[Darian]

Fuck this guy.

Within moments, a media blitz ran across virtually all television networks
in what could only be described as a grotesque celebratory display,
reflective of a level of emotional immaturity that borders on cultural
psychosis. Depictions of people running through the streets of New York and
Washington chanting jingoistic American slogans, waving their flags like
the members of some cult, praising the death of another human being,
reveals yet another layer of this sickness we call modern society.

Peter doesn't know how to use the word "only." This was not something that could "only" be described as grotesque, because none of those news networks did that. He is the only one who has referred to it as such. And I would reserve "emotional immaturity" for someone who would refer to the most notorious mass murderer in 60 years as just "another human being."

The first and most obvious point is that the death of Osama bin Laden means nothing when it comes to the problem of international terrorism.

Except that, yknow, he was the leader of the world's largest international terrorist group. This is like saying that if you're at war with a country, assassinating that country's president/king/leader means nothing when it comes to defeating that country.

The death of any human being is of an immeasurable consequence in society.
It is never just the death of the individual. It is the death of
relationships, companionship, support and the integrity of familial and
communal environments. The unnecessary deaths of 3000 people on September 11, 2001 is no more or no less important than the deaths of those during the World Wars, via cancer and disease, accidents or anything else.

"Important" is way too ambiguous a term to use. We're currently working on a cure for cancer. We invented seatbelts to decrease the likelihood of car accidents. We killed bin Laden to decrease the likelihood of anyone else's dying the way the 9/11 victims did. Is this so hard to understand?

Yet, in the United States alone each year, roughly 30,000 people die from
automobile accidents, the majority of which could be stopped by very simple
structural changes. That's ten 9/11's each year... yet no one seems to pine
over this epidemic. Likewise, over 1 million Americans die from heart
disease and cancer annually - causes of which are now easily linked to
environmental influences in the majority. Yet, regardless of the over 330
9/11's occurring each year in this context, the governmental budget
allocations for research on these illnesses is only a small fraction of the
money spent on “anti-terrorism” operations.

Wanna know what the difference is between car accidents and 9/11? No one deliberately, actively planned for 30,000 people to die in car accidents. Ditto for heart disease/cancer.

The fact that this guy is trying to lump in 9/11 deaths as equally "important" or attention-worthy as car accidents and heart disease just means he doesn't care about (or is wilfully omitting for the sake of argument) causation. Our government does care about causation.

For Peter Joseph, OP, and anyone else who's pissed that most of America is joyously happy, I'll try to explain why as simply as I can. I am not a Muslim. Most of America isn't Muslim. I'm going out on a limb here and saying that those Americans who are Muslim aren't Muslim enough for people like bin Laden, because they participate in things like democratic elections. Know why this is important?

It's because for the last few decades, Osama bin Laden woke up every day and thought about how he's going to kill me. And you. All of us. He proved he was capable of doing this. You wouldn't celebrate if you knew a man who wanted you dead was gone?

ps Daldolma put most of what I wanted to say in better words