Crazy

I'm not sure how long it will take for all the excitement over the death of Osama Bin Laden to dissipate.  I'm not sure how long it will take for his compatriots to act out in revenge.  I'm am certain both will happen.

For years I have been a pacifist and against the death penalty.  I have changed my mind to some degree, however, in that I don't think you can rehab some people.  More importantly, some people are probably just not worth the effort.  When I think about truly heinous crimes in which children are grossly molested, tortured, or killed, I realize such acts are perpetrated by individuals who are severely damaged.  Nonetheless I have come to believe that in such cases it is simply better to say, "game over."  What is the point in housing them in prison for the rest of their lives?  Rehabilitation? I believe there is no point whatsoever and society is best served by simply removing such individuals from the planet.

Bin Laden may have been such a person.  I'm fairly sure many people in this world believe the same of the U.S. and its aggressor policies and actions which leave the dead and injured in their wake.  I can't really say I know enough to vote yea or nay on that one. Given the horrors of September 11, 2001, I definitely lean towards a yea vote.  Adios, Osama.

The sad part in all of this is that we continue performing the same actions and expect a different outcome. We kill and hope to achieve peace.  We wage war and hope to end war.  After hundreds of years of human history we continue to adhere to policies of aggression in order to resolve political and religious disputes.  We kill one man as the literal and figurative head of a hated organization and hope that action will lead to their larger demise.  All sides invoke the power of God and righteousness.  Through all of time, through thousands upon thousands of people killed, lives destroyed, humanity decimated, we have made no peace.  The harvest has been nothing but strained intervals of quiet among factions, a quiet which now appears to be dissolving.

As a friend of mine's Grandmother used to say: If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.  To believe otherwise is the very definition of crazy. The only question I really have is not whether or not we should have killed Bin Laden. Rather, I wonder whether or not our biology will ever allow us to successfully subvert the animal and elevate the intellectual.  Will humans ever learn that war does not bring peace?  There are evil people in the world who do unspeakable evil to others and I have come to believe they need to disappear.  The same is not true of entire nations and societies.  We have to figure out a better way, one which involves caring rather than killing or, I fear, we are doomed. Crazy, huh?