break in Afghanistan. Any chance the two incidents are related? Any chance the escape was allowed, and that the pawns were allowed to slither back to the king? Just a thought. A great day indeed.

We need to remember that OBL admitted involvement, and the operation was directed specifically at him. I am surprised he was still alive; soon after 9-11, many thought that he would not survive long (kidney problem) and that if he was alive and sequestered, he could easily be traced via kidney dialysis equipment. Apparently not.

But I have mentioned before, and must mention again, a much more disturbing news item that I read online early yesterday, long before the news of OBL was even rumored. Apparently, an air attack (by NATO?) in Libya killed a son of Gadhaffi, and several of his grandchildren. The attack was cheered by some politicians of both major parties, not necessarily because of whom was killed, but in a more general rah-rah sense. Certainly, I was put off by the knee jerks, and will not consider voting for any politician who has that attitude. That goes double for the ones who claim that they are pro-life.

OH yeah. And now Barry is going to Ground Zero to politicize this. We need to pre-emptively attack him for callously doing so. He is treading on the bones of our fellow citizens to puff himself up. Obama should be ashamed. Ground Zero should not be this man's 2012 campaign headquarters.

It's hopeless to expect lefties will ever cheer even this news. They fundamentally believe America is a global villain (al Qaeda was just blowback, Iran is right to hate us because of Mossadeq, etc., etc.). They will never feel good about any use of American military power. But in this case, they cannot say so and resort to indirection: oh so terrible to see Americans being so bloodthirsty.

I really wish the hiding behind the women story could be pushed out big time. UBL was hiding in his mansion as he sent hundreds of foolish young men, many teenagers, out to blow themselves up -- and then wasn't even manly enough to fight but hid behind his wife.

Jim:

I like your Morning Jolt emails, and when you make comments like this, I generally appreciate the common decency that you display: your "bigger picture" comments sometimes really need to be said.

But, while I have absolutely no problem cheering the extermination of a mass murderer, I'm not sure that "full-throated exultation" is prudent even if the instinct is understandable.

"This is the moment to cheer, to scream, to pump your fist, to break into that old bottle of your favorite beverage you’ve been saving for a special occasion. Because the world is different this morning."

It's different because terrorists have been sent a message that we will hunt them down, but ISLAMISTS hear a different sort of message on a regular basis. They hear it when a United States military commander criticizes a private citizen in Florida for exercising his First Amendment right to burn a "Holy Quran," all when our military incinerated copies of the Bible EN MASSE to prevent them from being sent to Afghanis and run the risk of their concluding that the government permits the proselytizing of Afghan Muslims. Nothing could be further from the truth: we're a secular society that doesn't give priority to any single religious faith, EXCEPT when we put in place a constitution that enshrines sharia law, resulting in trials for Muslims who convert to any other faith, trials for which the penalty is death.

--

Andrew McCarthy is right, that the problem isn't merely those who support terrorist means, but those who support the ends of sharia law.

In both cases, prominent and high profile victories for our side are few and far between, with exceptions like this, the fall of the Taliban, and the capture of Saddam. The real victory will come through intelligence operations that we may never know about and, more importantly, a resurgence of cultural confidence that rejects, opposes, and defeats what McCarthy calls "lawfare" against our traditional institutions.

As is frequently the case, Mark Steyn is right:

"After watching the scenes of jubilation on Sunday night, I'm disheartened by the number of quotes I've seen and heard from Americans who seem to think this is VE and VJ Day rolled into one. I like the way Pamela Geller puts it - 'Killing Yesterday's Man' - and he'd been yesterday's man for many a year. Osama was never the 24/7 Fuhrer of Jihad, Inc. He pulled off 9/11 and the USS Cole. But as I wrote in my premature obit: 'These events are separated by months, years, but in between the splashy headline-grabbers the real work goes on day after day in the Saudi-funded madrasahs radicalising Muslims in South Asia, Pakistan, the Balkans, Western Europe and America.'

"Osama was the bad half of Islam's good cop/bad cop routine. Millions of Muslims support his goals - the wish to live under Islamic law in Amsterdam, London, Toronto and Falls Church, Virginia - but have no wish to fly planes into skyscrapers to accomplish them, and, even if they did, they understand they don't need to. In the absence of the bad cop of jihadist attacks, the good cop of remorseless incremental Islamization will accomplish far more than Afghan-trained boneheads with shaved genitals and Semtex belts ever could. Osama bin Laden is dead and I'm glad - and I certainly regret that he got to live the high life of a retired Pakistani businessman this last decade. But it was never about him, and what it is about goes on, whether we're paying attention or not."

External Link 

The irrational exuberance leads me to think that we won't be paying attention in the long term, especially not with an administration that may use bin Laden's death as an excuse to rollback our current, somewhat serious posture.

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Jim, you say that bin Laden's death sends a message to the rest of the world.

SO DOES HIS BURIAL.

We made certain to give the piece of human garbage a respectful burial at sea, and we made certain to announce that we were respectful of Muslim mores.

You ask, if this isn't worth celebrating, what is?

I ask, if his remains are worth our respect, whose isn't?

I'm not necessarily saying that we should have put his head on a pike, wrapped in bacon in defiance of Muslim ideas about what's unclean. (Not necessarily, but I do know where I would have put it: near Ground Zero, in front of the proposed sight for a supposed multi-faith religious center.)

But we should have NEVER gone out of our way not to offend Muslim sensibilities in disposing of the corpse, much less announce that we did so. If the question came up, the administration could curtly respond that the literal thousands of lives incinerated in Manhattan weren't given a chance to be buried in accordance to their religious beliefs. If there was one corpse we shouldn't give two bowel movements about, his was it.

Instead, even in victory, we show that we can be bullied not to offend the precious sensibilities of those who ultimately demand, through veiled threats and outright terror, our submission to their faith.

It's definitely a positive thing; bin Laden was demonstrably an enemy of the United States, he was at least partly responsible for 9/11, and he was (presumably) still active. His execution was a necessary act.

But he doesn't exist in a vacuum. He's not a cartoon super-villain. You whoop and holler and cheer when you win a video game; it's not appropriate when you're celebrating the end of a chain of events than began with the death of 3,000 people.

Most fire teams are sensitive enough about their image to conflate stories if there are women or children killed or injured. They shouldn't have to, but they do.

The choice of describing women shot in this action as "human shields" is a new one to me and looks to be very calculated. The message masters know that the image of OBL using a woman for a shield has an irresistible appeal to it. And they know from experience that even after the true facts come forth and there was no such shielding going on, that alot of people will believe it anyway. Because they need to. Its going to help them form a false image of people they still dont understand, long past the time for doing so.

AQ recruits aren't going to believe stories that come from the US govt anyway (their fantasy factory will issue their own story line for everything). They're still angry about having been scared by the image of jessica lynch firing all her ammunition at them until the last bullet and then pulling her knife. Such is the (our) image of the brave american fighting machine. Be very afraid, terrorists!

They've got reasons to join an AQ or similar group that very much need to be understood if there can be any progress for a victory. Once they commit, its preposterous to believe they will be scared at the thought of being hunted and killed by their enemy - just the opposite. What will unnearve the observers more here is a cold machine that takes the winning with the losing and expresses no emotion over taking out this target. Even better if there were no emotions over a smaller team's success overpowered a larger force. This job was easy.

But hey, if you want to evoke emotions from the non participants overseas, then go ahead and provoke who knows what. I particularly like the idea of laying down a challenge to them. People know me for doing that during the height of the iraq war after hearing a senseless, but never challenged, talking point used by the administration. Specifically, "we are fighting them there so we dont have do it here" - and "they will follow us here if we leave iraq". Geez. Wouldn't it have made sense to have laid down a challenge at that time and invited them to come here and fight? The expense was killing us to fight them over there, so it was time they do the hard work and come over here. They say we're brave one minute and then send everyone into fear with stuff like that.

(Serious question: What i still dont know is if those political leaders really believed they wouldn't come here if we stayed in iraq? I would feel better to know it was they're convenient lie, rather than a true belief - like "they hate us for our freedom")