AnkaraTheFallen said:
Edit: My main reasons for this is that we have no real proof that it is him, they say that they knew he was in that compound for a week before they went in (if you've been on the run from america for 10 years you don't just stop and stay in one place), and they buried his body at sea themselves... no offence to americans but when has their government really cared about people religious wishes... there's plenty of innocent people that they don't let have their own religious burial for one reason or another, and they've just decided to bury his body before anyone can confirm it is his... seems a bit odd to me.
Please before anyone decides to hate me for this I accept this is just my view and in all reality I might be wrong, I'm just giving my own views.
To provide a bit of clarity that might better inform your views on this:
1. When your health is as bad as bin Laden's was, you certainly do stay in one place for as long as possible. Travel is just not good. Additionally, you are far more vulnerable to detection when you're on the move. "Running" is a bad idea. "Hiding," however...
2. They knew he
could be there, which is why they waited for a week and gathered more information to make the decision. They wanted to avoid tipping their hand.
3. Burial at sea, as noted in other posts, prevents shrines or grave robbers (on either side). It would have been a simple matter to get the body out of there on military transports, rather than civilian, so logistically it's a sensible solution, too.
4. The most important: Yes, in the past, America has been (mostly unintentionally) insensitive to certain Muslim beliefs and customs. That's part of what contributed to the hatred that led to the attack. Why shouldn't you expect that over the past decade, we've tried to learn a bit more?
We've recognized that we're dealing with
two separate groups: Muslims and terrorists. There is overlap, sure, in the form of extremists, but they are still two separate groups. If we had refused bin Laden--a Muslim man--proper funerary customs, the non-Muslim world would see it as little problem. The Muslim world, however, views him as a
Muslim first, and then as whatever monster we believe him to be. If we had refused to bury him in a timely fashion, we would surely piss off the Muslim world (and among them, many of those extremists, who could potentially ally with the terrorists).
This was a tactical
and political decision. We follow the customs to avoid raising the ire of the Muslim world. We avoid making a martyr of him to both his organization (who surely already hold him as such), but also anti-Western Muslims everywhere (who could use our disregard for the customs as an excuse to turn extremist).
Our military from top to bottom has been doing
a lot of work over the past decade to learn more and be more sensitive about Muslim customs and Mid-East culture. You don't see all of that publicized, of course, but it is
constantly going on. This is a good result--the body is dealt with in a way that caters to Muslim custom, but also prevents shrines and trophies from popping up at the burial site.
