Death of bin Laden has brought no relief

I CAN’T say I was sad or happy to hear that the US had killed bin Laden.

I think, if after 9/11, they’d treated that massive crime, as a crime and hunted the man down, caught him, or killed him resisting, I would have been happy about it. But after nine-and-a-half years, during which the crimes of 9/11 were abused as cover for the slaughter of innocent Afghans and Iraqis, hearing that bin Laden is dead brought me no relief.

Certainly he didn’t deserve to be free and happy, but I strongly feel that the most just solution for the “War on Terror” would be bin Laden in handcuffs awaiting trial for mass murder, while Bush and Blair sit in the dock in the Hague. Was it not blind lust for revenge that caused so many to avoid scrutinising the logic of carpet-bombing Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, and then invading Iraq?

I’m sure a lot of US and western newspapers will use the word “justice” about the killing of bin Laden. When will the victims of Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, “Shock and Awe” see their justice? If westerners can get “closure” from bin Laden’s death, and feel no sympathy for those Iraqis and Afghans shredded, blasted and burned by high-tech weapons, then any claim they stake to moral superiority rings very hollow.

Tim Hourigan

Kennedy Park

Limerick