I have decided to stay away from all coverage this year, because even the preliminary stuff last night just felt ghoulish to me.
I still, though, can’t understand why, eight years later, we haven’t gotten Bin Ladin. I just can’t understand why we didn’t have his head on a pole within a year.
Just for the emotional effect.
Do we actually not want him dead? You know, is it like when we used to talk about how we didn’t want to depose Saddam because either the country would be turned over to conservative clerics or split into civil war? But everyone knew that would happen and we went into Iraq anyway.
So, it’s hard for me to believe that that same administration would say “Well, we can’t get rid of Bin Ladin because what would come after him would be worse.” Just seems out of character.
I just don’t get it.
Anyway, my thoughts are with you, if you are suffering today.
Tiny Cat Pants 
It’s not complicated. Bin Laden, if he’s alive, is being sheltered in Pakistan. Pakistan has nukes.
Thank you, Aunt B. Those of us who were there are also still wondering why, in the phrase of the comic, ‘we inhaled our neighbors’ bodies and nobody got fucking fired for it.’
All of the good memories of the Towers and that whole world that was destroyed are there, but they’re tainted by the knowledge that there has still been no real justice. So we say, again, maybe this year.
Hello, B. Sorry to chime in so late on this one, but I was in transit from Ireland most of yesterday. It was refreshing to spend a week in a tiny, spirited country where people have fought through and risen above centuries of real oppression, and for the previous eight years they were looking over at us and wondering ‘WTF?’
My view of this is based on the cynicism that’s regularly and reliably displayed by our national leaders. Bin Laden and his band of low-tech warriors were a godsend to the Bush administration and the Republican Party, because all it took was a few months of national security‘matador defense’ and the Bushies had a blank check for everything they and their cronies wanted (and then some). The Democrats played along while the nation was whipped into a frenzy of cowardice and genocidal hatred that soon settled into ovine detachment and compliance. All through this, the attitudes toward bin Laden– who was the eagerly self-righteous poster child for an entire nation’s vague fear and loathing of the mysterious Arab/Muslim ‘other’– reflected this psychic arc.
I don’t think we can’t get bin Laden so much as it isn’t really worth it to do so. On the contrary, having him lurking out there as a unwittingly satirical symbol of the amorphous ‘terror’ threat is good for business. The 9/11 attacks helped funnel public resources into private hands with more speed and efficiency than decades of race-baiting, ‘free market’ dogma, and selfish anti-tax propaganda had ever been able to. That dynamic hasn’t slowed down much with the Democrats in charge of two branches of the federal government.