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I thought it might help. I thought if I laid it all out, if I could visualize the distinctions, the boundaries, I thought I might be able to get some strike-back satisfaction.
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Did you?
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No.
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Maybe you just haven't gotten what you want.
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I don't think that's it. Even if I imagine a best case scenario where I'm given indisputable proof of bin Laden's direct responsibility, then we blow him up in a cave, it still doesn't sound good. It still sounds sad and bad.
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I think you need to visualize a simplified version of the situation. Emphasize pragmatics over vengeance. Picture some children standing on the edge of the subway platform. Here comes a train, and here comes Osama, sneaking up, sneaking up, intent upon pushing the little children to their deaths under the wheels of the A-train. He lunges! You draw your gun! Bam! Bam! Osama's dead! The children are saved! Bravo!
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Hmm. Yes, that helps. But wouldn't it be more fun to lasso him? Lasso him and throw him into the pokey? And what if I shoot him dead then learn that he was developmentally disabled with the IQ of a 3 year old?
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But he isn't.
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No, but doesn't it feel like that? Doesn't he seem to genuinely believe his professed ideology? I can't help seeing him as a man in the grips of a powerful mental virus. A man with a virus-disabled moral sense.
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You're hopeless.
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I know.
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It would be different if you knew someone who was killed.
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Probably.
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Why is it shaped like a tank?
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That was an accident.
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