When the people decide to stand up for themselves. As I recall, people on this very forum were tripping over themselves to justify the bailouts of big banks and automotive companies as soon as their favorite politician got behind them.

Why are you presuming moral equivalency between Bin Laden and ourselves? Do you believe Western values are no better than those of Islamic extremists?
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Values have never been better or worse. Values are determined by force and ability to apply it.

People cheering the death of an individual are not highly moral and definitely not Western. They aren't celebrating end of terror, end of war on terror, end of decaying freedoms, end of corruption, end of greed. They are celebrating a "boom headshot". Do people also cheer when criminals get executed and throw parties late in the night? I'd hope not. If they do, then it really is time to rethink "Western" morals.

There is no ideology, morality or anything higher. it's just the same images as those seen every day in other countries, except that instead of burning flags, they burn pictures of Bin Laden. There is no superiority, no moral victory. None of the things he stood up for changed, if anything they were reinforced. None of the ideologies fought against have been defeated.


Bin Laden was a dead man on 9/11. Death certificate just took a while to show up. He was a madman with an impossible plan that somehow lucked out against impossible odds. But for every one of his victims, 300 people died. That is not due process, that is a relentless vendetta at any cost. Then again, this is what was said from the beginning.



And every time you use a phone, every time approach an airport, every time you show an id, every time you use a credit card, his legacy is there. Until this changes, his death is irrelevant.

I believe that it's bad karma to celebrate a person's death, regardless of what they've done.

I do however find it ironic that while America was shocked to discover that middle-eastern civillians were celebrating the destruction of the twin towers, here America is now celebrating the death of the mastermind behind the attack.

Perhaps the government will use this as an excuse to leave the middle-east? Maybe change the reason for war one last time? (9/11 -> Weapons of mass destruction -> Bringing down a tyrant -> Peacekeeping -> "Oh hey, our original reason for war was to take down Bin Laden, and now he's dead. Now we can leave.")
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That depends on who you ask, and about which war you are discussing. If you are asking random Joe American you are quite certain to get a new response.

Please don't confuse the situation in Iraq with the situation in Afghanistan. Although they happened near the same time and many people confuse them, they are quite different. Both had very different causes.

Iraq = Started in 1990 with Iraq's Kuwait invasion, repulsion and ceasefire, decade of no-fly with a record of infractions. Followed up by UN inspection mandates requiring immediate and unconditional access to particular sites. UN expanded the program based on testimony from Iraqi expatriots, which was later shown to be false; The expanded program was followed by UN inspection teams getting locked out of locations, or in some cases locked into a room while crates of documents were removed off-site by the Iraqi government. At the same time there was an increase in surface-to-air attacks in the UN-ordered no-fly zone, discovery of UAVs that were in direct violation of the UN mandate, violations of UN sanctions, and violations of the terms of earlier cease fire. It was not so much the presence or absence of weapons, but the defiance to the weapons inspection orders and other mandates. Then there was the second invasion that resulted in the capture of Hussian and the trial by his own people.

Some officials and countless news outlets made statements about terrorists and 9/11, or trying tor take democracy to the country, but those claims were not stated by those in authority of making the military decisions behind the action in Iraq.


Afghanistan = Direct response to 9/11 with the stated goal of "dismantling Al-Quaeda and ending its use of Afghanistan as a base for terrorist operations". I don't believe this mission statement has significantly changed.

While Usama's choice to die rather than face capture does continue part of the goal, it does not complete either half of those objectives.