May 17, 2011
Yesterday was my mother’s 74th birthday (she was born1937). We had a dinner at a Chinese restaurant (Kowloon House) and then we visited Quezon Memorial Circle. It was one of the hottest night of this summer and we had some priceless pictures taken.
Nanay enjoyed her day and Francisco had a blast running and playing in an open space. It was a fine time for family bonding.
People are still processing the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. My concern here is that armed American soldiers invaded a sovereign country to kill a terrorist. Such an act sets a very bad precedent, what’s to stop US from doing the same thing somewhere else?
It was an act of war, and a formal declaration of war should have been declared. US didn’t even have the decency of informing Pakistan about the impending strike. Protocols were sacrificed to get Bin Laden; it really was in bad form.
The killing of Bin Laden marks another line that the US have crossed and the line gets blurred and further away – and sooner or later, US would cross it again in one form or another.
And though I am not a Bin Laden supporter or even a sympathizer of his cause, US could have handled it differently. More honorably, I might add, an act that is more befitting their status as the only remaining superpower.
The move of throwing his body in the sea is a brilliant move. US was able to dodge the problem of where to place the body at the risk of unwittingly creating a place commemorating his execution. Because we have to admit that in every story, there are contrasting versions. Definitely, to the sympathizers of Al Queda, Bin Laden is a hero – in the eyes of the world, he is a villain.
And Bin Laden is indeed a villain. He had it coming, what I object to, is the manner from which the objective was achieved. The route of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would have yielded a better result and closure.
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