Osama bin Laden is dead. One Buddhist’s response.

by Susan

“In the Shambhala warrior tradition, we say you should only have to kill an enemy once every thousand years.” –Chogyam Trungpa

So, Osama bin Laden is dead. We killed him. There really was no choice. We were clearly in an “us or them” situation and if we didn’t kill him, he was going to continue to do everything in his power to kill us.

As Buddhists, we are supposed to abhor all killing, but what do you do when someone is trying to kill you? Obviously great theologians have pondered this question for millennia and I’m not going to try to pile on with my point of view, which would be totally useless.

Instead, I’ll pose this question: How do you kill your enemy in a way that puts a stop to violence rather than escalates it?

http://www.susanpiver.com/wordpress/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-one-buddhists-response/

I don't think he had anywhere near that kind of power.

Acting alone, he could have done virtually nothing.

Acting after his death, others can certainly perpetrate more needless violence.

I don't care that he's dead. I don't feel sorry for him.

But I don't think we won much of anything.

I don't think much has changed.

He is that dangerous. Anyone who has killed can more easily kill again. He had a lot of help hiding over the past decade, he has followers, none of that has changed.

We won a massive amount. Think in terms of the intelligence gathered in that compound... the computers alone are surely loaded, and the communication history is pointing fingers to a whole lot of supporters and helpers.

important than the information on contacts, on-going operations, funding sources that we (hopefully) recovered from his place.

He was not a military leader who could order millions, or even thousands, into battle. He was a facilitator. His value was in he ability to organize.

And now we have his rolodex.

and that is enough to celebrate.

"if we didn’t kill him, he was going to continue to do everything in his power to kill us."

He really is dangerous if he could hi-jack multiple planes all at the same time.

The lesson is that there will always be Osamas, there do not always need to be followers.

Hitler also did not drop the Zykon into the gas chambers.

Not every mass murderer kills his victims personally.

I hope you're able to expand your thinking at some point.

Before he started murdering people, there was a time when Bin Laden was an innocent person, a good person who could have stayed that way if he hadn't made the wrong choices. But the world lost that person when he chose to murder people instead of dialogue.

To quote the movie Avatar: "You don't 'thank' for this. This is only sad."

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every part of it, anymore than I believe the Christian mythology, despite the wisdom of some of Jesus's supposed words.

What a Buddhist monk says is not necessarily the universal truth. No man speaks the truth in all things.

But thanks for your post.

and Trungpa was an amazing, infuriating person and teacher.