No Tears for Osama; No Cheers for US Imperialism

No Tears for Osama; No Cheers for US Imperialism

by Mark Anthony Neal | BlackVoices

What struck me initially about the announcement that al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden had been killed by United States forces in Pakistan, was the odd framing by mainstream corporate news networks: "This will be one of those moments when people will remember where they were when they heard the news."

Really? Nearly ten-years after bin Laden orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, thousands of American service women and men and tens of thousands of citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq have been killed in the name of what was essentially a pogrom of retribution in the name of American imperialism - and all the mainstream media can do is present this moment as the digital generation's ready-made D-Day?

Let me be clear: I shed no tears for bin Laden, whose murderous beyond-the-State reign, left nothing but death, grief and trauma across multiple continents. But the pursuit of bin Laden was not justification for what has been an escalation of violence and de-stabilization in the Middle East and Northern Africa, by two American Presidents.

As surely as George W. Bush marshaled U.S. military forces in the name of goals motivated as much by political desires as they were motivated by legitimate foreign policy concerns, his successor Barack Obama is complicit in the same desires. The killing of bin Laden is the apex of what the President might described as the "best week ever," particularly after his appearance of Oprah this afternoon (taped and widely speculated on in the blogosphere last week).

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