Hey, I’m glad he’s dead. I know, I know, we’re not supposed to celebrate anyone’s death. In fact, it wasn’t even a full day after the news of Bin Laden’s death that I had to hear from presumptuous moral-equivalence preaching factions amongst media and social networks about how embarrassed they are to see any fellow Americans show any joy or positive emotion over the death of the murderer of 3,000 Americans (not to mention the the October 12, 2002, Bali bombings, or the March 11, 2004, Madrid bombings, or the July 7, 2005, London bombings, and so on).

The hand-wringer’s code word instead became “relief.” You are only allowed to express “relief” that OBL is dead, not happiness, you see, because in the second-grade logic of the moral equivilist expressing any joy over a terrorist’s death makes us no different than the terrorists, or at least no different than, say, the Palestinians caught on tape celebrating the murder of 3,000 civilians on 9-11. See: “Cycle of violence” and all of that nonsensical garbage, as though defending oneself is the same as trying to push a lawful and recognized nation of peoples into the sea.

Faster than you can say “Bleeding-heart, context-lacking UN lover” a supposed quote from Martin Luther King popped up all over the social media Internet, claiming, “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” Just one problem — MLK never said that. Facts? No matter. A five-minute Google search won’t stop the moral equivilist locomotive once it gets going. And the speed at which it propagated — faster than any false narrative that National Security Adviser John Brennen could even muster! — underscored its fabricated intentions.

Sure, maybe the quote captures the spirit of MLK’s thinking, and many are saying it’s not such a stretch or no different than, say, the MLK quote that “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” Well, there’s a time for MLK’s thinking, and there’s a time for the Navy SEAL instead. You either get that or you don’t. As for me, I like to think that the last light Osama saw was the muzzle flash from a Navy SEAL’s Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying to abandon moderation. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be cases in which an expression could become pornographic, embarrassing or extreme. Albeit, chanting “U-S-A” is more appropriate at an Olympic event than for the death of a murdermarytr-preaching terrorist. Lack of couth aside — and from what I’ve seen such celebrations were mostly from college youths who were 10 years ago too young to understand how our world forever changed — if you take joy in Bin Laden’s death, don’t be cowed into shame. It doesn’t make you a monster, or the same as the terrorist, or someone with blood lust, or even less enlightened than the self-righteously moral equivilists claim themselves to be. And, certainly, OBL’s death may not change much operationally (and yet, never underestimate the loss of a leader — they are not often easily replaced).

Likewise, if you’re sad over his death — because the loss of life and recollections of dark times, etc. — I will respect that too, but don’t hold yourself somehow superior to those feeling in a more elated mood.

And while we’re at it, it’s also perfectly acceptable to be happy for the circumstances of the mission. It’s okay to be okay that Bin Laden may not have had a firearm, and may not have used women as a human shields. Maybe it would have lightened the heavy conscious of the hand-wringer, but it changes nothing.

It’s also perfectly natural to want to see the photographic evidence of Bin Laden. True, a lack thereof does not make a conspiracy — the nuts are nuts and weave their logic accordingly. All the more reason one rationale of the Administration — that they had a DNA match and thus needed no photograph for proof — was truly ridiculous. We’re talking about an Arab street that believes that Jews were told to stay home on 9/11, and a Truther fringe that thinks federal agents somehow secretly and quietly planted explosives in the twin towers. Do you really think they’re going to accept, “Trust us, we have DNA evidence?” No, the reasons for the evidence are many, and include less tangible things as affirming to terrorists how bipartisianly serious and persistent we remain in hunting them and crushing their morale, historical record, and for some, just plain closure.

Indeed, it’s not just the president or liberal Democrats who would have us all take a quaalude. Here’s the epitome of knuckle-headed moral equivalence from Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers: “Imagine how the American people would react if Al Qaeda killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the Internet.” Did Chairman Rogers really compare al Qaeda terrorists and self-ordained Islamic rulers to our professional soldiers and duly-elected representatives? Isn’t it great how Chairman Rogers can see the photos but the constituents paying his salary cannot? Can we get a little less lecture with your hypocrisy, Congressman?

But most of all, one should be overjoyed with U.S. military forces, the guys and gals who keep us safe.

You see, that Navy Seal is the same guy who hasn’t seen his family in 10 months, who routinely humps about a 50-pound rucksack across the mountains of Afghanistan, the deserts of Iraq and other armpits of the planet while our hand-wringing moral equivilists shake fingers and tut-tut with one another in their virtual chat rooms and otherwise second-guess and draw comparisons between our accountable military forces versus unaccountable, non-state sanctioned, illegal-combatant terrorists who highjack passenger planes for guided missiles.

Like I said, you either get the difference, or you don’t.

Solid points by Eugene Robinson, a rare occasion we’re in agreement:

Why? Because while gory photographs would have inflamed some jihadists and wannabes, I believe they would have disillusioned and deflated others. A heroic myth of invulnerability had been built around bin Laden. He was supposed to have cheated death while fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, walking tall through fields of fire as the bullets somehow missed. He escaped the Americans who cornered him at Tora Bora. He evaded capture for a decade, despite the best efforts of the West’s spies and soldiers.

Showing him in death would definitively refute any notion that bin Laden enjoyed some kind of divine protection. The myth would die with the man.

It’s also true that photographic evidence would silence most, but not all, of the conspiracy theorists (who are surely putting on their tinfoil hats as we speak). But this is just a secondary consideration, because the wing nuts won’t get any traction. I doubt that even Donald Trump is going to endorse a theory that requires calling Navy SEALs a bunch of bald-faced liars — not to mention the entire military and intelligence chains of command.

The reason to display the photos is to show bin Laden for what he really was: not a holy warrior, not a holy anything, but a deluded mass murderer who met the end he so richly deserved.

Great tongue-in-cheek post by IowaHawk. Read the whole thing:

Who is to credit for this rebirth in American national unity? First and foremost, we must cite the leadership of President Obama. Like many Americans – and the Nobel Peace Prize committee – I naively feared he was actually serious when he initially proposed shutting down Guantanamo, trying detainees in American civilian courts, and prior consultation with the international community. Little did I know that this untested young Commander-in-Chief would muster the courage to read his weekly Gallup numbers and, in one daring unilateral extra-judicial targeted hit job, toss aside every single idiotic foreign policy principle of his election campaign. Perhaps most satisfyingly, it was a mission made possible thanks to information extracted by methods he previously banned as “illegal torture.”

But this triumphant new era in situationally-unified American bloodlust does not belong to the President alone; we must also cite Congress’s born-again waterboarders like Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and their newfound enthusiasm for what (at least until 9pm Sunday) they would have once considered illegal military murder squads. Neither can we forget the watchdogs of America’s press, who have shown unprecedented ethical flexibility in shedding their long-held Gandhi moralism and embracing their inner Rambo.

Hey, was this part of the War on Terror, or just Overseas Contingency Operations?

Ha! I’m laughing at the su-perior liberal rationale! Seems we’re all a bunch of targeted-assassination lovers these days.

Here’s Alan Dershowitz on why President Obama made a mistake in both burying Osama Bin Laden at sea and then not releasing the photographic evidence.

In my nearly half-century of representing defendants charged with homicide, I have come to know that the best evidence of how a person died comes from the body of the deceased. Dead bodies often talk more loudly, clearly and unambiguously than live witnesses. Bin Laden’s body should have been preserved as long as necessary to gather all relevant evidence, notwithstanding the requirements of Shariah Law.

When a Muslim or a Jew is the victim of a homicide in the United States, religious considerations do not trump civil requirements. Their bodies are generally sent to the medical examiner for thorough examination. Notwithstanding religious prohibitions, autopsies are performed and organs removed for testing. No special exception should have been made for bin Laden’s body.

The president’s decision to suppress the remaining photographic evidence is disturbing on many levels. First, it is wrong on its merits. The public is used to seeing visual portrayals of dead bodies on television and in movies. Anyone who has served as a juror or a courtroom observer in a homicide case has seen bodies riddled with bullets or afflicted with stab wounds. We are mature enough to endure viewing such visual evidence if we choose to. Nor is there any real risk that these photographs will inflame Muslim or Arab sensibilities any more than the photographs of Saddam Hussein did.

In a democracy, doubts must always be resolved in favor of disclosure, particularly in a matter of such great public interest and controversy. Surely Congress has at least equal authority to decide what to do with the photographs. Moreover, the press may have the right to obtain and publish these highly relevant items of evidence as part of its duty to inform the public. Some media will surely challenge the president’s decision—and if they do I hope they win.

The great Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis taught us nearly a century ago that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” The remaining evidence of how bin Laden was killed—the photographs and the results of any forensic tests that may have been hastily performed—should be exposed to the sunlight of publication.

Add to that the hypocrisy of the decision by its defenders, whether in public office or private enterprise such as the media. President Obama recently lifted the ban on photographs of U.S. servicemen and women coffins — does that not incite? The Supreme Court recently backed the “right” of the Westboro Baptist’s funeral protests — certainly that incites! Or what of the charred remains of American contractors in Iraq a few years back, or photos of Abu Ghraib — apparently back then it was just fine to incite the Arab world and the easily disturbed American conscience.

Even now the United States military and other Western powers are deploying ships and other assets around the Med and near Libya. But posturing aside the National Review editors advocate a different kind of military strategy — do nothing. Here’s why:

We understand and share the impulse to stanch the killing. But there are two problems with the proposed no-fly zone.

One, Qaddafi’s regime doesn’t appear to be doing much of its murder from the air. If we are serious about limiting his ability to massacre his countrymen, the no-fly zone would have to become a no machine-gun zone, too — in other words an honest-to-goodness military intervention to affect events directly on the ground. Deploying our air power while Qaddafi continued to kill with impunity would make us look more ineffectual rather than less. For now (perhaps this will change if Qaddafi begins to consolidate his position on the strength of his air force), the no-fly zone seems a classic case of looking for lost keys under the streetlight; it’s the handiest way for us to intervene, not the most effective.

Two, the rebels are on the ascendancy. Absent some drastic change in the tide of events, it looks as if they will prevail. Why would we taint what would be the indigenous glory of their ouster of Qaddafi with an almost entirely symbolic Western military action? The reason that the revolts of 2011 have had a dramatic catalyzing effect across the region, when the invasion of Iraq didn’t, is that they are the handiwork of Middle Eastern populations themselves, and thus a much more appealing model of change.

This is a very interesting approach and something to be taken seriously, simply because we have used this strategy before successfully — In Poland, it was the tipping point for Communism.

As reported in Time Magazine in 1992, Reagan Republicans joined with The Vatican and Pope John Paul II, the AFL-CIO and other lefty labor movements to defeat the greater evil of Communism. One wonders if such cooperation for such a just cause and with such far-reaching consequences will ever be witnessed again.

Tons of equipment — fax machines (the first in Poland), printing presses, transmitters, telephones, shortwave radios, video cameras, photocopiers, telex machines, computers, word processors — were smuggled into Poland via channels established by priests and American agents and representatives of the AFL-CIO and European labor movements. Money for the banned union came from CIA funds, the National Endowment for Democracy, secret accounts in the Vatican and Western trade unions.

Replace the technology of the 1980s with today’s — cell phones and generators, webservers and Twitter and Facebook — but the concept is the same. (On second thought, if the illiberal regimes of the Arab world focus on blocking modern technology, what if the populations did utilize the old technologies — would the dictators see that coming before it was too late?)

Of course, we’ll never know, at least for many years to come, how much or how often our intelligence services employ asymmetrical support to the world’s enemies of freedom and liberty. I’d like to think it occurs often, but given that the only leaks of our intelligence services time and again seem to indicate a climate of inaction and risk aversion, it may be that we’ll never see the West support an Arab or Islamic “Solidarity” movement.

Never forget.

The “falling man” photograph is to me one of the most horrifying reminders of that dark day. What hell they must have endured that throwing themselves from 100 stories was the least agonizing option.

A word about all the proposed “Koran burnings.” It’s idiotic, and in this case does accomplish drawing moderate and sensible persons into a war of extremities. Having said that, as we approach the 10th anniversary of 9-11 just 365 days away, it’s also a lesson in the folly of appeasement. For 9 years and two administrations our government and most of our media have gone out of their way to avoid addressing what 9-11 really was. Is it any wonder that all of that political correctness and appeasement has empowered our own elements of extremism? — Ironically, the very thing the kumbayah “Coexist” bumper-sticker movement has championed has made it more likely that a preacher in middle American can feel justified in burning a stack of Korans. Taking a line from the “root cause” playbook, perhaps had our government and media not always taken the side of political correctness, and outlandish double standards, and been a little tougher in some responses to terrorism, such frustration would not be ingrained in the populace.

No matter, as former Sen. Fred Thompson pointed out, when the 9-11 mosque was announced these appeasement fools — including but predictably our president — focused on the legality instead of the sensibility of such an act. Conversely, they do not back a Gainesville preacher’s legal right to burn Korans, rather the sensibility.

That’s the double standard that empowered this act to begin with.

This is astounding… creepy too.

[Mark Steyn] Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians [AAP] noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo “female genital mutilation.” So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.

A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at “FGM.” After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

Der Spiegel, an impeccably liberal magazine, summed up the remorseless Islamization of Europe in a recent headline: “How Much Allah Can the Old Continent Bear?” Well, what’s wrong with a little Allah-lite? The AAP thinks you can hop on the sharia express and only ride a couple of stops. In such ostensibly minor concessions, the “ritual nick” we’re performing is on ourselves. Further cuts will follow.

To say that this is multiculturalism and diversity tolerance run amuck is to give the word amok a bad name. If this is the recommendation of  pediatricians then one may as well go back to seeing one’s barber for surgery. Pass the leaches. The apologists make the false comparison to circumcision, but while religiously traditional it’s not a sexual control.

Steyn is right. If we can’t draw the line here we may as well start paying our jizya “protection money” as dhimmis. If you don’t know what that is yet, don’t bother Googling it, for we may learn the hard way in our lifetime.

Okay, one more post on the Ft. Hood shootings. I couldn’t resist after reading this analysis of the dangers of willful political correctness voiced by a counter-terrorism expert. Note he makes the same point many have previously — had Nidal been pining for, say, Nazism, he’d have been booted out of the military a long time ago.

[Inside the Ring] Patrick Poole, a counterterrorism consultant to law enforcement agencies and the military, said he expects more attacks like the one that occurred at Fort Hood because the Pentagon so far is unable to produce a “threat model” that correctly identifies the threat posed by both internal and external jihadism.

“The case of Maj. Hasan is Exhibit A on existing jihadist threats from inside the military,” Mr. Poole told Inside the Ring. “Had anyone dared to officially protest Hasan’s extremism, they would not only have been risking their military careers, but would have certainly faced a harassment lawsuit fully supported by [some Muslim] groups. … It’s not that warning signs were missed, but they were willfully ignored.”

Mr. Poole said Gen. Casey’s comments on diversity were shocking and indicate that “the Pentagon brass are doubling-down on the see-no-evil, speak-no-evil culture responsible for this incident. And more soldiers are going to die until that changes.”

Among the other incidents of Muslim extremism in the military, Mr. Poole noted the case of Ali Mohamed, an al Qaeda military chief who was an Army sergeant at the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, N.C., during the late 1980s. There he gathered intelligence before defecting to help al Qaeda with its war-fighting skills. Mohamed was allowed to continue working at Fort Bragg despite warnings from both the Army and Egypt’s military that he held jihadist beliefs, Mr. Poole said.

Mr. Poole said the military has policies designed to ferret out neo-Nazis, gang members and those with psychological problems from the ranks but is unwilling to do the same with radical Muslims. “Why these existing rules could not be applied to jihadism can only be explained by the delusion that there is no problem to solve,” he said.

“If jihadist ideology is so isolated from institutional Islam as Islamic groups claim, they should have no real fear of trying to weed out the jihadists in the military, because it has nothing to do with the thousands of Muslims who are serving honorably and courageously,” he said.

What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?

… Was anything done about this potential danger [all of the warning signs about Nidal]? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague’s religion?

– Charles Krauthammer.

There is not a perfect or even agreed upon definition of “Terrorism,” but I think this definition by Yohan Alexander in his 2002 book Combating Terrorism: Strategies of 10 Countries is about the best I’ve read. Consider his definition as you debate whether or not the mass murder by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was terrorism or a case of the crazies (or both):

[On the basis of the act, perpetrator, objective, motivation, target and method] Terrorism is defined as the calculated employment or the threat of violence by individuals, subnational groups, and state actors to attain political, social, and economic objectives in violation of the law. These acts are intended to create an overwhelming fear in a target area larger than the victims attacked or threatened.

It’s important to try and define terrorism, especially after the Ft. Hood shootings. What’s sad is that we still seem to have to do so even after 9-11. And what’s disconcerting is how so many persons hastily refuse to even consider that Hasan was a terrorist even while they condemn others for for doing so without thought or with haste, or both.

Maj. Hasan clearly had a political/social agenda  — he wished to not only avoid deployment to a Muslim country, but championed the idea that any Muslim in the military have the right to refuse deployment to Muslim countries — and illegally pursued the means to achieve it, committing mass murder.

Hasan “exchanged 10 to 20 e-mails” with Anwar al-Awlaki, still wanted by federal authorities, who was imam of a Falls Church, Va., mosque where three 9-11 hijackers attended. Hasan reportedly proselytized Islam to patients, was considered by soldiers who knew him to be seriously disloyal to both the military and his country, and worried fellow doctors by giving a 50-slide Powerpoint presentation promoting conscientious objection for Muslims and filled with disconcerting messages like “We love death more then [sic] you love life!” and “Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam.”

U.S. Intelligence agencies reportedly were investigating Hasan for attempting to contact persons (i.e., plural) with known al Qaeda connections. He “spent time surfing radical Islamic Web sites,” and shouted “Allahu Akbar” — God is great — during his murder spree, thus mimicking Islamic terrorists who have done the same.

Hasan may have even been practicing the terrorist strategy of takfir, where the terrorist attempts to better blend into their role by conducting themselves in a manner of the kefir (unbeliever): Hasan reportedly went to strip clubs similar to how the 9-11 hijackers did (or then again, maybe he’s just a typical sexually-repressed, misogynist, Islamic fanatic who’s also a hypocrite).

Hasan sure sounds like a terrorist. He may not have been a card-carrying member of al Qaeda (there is no such thing), rather just a wannabe, and perhaps even crazy too. It’s not an either-or paradox. He could have both “gone nuts” and been a blatant Islamic militant.

But ask yourself this: If Hasan had been a Tim McVeighesque Bible-thumper who proselytized to patients about an angry Jehovah; who championed conscientious objection for Christians serving against other Christians (say against any further enforcement of Balkan issues); who was a frequent visitor and hate-posting member of neo-Nazi websites; who delivered 50-slide Powerpoints on the evils of gay marriage or abortion; who was known to be in contact with persons connected to white militias or domestic terrorist groups; and then chanted “Onward Christian Soldiers” as he gunned down persons in a Planned Parenthood facility…

… would Hasan still have been in the military or kicked out long before? Would the FBI be calling his pre-shooting behavior “benign” now? Would we be fearing that the same politically correct atmosphere that at least in part exacerbated the chances of success for 9-11 is back with us? Would Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr. be on television defensively arguing the importance of “diversity” and not wishing to offend religious liberties? Would not the media be screaming “[right-wing] terrorist” at the top of their lungs?

The answers to those questions should be obvious to all of us.