Where's Bin Laden?

247 weeks since 9-11-2001.

Never mind OBL -- we got AMZ. It is excellent news that he's been removed from the field of battle. Michael Berg says:

Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that. I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can't end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

I agree with him that the death of any other human being is nothing to celebrate, but where I part company with him is in his apparent unwillingness to recognize AMZ's complicity in the cycle of violence. It is doubtful that anything short of being killed or captured was likely to persuade AMZ to lay down his weapons. Having positioned himself as an opponent of the "coalition" forces there, he's fair game.

Henry Schuster of CNN says:

It doesn't take long for the question to be begged: If you can catch al-Zarqawi why can't you catch bin Laden or his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri?

The only time bin Laden's name came up in Afghanistan over the past couple of weeks was when we asked. Especially with the U.S. military.

There have been other similar murmurs, but if anyone asked Dubya, I missed it. In his official statement on the death of AMZ, Dubya said:

Osama bin Laden called this Jordanian terrorist "the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq."

Of course, OBL attacked us here, while AMZ rose to prominence only as a result of our misadventure in Iraq.

I know we're not observing the Geneva Conventions in this country anymore, but even so, is it necessary or wise to display his, or anyone's, mutilated corpse? Don't we condemn "them" for posting stuff like this on the Internet and on al Jazeera? This is just another example of our Bush's failure to take the moral high ground, even when it's easier, and ultimately more effective, to do so.