A few words on the assassination of Osama bin Laden

Assassination is not justice served, it is vengeance done. The world will not find peace while we continue to confuse justice with vengeance.

This is not a time for celebration or any kind of pride in achievement, but one for deep reflection on who we have become and what kind of world we are doomed to leave behind if we don’t make radical changes.

We continue to spend offensive sums of money on the machinery and the politics and the business of war while billions of people struggle to live. Claims for the moral high ground, for the side of ‘right’, all too often couched in religious terms, are made to hide motivations that have more to do with power, greed, resources, land, and just plain hatred of those who are different than they do with what is ‘right’ and ‘good’.

We are suffocating the planet but many of us would rather turn our backs on science than accept the consequences of what the science is demanding of us.

If we stopped warring and began to spend as much money on the things that bring peace, if we stopped plundering the planet and began to appreciate the natural world as sacred gift, it is true we would have to make massive changes to the current organising principles of our economy (which are inherently destructive of our humanity), but just think of the kinder, gentler, flourishing world we’d leave to future generations.

But maybe we can begin by just speaking the truth. The US and its allies have spent billions of dollars with the aim of assassinating a single individual in revenge. They have achieved their goal. The war and the hatred will continue.