what now…..

Ding dong, the witch is dead!  What now?

I’ve waited a few days to write a post about the assassination of Osama bin Laden.  I think I’m ready now.

I’ve never rooted for anyone to die.  It seems not Christian, like it would make me like him, an evil doer.  But, I can’t help but feel some satisfaction over this, that wounds have been healed and unfinished business resolved.

So, here we are, the great Satan is no longer, but we’re still at war, still watching our own maimed and slain, still watching our own, away from home trying to make things right.

When will it end?  Who is the next Hussein or Osama?  Muammar Gaddafi?  When we kill him, who then?

In a global game of whack a mole, our government seems to stand over governments with oil or strategic geography, hammer in hand, waiting for the next head to bop. 

What happens when we don’t have heads to bop?

It never seems we go after the evil doers in countries that don’t have desired resources or geography.  Sudan?  Nope.  Somalia?  Forget it.  Myanmar?  Really, are you kidding?  Most of us think that is some kind of a shiny balloon fabric.

I’m not advocating we go after every problem in the world.  What I am saying is that I think we can tell the truth when we do go after another leader, that there is something in it for us, that we are working from self interest, not some altruistic vision of ourselves.

So, you can be a bad actor if you don’t have oil.  You can torture your subjects if you don’t have strategic geography.  You can do anything if you have nothing we want.  Because, in those locations, there is nothing for us.  As Edith Ann would say, “and that’s the truth”.