Why Obama should not have killed Osama or buried his body at sea
Barely a week has passed, yet the world already misses the genial, kindly face of Osama bin Laden.
Never again shall the faithful be inspired by his fiery speeches on video, urging true believers to take a shortcut to heaven.
This colossal loss results from US President Barack Obama’s poor sense of humour and inferior understanding of economics. His predecessors, Mr George W. Bush and Mr Bill Clinton, had spoken repeatedly about capturing or killing bin Laden while all the time bombing various cities around the world, detaining all sorts of people and giving the holy warrior himself a wide berth.
Mr George W. Bush it was who once confessed that if you want to grow the economy, start a war. In his time, he did just that, and by the time he was leaving office, there were more American homeowners and unemployment was not a problem.
There was work — in the military, doing torture, spying on enemies, learning Arabic or making bombs. Granted, a few people might have got into debt and defaulted on their mortgages, but it was not anything another war could not fix.
Mr Obama was handed a big global war into which all the economic problems could disappear but chose to squander it, cutting back troops in Iraq and winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
With unemployment in America still at 8.8 per cent by March this year, one would have expected Mr Obama to be hard at work creating jobs. Instead, he has taken out the biggest economic stimulus and job creator in the entire civilised world.
Osama bin Laden was a major public relations magic bullet that necessitated the Global War on Terror. It is a war that cannot be won or ended because of the important role it plays in American economics.
One does not need to look further than the figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2009, which confirm that despite a global recession, the sale of weapons yielded $14.8 billion (Sh1.24 trillion) more than the previous year’s $401 billion (Sh33.68 trillion) for the top 100 arms dealers around the world.
America alone accounts for 45 of the top 100 arms dealing companies, which generated just under $247 billion (Sh20.75 trillion) or 62 per cent of the total trade.
Dr Susan Jackson, an expert at the Stockholm Institute, says the US government is the biggest customer of firms that produce arms or offer military services.
For these companies to continue producing wealth and sustaining jobs, it is important for America to be engaged in a war of some kind.
Whenever the government loses interest in war, arms dealers are usually on hand to persuade them to adopt combative policies.
In the absence of war, large economies like America’s could be brought to their knees. Research into warfare would cease. Bullets would never be fired. Fighter jets would never take off. Then people would lose jobs and starve.
Although American is a big market for weapons and military services, it does not hurt if it has auxiliary markets abroad.
The Global War on Terror ensured that there were more weapons everywhere, especially in countries that have friendly ties with America, lest Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda visit them with explosives. Even the tiniest village airstrips have scanners to detect if passengers are carrying knives, bullets or gunpowder.
All this is in jeopardy because of the rash decision of the US President. No one had wanted to find Mr Osama bin Laden — not the Saudi’s nor the Afghanis, nor even the Pakistani.
For these nations, finding Mr bin Laden would signal to America that they had served their usefulness.
These past 10 years, the US military has been busy finding new markets for weapons around the world, arming America’s friends to keep Americans working, and then Mr Obama goes and kills the goose that lays the golden egg.
Obviously, he is oblivious to the length of time it took the US government to cultivate a credible, frightening and amorphous enemy in the name of Osama bin Laden? In just under 40 minutes, Mr Obama made millions of jobs in defence and arms precarious.
And to add insult to injury, the fellows Mr Obama sent did not know that Jack Bauer still needed to do Unthinkable things to Mr Osama.
Instead of capturing him and parading him through the streets of New York to be jeered and spat on by survivors of the September 11, 2003 attack, they hurriedly dumped his body in the sea, sinking with it all possibilities of auctioning his clothes and sandals on e-bay.
All that brand value, fed to the sharks, and America still whines about recovering from a financial crisis! Mr Obama should blame himself.
