Victor Manuel Gerena<\/a>, a Machetero<\/i> involved in the White Eagle robbery (which I have never heard of, despite living not far from its location), and he has been a fugitive for twenty-seven years<\/i>—and is a member of an accredited terrorist organization that (a) has a history of murdering American servicemen and civilians, and (2) seems it ought to have extremely limited resources for hiding fugitives. We are stopped fairly frequently, and could well have been stopped by the old lunatic just clutching his chest and keeling over six years ago. Still, it’s a good story this way.\nAnd I can’t help contrasting this to Saddam Hussein—when our boys caught Saddam Hussein, he was evidently hiding out in a bunker without running water, he had been totally cut off and such loyalists as remained were of no help to him nor he to them. Now, it was always possible that he would return a few years later and form the spearhead for a revolt of ex-Baathists, so it’s clearly a Good Thing that he was caught, but it wasn’t in any way a blow to the operation of the resistance.\n
Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, was living in a house he had built for his comfort and security in a major urban area. Although he evidently didn’t have phone and internet access, he clearly wasn’t lacking for communication channels (as evidence the “courier” we hear so much about). And I’ve never been very clear about the extent to which the fellow was some sort of operational chief anyway. Clearly he was the head fund-raiser and was a sort of inspirational figure for recruitment and for goals and means, though, and I can’t imagine that he had much difficulty acting in that capacity from his suburban safe house. To the extent that Al Quaida was ever a substantial threat to the US, it was evidently still a threat, still with substantial resources and communication capabilities. Saddam Hussein in a gilded palace with an army at his command was a potent force; Saddam in a hidey-hole with a pistol was not. Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad was a potent force, it seems to me.\n
And here’s where I find myself bewildered and perplexed: up until the news of his death, I assumed that Osama bin Laden was no longer a potent force. I actually would have given something like twelve-to-seven against his being alive. In my imagination, if Osama bin Laden were alive at all, he was in a situation not unlike Saddam Hussein’s when we caught him: cut off, uncomfortable, degraded. This appears not to have been true in the slightest. Presumably this was well-known amongst his supporters. That must have been very good for him and for fund-raising and recruitment for anti-American terrorism generally, and it’s a relief to know that we put an end to it, even if I didn’t have anything to be relieved from, not having known it until it was over.\n
I am rambling. The thing is, I don’t really have anything other than rambling. I am concerned that my country appears to be involved in assassination, but then I’m not sure it is assassination, properly speaking, and to the extent that war<\/i> seems to be only sort-of a metaphor for what was going on then a military assault on the leadership is not altogether an assassination. On the other hand, does this set a precedent? That would be extremely troubling. On the other other hand, that precedent has already been set, and it doesn’t shock me that a Most Wanted was killed rather than captured—Mr. Gerena’s buddy from the White Eagle robbery, Filiberto Ojeda R\u00edos, went down pretty much the same way, and he was an United States citizen on American soil. And we have been sending drones to blow up buildings in civilian neighborhoods to reach \"high value\" targets for years in this war-like-thing. So if the death doesn’t bother me as a death, and it doesn’t worry me as a precedent, why does it niggle at me? I think it must be that stuff I was rambling about. Or perhaps it’s just that after spending almost twenty years living with a boogey-man, even if it was somebody else’s boogey-man for the most part, it leaves a hole when he goes?\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Which Your Humble Blogger hopes that writing about a thing will lead to clearer thoughts about it. Didn’t work. Ah, well. Sometimes it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing","category-news-item"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19352,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13695\/revisions\/19352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}