JHB,
I think the killing of Osama Bin Laden changed the world dramatically.
It won’t change terrorism or our world views… yet. OBL was a powerful symbol and the media, politics and academics are going to make sure that the symbol carries a lot of weight and reinforces whatever agenda they want to push.
From oil prices, to futures, to political fortunes, the process of killing and marketing OBL has changed everything.
What if all it does is change the political fortunes of Pres. Obama? isn’t that a big deal?
Perhaps we need to consider different levels of change. Even if all these things I claim are a big deal actually, in the grand scheme, are just small perturbations in the overall arc of the human and Earth story. Perhaps this story has played out thousands / millions of times and its just part of it. No real outlier.
What say you?
RFS
Oh, sorry… what was the question?
I was busy trying to figure out the status of my friend going through some rough stuff, seeing if Japan’s radiation filters were put in place and if Cairo, IL, still exists or will be washed downstream…
Oh, right; that OBL killing in Pakistan…
No, the world or the US or our policies are not or have not changed materially. No social changes either. Just a new political contingency. A few secret meetings to give the line of command metals for a job well done; maybe some changes in Congress assessing the pending 7.8 Billion dollars in aid to Pakistan to psychotically deal with our gullibility over the “Who knew?” Pakistani response…
Clearly the nothing changed like 9/11 made the world different. OBL was the bad guy that took us by surprise and changed how we saw ourselves. Now we are reminded of that every time we fly, take a train or enter a pro football game. Yet we moved on because life is what we all do. We had to get gas, pick up the kids, clean up after the floods, and fix the levee or blow them up to make “it” all better. No paradigm shift – translation: no head grok needed.
I am like some others in the spectrum and equate it to hunting Nazi generals 30 years post WWII. In a way viewing the less-than-a-week of hyperbole and we don’t know what went on. Everyone is an expert with their take… hindsight bias abounds and no one is accountable for any of their “lip.” But, it is all very much like Columbine and Virginia Tech. There will be a report in 3 months. We’ll have a couple of holidays and people will have moved on.
All in all, the world may be different in trivial ways… maybe… just as we’re different when we take a vacation or go home for Christmas.
• We’re not safer – we just have more people in the world’s largest union TSA poking us
• Recruitment is up, almost double and everyone wants to be SEAL… what does that say… oh boy!
• We have some cred for doing what we said and that’s good.
• We’re not smarter – we have no policy understanding why some groups want to attack us
We had our paradigm shifted by events surrounding 9/11. The killing of OBL and Twittering about it will not make a Tweet of difference or shift anything back or better. We celebrate with nationalistic fervor and don’t see the irony or connection with that and our socio-political status in the world.
Now I have to go. Having some Iranian friends over so and that ought to be interesting…