My Christmas cards this year
By Bobby James (Email BJ)
I hate to rain on everyone's parade, what with all the murder dancing and all, but I have to break it to you all. The death of Osama Bin Laden isn't going to make any difference. We're hearing a lot of positive things from our politicians and, for a day or two, it seems like they are actually congratulating each other. Nothing like a killing to bring everyone together. But the death of Osama isn't the beginning of the end for al qaeda, just like the death of Tookie Williams didn't end the Bloods, like the death of Hassan al Bana didn't end the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather, it's more likely that Bin Laden will now rise to the level of martyr, someone who died for a cause, the converse to the twisted madman that we've viewed him as. Already the aforementioned Muslim Brotherhood is standing by Bin Laden and labeling the killing as an 'assassination', a word that carries all sorts of imperialist connotations. Because as we've seen in the Middle East over the past months, governments will fall, leaders will fall, but it's much more difficult to kill an idea. It's the reason why the purveyors of ideas, both bad (Hitler, Mao) and good (MLK, Ghandi) continue on well past they're dead. They become less of a human and more of a myth. And unfortunately, we might have just created a new myth.
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