Go USA!!!!

If you think this is going to be a celebratory blip then it's likely you've not read my journal before...

Let me just state for the record that Osama Bin Laden was what is commonly referred to as a bad man, and frankly I don't think the world is a worse place without him. Nor is it a different place, which is the immediate first issue I have with celebratory whooping at his premature (in his eyes) date with a whole pile of virgins. You still won't be able to take more than 100ml of liquid onto a plane; you'll still get a funny look if you're a little bit foreign carrying a backpack on a bus; the Patriot Act is not about to be repealed Stateside. International terrorism has not ended overnight. In fact, in fear at reprisals, our state of readiness (if not the official level of threat) has gone up.

Right, glad we got that cleared up. After all, there is precedent - I think I'm right in saying that after despatching Saddam Hussein from whence he came Iraq didn't suddenly fall into a pacified idyllic state.

But there's a bigger issue, personified by a random punter on a street in New York New York when asked by a radio reporter what he thought about the world's most wanted man being dead. He was proud, he revealed, that it had been done by Americans. "I'm glad," he continued, "that it was American who looked him in the eye, so he knew they knew who he was, then they shot him twice in the head," the self-righteous back-slapping excitement builds here, "checked him for DNA," well you've got to be sure before you deliver the coup de grace, "and dumped his body at sea," he finally frothed.

Bloodlust is this - ugly.

President Obama and former President Clinton both spoke of Bin Laden having been 'brought to justice'. I'm going to be pedantic here, 'justice' means facing a trial. Or tribunal. At the very least a commission. Osama Bin Laden was killed. Many of the newspapers here also lead with big JUSTICE headlines. Only the Scotsman got to the truth of it with REVENGE splashed across their front page. But 'revenge' sounds a bit too unpalatable compared to 'justice' doesn't it? And hey, it was justice in a biblical sense, an eye for an eye and a' that.

Like I said at the start, OBL was someone filled with hatred and actually put that hatred into actions, and as such the world might be a fractionally safer place without him. Rejoicing at his death is crass and, in the grand scheme of things, delusional. Interestingly one of the problems cited by zealots in the States with Al-Megrahi's return to Libya was 'vulgar' flag waving. A mirror is being held up now - but then there is a stereotype of Americans not really getting irony.

That it took almost ten years to track down Bin Laden and put a bullet between his eyes melts into the background. That it has taken the lives of young soldiers from so many countries (remember, we went into Afghanistan to find Bin Laden, will we now pull out?) in conflicts based entirely on the need to beat Bin Laden is swept under the carpet. The wanted poster is riddled with bullet holes, and that's all that matters. We're happy that a man has been killed. Ecstatic even. Dubya Bush, Clinton and Obama have all told us so, and Cameron toadies along to rejoice too.

Maybe, just maybe, some introspection at this point might make some of these people realise why the world has got to this point. But I doubt they can see it through the ticker-tape. I doubt they can hear it over the strains of the Star Spangled Banner. Cold, unequivocal, revenge. Served with a proud American bullet.

That'll teach 'em.