Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
Hahahahaha.
"The Era of Osama lasted about an hour and a half or so, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty."
- Jim Bennett, UPI

It's nice being right.

I'll give us all one guess (okay, maybe two) who got him.

Too bad he won't get to see the Freedom Tower completed. But I suppose you can't have everything.

[ 5AM video of me dancing a jig with the headline on my iPad elided. On second thought, it's no cause for celebration. A man's dead – and the people he killed aren't coming back. Nor are the thousands of American servicemen and women who've died protecting us in the war he started. Though we can hope many of their brothers and sisters in arms will be coming home soon. (*)]



Update: Morning Elaboration

My jubilant reaction lasted about four minutes, which I think is about right. This isn't a cause for celebration. We had to kill a man – several, in fact. It's the Salafist jihadis who celebrate death, not us.

The whole thing was unfortunate – it's unfortunate that bin Laden couldn't just be decadent, wealthy playboy, spending his family's money on nice Lithuanian hookers in London; it's a damned shame he had to kill all those people; and, yes, it's a shame we had to kill him in response.

Watching the celebrations in Lafayette Square, and at Ground Zero, I did think that's nice for the boys in the spec-ops community who accomplished this – that they get to see how much their tireless and masterful work is appreciated, and that it made people happy. (I didn't particularly like how Obama seemed to be claiming personal credit for it, apparently campaigning. Let's be clear: Obama did nothing.)

Anyway, the hope now is that we can now spend a lot of the terror-fighting money and effort on curing disease, and eradicating poverty, and making a $500 tablet device that can run the new Unreal 3 engine:

The Israelis, perhaps, had it best:

"We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel."
- Golda Meir (Israeli Founder and Prime Minister, 1898-1978)

I'm sure she would have mentioned the Unreal 3 Engine had she been alive today.

Oh, yeah, look who else is taking it pretty soberly – the Marines in Afghanistan:


Update: Tactical Note

It's being reported that the takedown was done by Navy SEALs, pace my guess that it was 1st SFOD-D. I'll make another guess: the SEALs were actually DEVGRU (aka SEAL Team 6) and they were attached to the many-numbered Task Force, or at any rate under JSOC. This was a deliberate, not rushed, op – and I'd be surprised if they would use anything other than Tier-1 SOF. Whether it was Delta or DEVGRU sort of comes down to the theatre and the current rotation. Then again, it's by design that someone like me shouldn't know much about this.

Update: That looks about right:

U.S. Joint Special Operations Command Special Mission Unit (SMU) from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU – formerly known as Seal Team Six) did the shooting. There were other JSOC spotters on the ground, as well as two special operations helicopters and an unmanned drone overhead.


Oh, my. (Thanks, Wahoo.)

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.

On a personal/professional note –

Right now, somewhere, a genre novelist is finishing work on a special forces military terrorism thriller that climaxes with capturing bin Laden – and going, "Well . . . shit." Sorry, dude.


This is nice – Arab Americans celebrating in Dearborn, MI


And another group that has every right to feel okay today:


Right then. Off now to Mayfair, for a quick swing by Grosvenor Square to see if anything is happening outside the American Embassy. Then beers and Lebanese food in Shephard's Market. Life's truly not so bad today.

Final Update: UBL Demise Day Photos

Okay, here's some photos from our lovely day of celebrating in Mayfair – virtually all taken after a couple of pints in Ye Grapes, and a couple more beers in the lovely Iranian restaurant, both in Shephard's Market . . .


Our Flag Was Still There

Okay, I wasn't too big on the triumphalism, but this one is hard to resist: it's got spraying champagne, Church Street (one edge of Ground Zero), and spontaneous singing of the National Anthem. There are a range of feelings about having a song about a battle as our national anthem. But it seems very suitable today.



  9/11     al qaeda     the long war     the military     spec-ops  
about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

my latest book
ARISEN : Operators, Volume I - The Fall of the Third Temple by Michael Stephen Fuchs
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