Don't get the wrong idea PUH-LEAZE

please,please,please,please,please,please,please,please,please understand that when I say this, i'm not siding with, absolving or promoting anything the guy has done. It's just a strange feeling in the pit of my heart.

When I heard that Osama Bin Laden died a few months ago I felt a strange... sense of loss. Did anyone else? It's not that i miss him or wanted to see him live, it's just that it feels like a massive chapter of our world is over. The Big Bad is dead. Who will be the villain now? I hope i'm not crazy for thinking like that.

"Contests fought between two masters are decided instantly. An invisible battle is now raging between the two of them." Lulu vs Schneizel

Habit is a strange phenomenon.

The sin of silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

Eh. I've heard crazier.

I get your feeling. For many of us who were young at the time, OBL became a staple of our youth. I guess you feel a little weird after everyone tells you the man that hurt all those people is dead.

I felt strange too. Like a burden has been lifted or something.

However, Al-Qauda isn't done. They've elected a new leader, but he's like a David Cameron. He is leader, but not many people like him.

edited 25th Jun '11 5:08:38 PM by Inhopelessguy

The need for a villain figure is something I've always found puzzling and a bit troubling.

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Now you know how some people felt when the Cold War ended, maybe even WW 2.

^^

As for how I felt...I first found out about in a thread about celebrating his death. I was a bit disturbed about the concept of celebrating his death and pissed that some people had decided that it was a good time to go around defacing mosques.

Had that not been the first thing I saw I might have been more apathetic.

edited 25th Jun '11 5:14:28 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I always thought that if we have a villain, we can use it as a counterpoint to prove how good we are. It's not rational, but a lot of us like the feeling that we're on the right side

"Contests fought between two masters are decided instantly. An invisible battle is now raging between the two of them." Lulu vs Schneizel

Yeah, that makes sense, actually. It's a nice feeling, isn't it? Being superior.

Not attacking you. I mean it. It is a nice feeling. Potentially blindingly so.

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Oh it's a lovely feeling. A potentially blinding feeling that needs to be well balanced and understood thoroughly in how it feels, what it does to you, and how it arises. So...like all feelings.

edited 25th Jun '11 5:18:26 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

"I always thought that if we have a villain, we can use it as a counterpoint to prove how good we are. It's not rational, but a lot of us like the feeling that we're on the right side"

Like Bin Laden did with the U.S?

Just sayin' >_>

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

Agree that the bad is a counter point to the good. Moral superiority doesn't mean a whole lot without people to whom we are morally superior. To recognise the significance of something, or even its existence, it's converse needs to exist.

Logically that obviously isn't the case, but in the realm of emotion where logic is transcended, it's a psychologically important idea, no matter how irrational.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

I think it's more to do with a sense of "Wow - after all that's happened, he's gone. He's finished. He lost". He's probably the biggest Big Bad since the fall of the Soviet Union (depending on where you stand politically) and has certainly been the big evil for a generation or so. And now he's dead.

edited 25th Jun '11 5:40:55 PM by TheBatPencil

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

Also true. Beyond the practical stuff of him being leader of Al Quaeda, he was the figurehead, the representative, the symbol whose image was known the world over as representative of the West's War on Terror. In an intangible war fighting an abstract and difficult to quantify enemy, he was a direct and clearly identifiable target. By going specifically for him, a lot of damage would have to be done to the organisations he was associated with by default anyway.

Now he's gone, there's the somewhat sobering realisation that he was only a figurehead, and the abstract, difficult to quantify/destroy enemy remains in the shape of everyone else. Cue blackhole and emptiness of not having a specific target to go after and identifiable goal to achieve.

If that makes sense? Like my last post, this isn't about logic, but the psychology.

edited 25th Jun '11 6:10:28 PM by CaissasDeathAngel

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

Speaking with my history prof who was a former officer in the U.S. Army's VII Corps in West Germany, I'd have to agree with you. When the Cold War was ending, he said that the VII Corps staff were planning contingencies in Liberia, of all places to keep themselves relevant. As you know, the end of the Cold War meant that the U.S. military had to cut a lot of its manpower and as a result many were left without a job...

Liberia? That's like, one of the only countries in the world to not use metric.

They also have a shoddy economy too.

@OP Um...you do realize that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are still around, right? Plus we've still got plenty of dictators still alive and there's the drug lords down in Mexico...

Evil did not die with Osama bin Laden, no matter how much some people acted like it did.

There's no justice in the world and there never was~

I think on an evolutionary level, a counterpart is needed in order to improve. No competition. No improvement. De-evolution.

Honestly OP? I kind of felt that way too.

Years of hoping we would find his ass and take him down, thus justifying our revenge in Afghanistan.

I've never really been able to hate him much. He doesn't condone suicide tactics as a path to heaven, and I respect him for being as crafty and resourceful as he was. All I really felt when he died was "GG, you ran for a long time and evaded us for longer, but we finally got ya.."

GG Osama, GG.

I think the suddeness of it had a lot to do with it, too. I woke up that morning, turned on the TV just as a presenter on the BBC said the line "Osama Bin Laden is killed by American special forces in Pakistan".

Holy Shit!

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

I was watching CNN at the time so I knew as fast as any commoner could.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

I agree, and i wanted to mention that I respected his craftiness, but this being Real Life, it's apparently impossible to respect someone without loving and/or agreeing with them, so i decided to leave that out

I guess i just expected more from him. He built himself up as The Chessmaster, i was hoping for some more Xanatos Gambits outta the guy :(

edited 25th Jun '11 7:18:12 PM by gingerninja666

"Contests fought between two masters are decided instantly. An invisible battle is now raging between the two of them." Lulu vs Schneizel

We always have North Korea lol.

Indeed. Even though this one can understand the feeling. This one is just...worried...about where people would look for the Big Bad next

edited 25th Jun '11 8:42:24 PM by Beholderess

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

@OP: I don't think that's a bad thing to feel. For me, I was very much appalled by the way we were celebrating his death. I'm not 100% sure why though.

I think an acquaintance of mine clarified why I felt this way...she said that when 9/11 happened, people celebrated in a similar fashion as we did. She believes we should've been the "bigger man" in this situation.

"Without a fairy, you're not even a real man!" ~ Mido from Ocarina of Time