Written by Richard Kane   

I was intrigued by the title comparing of bin Laden with a Wicked Witch. The idea of bin Laden casting spells suddenly intrigued me. I am considered very inconsistent by both opposing capital punishment in all cases, yet supporting the exuberance at Ground Zero following bin Laden's death, though I would have cheered louder under certain circumstances if bin Laden had remained alive. The idea of war and peace having something to do with good and evil spells gives me new insight. That good karma spreads and bad karma spreads, like waves in a pound, I believe, but never dealt with before.

Everyone agrees that the worldwide celebrating when the Chilean miners were rescued was only for the good, but World War II's end was in part celebrated by drunken sailors ending up fighting with each other. I fully support the squirting of champagne.

Michael Moore in his important in depth remarks, said Hitler's death wasn't celebrated, however neither was earlier reports of bin Laden's demise. What if Hitler was killed, with his mistress and her family watching and verifying it to the world? Interestingly, I can't remember anyone cheering when there was a picture of the captured Saddam with a thermometer in his mouth, nor during the lynch-mob type trial and execution of Saddam where the anger didn't change to applause as the body fell. Cheering is more evident when a courtroom verdict is read than when an executioner pulls the switch. Cheering as someone dies is very rare except that one jingle about the wicked witch.

Bin Laden had reality booby-trapped where every time an al Qaeda member committed suicide rather than captured it was victory. Think of (compared to the massive haul when bin Laden was discovered) the small bits of information an al Qaeda member protected by (in the reality they created) “heroically” crashing a bomb-loaded truck into a US military base gate in Britain. To me the bad karma is not the cheering at Ground Zero but the hindsight interpretation that the major reason for the cheering was that a bad man was shot in the head.

It was amazing that bin Laden's plans to have the the CIA claim that he was unarmed and not booby-trapped, to make his follower think of it as the last final insult to a dead martyr, but the helicopter crash clearly gave him plenty of warning.

Come on all you glum peace activists, who used to cheer every inch toward peace, even as with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, negotiated with leaders in pursuit of peace. Far more recently, a peace group met with the then head of Pakistan, but today peace websites and publications are ignoring Afghan President Karzi's calls for mediators,
http://www.peaceproposal.com/power4.html
India is a rare exception,
http://tribune.com.pk/story/167929/indian-pm-backs-afghan-peace-talks/

Think of all the antiwar cheering, if in late April, Armed Service Committee head Carl Levin said some event made it easier for us to get out of Afghanistan. This then followed by Rep. Cliff Stearms, who was a firm hawk, sudden opposed the Afghan War,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/04/cliff-stearns-bin-laden-afghanistan_n_857630.html

Come on now, bin Laden's evil spell is broken. Since bin Laden left computer and other documentation lying around, we don't need to argue over whether the only way to get information is canceling civil liberties. A follower would be canned for such a mess. Bin Laden claimed that the only way non-Westerners could prevent their culture from being insulted, slandered and overwhelmed by the West is by a policy of total ruthlessness. I thank the Arab spring, President Obama's patience, and the amazing helicopter crash where no one was hurt and changed reality around in a significant way.

The Navy Seals couldn't come in through the windows due to a helicopter crash. Let's cheer that they risked what looked like almost certain death when they run up the long entrance way that seemed like it was designed to be flooded with gasoline. Thank you America to consider it is better to risk a Navy Seals life preventing innocent children from being hurt, than to attack from the terminal of a computer desk, with a drone.

If bin Laden were kept alive, and if that had lead to a new way of dealing with evildoers like the Nuremberg trials were supposed to do, I would cheer even louder. If bin Laden kept alive would mean in the future the US would attempt to replace drone strikes with arrest attempts. And if such attempts spread elsewhere. Such as if French and Qatar Navy Seals attempted to take Gadhafi alive with the help of percussion grenades, like the Spanish police tried with the Madrid commuter-train masterminds, who promptly blew themselves up killing a Spanish police officer in the process. The attack by France and Qatar could be immediately followed by a US warning that if the arresting officers all die, or were held for ransom, US cruse missiles would follow. If Qadhafi tried to avoid killing them while avoiding capture, even better. I would cheer the new universe that was beginning to unfold.

However if bin Laden kept temporarily alive led to nothing new, a lynch-mob styled trial as with Saddam, and 9/11 victims in further pain by arguing with each other over how bin Laden's punishment should proceed, I cheer this scenario did not follow his apprehension.

Near the end of World War II, US GIs were amazed to see Germans cheering. Some when the war ended packed their bags and headed home. Instead of being held for insubordination, the orders to stay for a while were changed. If the Taliban felt secure enough, they could declare a unilateral cease-fire and see if US war-heroes would be held for mutiny.

Ironically in and near Abbottabad where bin Laden was hiding all these years, bin Laden didn't sponsor creative terror attacks that might lead to any house to house searches. In fact he didn't direct much in the non-tribal areas of Pakistan in order to not tip off where he was hiding. So ironically the one area of the world where al Qaeda doesn’t have to watch their backs is anywhere near where he was hiding. His wife said they were in or near Abbottabad since 2001, meaning the 2005 video tricked the US as bin Laden sicked the US on to tribal Pakistan. He probably taped the 2001 video in front of a cave, then headed for urban Pakistan before releasing it. Obama thank you for your patience. Please give all detainees probational amnesty, Put a listening bracelet around their necks, and a tracking harness around their ankles and a siren that goes off when the two alarms are over six feet apart, and then let them out of custody.

Wars all over the world end in negotiations except wars the US fought, with the UN nominally in charge, the Korean War armistice didn't give negotiations a good name. The peace movement needs to respond to Afghan President Karzai's call for negotiators. Ask Karzai, Obama and the Taliban to state their minimum war demands. Hamad Karzai had asked the Saudis to mediate between his government and the Taliban, but the Saudis demanded that the Taliban denounce bin Laden before they would get involved, who is again looking into the matter? However real movement to encourage peace in Afghanistan is occurring in India,
http://tribune.com.pk/story/167929/indian-pm-backs-afghan-peace-talks/

In the past US Congressional reps. went to Syria and other countries to talk peace. A Congressional Bill demanding minimum goals be announced before any more funds are appropriated would make more sense than the current no more funding in six months bill.

For a change, if the US conspirator theorists are right, it would be good news as well. I am intrigued by the possibility of trains being derailed was a plot actually hatched by the CIA. Imagine an al Qaeda bragging about not getting caught when it turned out that freight trains, with a cadaver at the controls. I I would cheer a conspiracy where President Obama was quietly watching them since he became President, quietly placing listening devices everywhere they went until there was no way to stop the overthrow of the Yemeni government without being exposed. If freight trains kept derailing in the name of national security I would say brilliant, a much better idea than in the name of national security Churchill letting Coventry burn, so as not to tip off the Nazis that the West was listening to their secret code correspondence. Or Roosevelt letting Peal Harbor be a surprise to the sailors there so the Japanese could note that the aircraft carriers they were after were missing and call off their invasion of Hawaii at the last moment.

Today it's good news at every level including conspiracy theory!

The accusations that Obama and the Seals killed a helpless old man further breaks the spell that bin Laden was a Rambo character. A relative threatening to sue in US courts contrasts al Qaeda diehards at Guantanamo never asking for a bourgeois western decadent civil liberties. I wish the peace movement would cheer Chris Stearns peace statements, but the good karma is so overwhelming that this may end up good news as well, if only one former public hawk whether Bush, McChrystal, Rumfield, or Rice asked for sensible limited goals in Afghanistan the amazing karma could spread further.

Not long after the USSR left Afghanistan, warlords fighting led to a greater death-rate, then during the Soviet attacks. Limited goals might be better opportunities toward peace than US troops just suddenly leaving. One of the former hawks could suggest a US demand only that the Taliban leave Kabul alone, only slowly assuming jurisdiction like China is slowly still doing in Hong Kong. With Chinese peace keepers at the city of Kabul's borders. The Taliban could answer they want compensation as well or perhaps rent, and if savvy say no compensation necessary if Iranian, not Chinese, peacekeepers guarantee the peace.

The US may suddenly remember that it gives a small stipend to the relatives of an Taliban tribal leader who was urging the rest of the Taliban to accept negotiations until he was mistakenly bombed as a terrorist, and is giving a lot of blood money to the relatives of robbers shot by a CIA contact, and the US might on its own look around for other people who would never have been targeted if the US had prior knowledge that bin Laden was nowhere near by.

President Lincoln lessened the wounds of the Civil War by granting mass pardons. If the incredible lack of terror continues in the US and Europe, the US needs to grant probational amnesty to all, implanting listening devices not torture. The UN could accept Gadhafi's lying peace proposals if he would wear listening monitoring devices. Some day soon John Lennon's “Imagine No more War” may follow the National Anthem at sports events with people calling John Lennon a predictor of the future. There is no sign that the march toward bankruptcy and currency collapse from too much military spending is over, except gold and silver value as a hedge against currency collapse is constantly dropping in value. Incredibly silver now has only utility value.

Again Bin Laden as a supper smart Charles Manson implanting Helter Skelter on this planet made one mistake, he never expected the US to get him in such a way that the people he inspired would think he didn't have murder-suicide devices. Thank you again Arab spring, Obama, karma and blind luck.