In the Ocean … Really?
In the ocean, really? Indeed, the ocean! Be all you can be, oh briny deep, but you are something quite different than what you were – this week you became a graveyard. Such is the will of America, that mother of invention and technology. This is a country that can invent nearly whatever it wants, yet it still does not know how to dig a grave on dry land.
The majority of Arabs and Muslims who love bin Laden like who they like and reject who they reject not because of anything to do with al-Qaida but because they love a fighter. [Such is the case with bin Laden and many others.] This is the same way that they loved Saddam Hussein yet almost entirely rejected the Baath Party. They love even a non-Arab like Ernesto "Che" Guevara because he is a fighter for the cause of freedom — not because they have any interest in his ideology! The Arabs love an underdog, and these days that means anyone who stands in the face of America and Israel [which sometimes means even Americans and Israelis!]
The important thing is to be honest with yourselves, and here I am talking to those of you who do not normally concern yourselves with what goes on in the world. Suddenly you discover that you are completely deprived of any way of connecting to what is going on. You claimed that bin Laden does not concern you. But if you shed tears yesterday that you would not have shed even over close deceased relatives; if yesterday you felt that bin Laden was no concern of yours but represented a source of power that made you proud and boastful without declaring it; if you felt something bothering you yesterday — it is the fact that America ran you down!
The brutal manner in which America dealt with the issue is the reason. It is possible that this was not the way that they wanted to deal with it. You may have wanted him to die at peace, in a battle or a struggle. You may be angered that the ocean has become his grave; maybe you have discovered that it is your genes that have moved you to feel everything that is happening to you now … rather, maybe you do not understand yourself and you do not know how to laugh at yourself!
In the ocean, then ... he will be celebrated in the sea, not because he is from al-Qaida but only because he is against America — because America knows how to kill but not how to bury. Did they not leave their victims in Afghanistan and Iraq out in the open? The ocean has now become the repository of the wretched of the earth!
The majority of Arabs and Muslims who love bin Laden like who they like and reject who they reject not because of anything to do with al-Qaida but because they love a fighter. [Such is the case with bin Laden and many others.] This is the same way that they loved Saddam Hussein yet almost entirely rejected the Baath Party. They love even a non-Arab like Ernesto "Che" Guevara because he is a fighter for the cause of freedom — not because they have any interest in his ideology! The Arabs love an underdog, and these days that means anyone who stands in the face of America and Israel [which sometimes means even Americans and Israelis!]
The important thing is to be honest with yourselves, and here I am talking to those of you who do not normally concern yourselves with what goes on in the world. Suddenly you discover that you are completely deprived of any way of connecting to what is going on. You claimed that bin Laden does not concern you. But if you shed tears yesterday that you would not have shed even over close deceased relatives; if yesterday you felt that bin Laden was no concern of yours but represented a source of power that made you proud and boastful without declaring it; if you felt something bothering you yesterday — it is the fact that America ran you down!
The brutal manner in which America dealt with the issue is the reason. It is possible that this was not the way that they wanted to deal with it. You may have wanted him to die at peace, in a battle or a struggle. You may be angered that the ocean has become his grave; maybe you have discovered that it is your genes that have moved you to feel everything that is happening to you now … rather, maybe you do not understand yourself and you do not know how to laugh at yourself!
In the ocean, then ... he will be celebrated in the sea, not because he is from al-Qaida but only because he is against America — because America knows how to kill but not how to bury. Did they not leave their victims in Afghanistan and Iraq out in the open? The ocean has now become the repository of the wretched of the earth!
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