By Faith and not by sight

One Sunday morning, an old cowboy entered a church just before services were to begin. Although his clothes were spotlessly clean, he wore a tattered jeans, a faded denim shirt and boots that were well worn and badly scuffed. In his hand he carried a well-worn tattered hat and carried an equally worn, dog-eared Bible.
The church he entered was in a very upscale and exclusive part of the city. It was the largest and most beautiful church in the city. The people of the congregation were all dressed with expensive clothes and fine jewelry.
As the cowboy took a seat, the others moved away from him. No one greeted, spoke to, or welcomed the aged cowpoke. They were all appalled by his appearance and made no attempt to hide it.
As the old cowboy was leaving the church, the preacher approached him and asked the cowboy to do him a favour. "Before you come back in here again, have a talk with God and ask him what he thinks would be the appropriate attire for worship in this church." The old cowboy assured the preacher he would.
The next Sunday, he showed back up for the services wearing the same ragged jeans, shirt, boots, and hat. Once again he was completely shunned and ignored. The preacher approached the cowboy towards the end and said, "I thought I asked you to speak to God before you came back to our church."

"I did," replied the old cowboy.
"And what was His reply?" asked the preacher.
"Well, sir, God told me that he didn't have a clue what I should wear. He said he'd never been to this church."

Let's walk by faith and not by sight.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week-end.

Love,

Adv. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

How can couples re-sync their desires?

Many men and women in long-term relationships are unhappy with the frequency they have sex.
Why does sex dry up in most long-term relationships?
What to do about it is the questin looming large for many.
According to a report in the March issue of The Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 54 percent of men and 42 percent of women are unhappy with the frequency of sex in their long-term relationships. A prime reason that couples go out of sync sexually lies in the brain’s reward circuitry. It’s a set of mechanisms that work together to drive all motivation, libido, appetite, and—when out of kilter—addiction. Therefore, it governs your attraction, or lack thereof, to each other under the sheet. It works subconsciously, which is why neither of you can will yourself to enjoy sex if the magic isn’t happening.

Your reward circuitry drives you by promising satisfaction using strategic surges of dopamine, the “go-get-it” neurochemical. But when no dopamine surges in the brain, it’s like the accelerator is not connected to the throttle. When it’s time for sex, going through the motions gets you nowhere or requires a lot of effort. Its very disheartening.

Instead of taking your mate’s unresponsiveness personally, keep in mind that both libido and lack of libido play into our genes’ strategy for propelling themselves into future generations. After all, when are we most likely to spread genes around? When we’re sexually dissatisfied in an existing relationship. Obviously, this is more likely after lovers have exhausted their one-time booster shot of fiery honeymoon neurochemistry.

Precisely how does this sneaky gene-spreading program put couples out of sync? Let’s say things are cooling, so you and your beloved act out a sexual fantasy or try a sizzling foreplay technique. Briefly, you recapture some of the drug-like buzz that effortlessly sustained your early sex lives—when you were jacked up on Mother Nature’s surplus neurochemicals.

But here’s the sinister bit: intense stimulation appears to have the power to trigger lingering changes that can leave some brains more dissatisfied soon afterward—and other brains desperately wanting time to recover.

Said one husband: I was going on the assumption that if she could just enjoy sex more, i.e., have more orgasms, we would have sex more often and my needs would be better satisfied. So, I was always trying to give her a good pounding. Instead she moved out of our bedroom.

It took years before they restored the harmony in their marriage.

Sexual frustration is stressful. But chances are you aren’t suffering alone.

One woman explained: “Regular” sex was always something that seemed to have to escalate in order for it not to become boring. “Let’s see, if I wear these crotchless panties, that will excite him” What usually ends up happening -if you have ever been married a long time or know people who have been- is that the wife starts withholding sex. Why? Because she has an innate fear that if she continues to escalate what they do to “alleviate the boredom,” then eventually, he’s still going to get bored. What do you do after you’ve done it swinging from the chandelier? You are out of ideas, and you no longer seem “fresh” or exciting to your husband.

Incidentally, about 13 percent of long-term couples seem impervious to this phenomenon. But that leaves the vast majority floundering in the habituation swamp.

Bad News for Lovers: Before evaluating possible coping strategies, it’s helpful to know why intense stimulation promotes discontent despite its short-term solution. There’s much still to learn, though it looks like the changes in the reward circuitry that temporarily dampens the pleasure response after climax.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week,

Love,

Adv. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

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Bonhomie, Luv Ya, Peace!

Kudos!

A 16-year-old boy from Chennai bagged the first prize in chemistry at the IntelInternational Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world's largest international pre-college science competition conducted in Los Angeles.

Raghavendra Ramachandran, from Chennai's St. John's International School, won over $9,000 in prize money for his research in the field of drug synthesis.

Some other winners from India included brother-sister duo of Hetal and Ankur Vaishnav from Rajkot, who received the second prize in the environmental-science category for developing a novel and economic way of recycling rexine waste material. Manosij Ghosh from South Point School in Kolkata also got a second prize (mathematical sciences) for his work on integer partitions and sequences.

The global fair, which included over 1,500 students from 65 countries had around nine Indian students participating, most of whom won some award or prize money for their science exhibits. Apart from these, the fair saw many NRI and PIO finalists, many of whom went on to win in their respective categories. Raghavendra, who was ecstatic after his win, told TOI he had missed an entire year of school to focus on his research. The fair was organized by Intel and the Society for Science and the public.

Asteroids to be named after winners: Students who won first and second prize at the Intel ISEF competition, will not only get a windfall in prize money but also have an asteroid named after them. This was announced by Jenifer Evans from MIT's Lincoln Lab at the concluding function of the science fair in LA.

'Lucky"

Mary and her husband Jim had a dog named 'Lucky'.

Whenever Mary and Jim had company visiting on week-ends, they would warn those friends not to leave their baggage

open because Lucky would help himself to whatever struck his fancy.

Inevitably, someone would forget and something would soon be missing.

Mary or Jim would then go to Lucky's toy box in the basement and there the treasure would definitely be, amid Lucky's

other favorite toys. Lucky always stashed his finds in his toy box and was very particular that his toys stay in the box.

It so happened that Mary found out on a certain day she had breast cancer. Something told her she was going to die

of that disease- in fact, she was just sure it was fatal.

She was scheduled for a double mastectomy, fear riding over her head. The night before she was to go to the hospital,

she cuddled with Lucky. A thought struck her....what would happen to Lucky? Although the three-year-old dog liked Jim,

he was Mary's dog through and through.

If I die Lucky will be abandoned, Mary thought. He won't understand that I didn't want to leave him!

The thought made her more grief-stricken than the impending possibility of her own death.


The double mastectomy was harder on Mary than her doctors had anticipated and Mary was hospitalized for over two weeks.

Jim took Lucky for his evening walk, but the dog just drooped- whining and miserable.

Finally the day came for Mary to leave the hospital. When she arrived home, Mary was so exhausted that she couldn't

even make it up the steps to her bedroom. Jim made his wife comfortable on the couch and left her to take a nap.

Lucky stood watching Mary but didn't go close when she called.

It made Mary sad but soon she fell into a deep sleep.

When Mary awoke, she couldn't understand what was wrong with her. She couldn't move her head and her body felt
heavy and hot. Panic soon gave way to laughter when Mary realized the problem:

She was covered, literally blanketed, with every treasure Lucky owned!

While she had slept, the grieving dog had made trip after trip to the basement bringing to his beloved mistress all

his favorite things. He had covered her with his love.

Mary forgot her foreboding thoughts about death. Instead she and Lucky began living again, walking together farther

and farther every day.

It's been 12 years now and Mary stays cancer-free.

As for Lucky, he still steals treasures and stashes them in his toy box but Mary still happens to be his greatest treasure.

Remember to live every day to the fullest.

Each minute is a gift of God.

And never forget - the people who make a difference in our lives are not the ones with the most

credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care for us.

If you see someone without a smile today give them one of yours.

Live simply... Love seriously... Care deeply... Speak kindly.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week-end.

Love,

Adv. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

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Bonhomie, Luv Ya, Peace!

'Non-Religious'; the fast-growing preference.

More than one billion people around the world define themselves as agnostic, atheist or nonreligious. What's more striking: “nonreligious” is not only the fastest growing religious preference in the U.S., but also the only one to increase its percentage in every state in the past generation.

In February, 1968, the Beatles came to India for an extended stay with their new guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It may have been the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus Christ's spending those 40 days in the wilderness. From Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, succeeding generations absorbed India’s 'science of consciousness', and millions have come to accept and live by the central teaching of the vedic wisdom: “Truth is One, the wise call it by many names.”

Recent bestsellers from Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris stress the irrationality of belief and what’s wrong with religion, while offering a few positive alternatives. In Good without God, Epstein explains how humanists strive to live well, build community, uphold ethical values, and lift the human spirit…all without god. “It’s not enough to just ‘discover’ the meaning of life. Humanism is concerned with one of the most important ethical questions—what we do once we’ve found purpose in life.”
In the 1960s, almost all progressives thought what Marxism said was right: religion was the opium of the people. But that did not provide answers to bigger questions or a means to get one's life together. That led to the spread of Eastern Philosophy, Mysticism, Yoga, Hinduism and Buddhism. There was something in the zeitgeist that brought the East to the forefront. It was Ravi Shankar’s music, it was the Beatles, it was drugs... and the passion to get answers.

I read Bagavad Gita and a few other books by western interpreters -- Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and Houston Smith – who presented ancient teachings in a very rational and sensible way that made sense or rather talked to me. I remember saying to myself, “Why do they call this mysticism? There’s nothing mysterious about it.” It makes sense and offers an empirical approach to human development and attempts to define our place in the cosmos. That got me hooked, and I wanted more and more. And now I want to start meditative practices which have the power to transform life for the better. The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, to me, is the very western perspective on meditation…

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week,

love,

prof. dr. alex abraham odikandathil

Fraud begets fraud..

The Obama administration tried to portray its prized kill honorable by detailing a picture-perfect, morally unambiguous special forces operation, which culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of the details of that narrative have now unravelled, but the conventional wisdom that the tale established remains. As Glenn Greenwald put it, that's par for the course: “the narrative is set forever by first-day government falsehoods uncritically amplified by establishment media outlets, which endure no matter how definitively they are disproven in subsequent days.”
In his address to the American people, and in subsequent media briefings by senior officials, we were told that a small force of as many as 25 Navy Seals stormed the compound with orders to take bin Laden alive, if possible. White House spokesman Jay Carney said that once inside the compound, they came under heavy fire and “were engaged in a firefight throughout the operation.” The SEALs killed Osama bin Laden's son when he lunged for them on a staircase, and finally encountered their quarry in a bedroom, where, after taking a woman believed to be his wife as a human shield, bin Laden died in a vicious fire-fight. The operation, Obama said, was carried out “with extraordinary courage and capability.”
As the week wore on, all of these details were "revised," and the administration claims that the initial, improbably clean account of what happened was merely a product of the "fog of war." And, as Salon's Justin Elliott notes, “despite the major misstatements by the administration on perhaps the biggest story of the year, the media has largely taken a deferential stance” to that position.
Let's look at what has changed since that first draft of history was written by the administration.

1. No Firefight
John Brennan, White House security adviser, initially told reporters that bin Laden “was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in.” But on Wednesday, unnamed “administration officials” told NBC that only one person fired on U.S. troops from an adjacent guest house, and once they entered the main residence the “resistance” we were told they faced “never materialized.”
The compound was cleared quickly, said the officials, and rather than a 40-minute firefight, the commandoes spent most of their time there gathering computer hard drives and other potential sources of intelligence.

2. No Human Shields
A senior defense official at the Pentagon told reporters that bin Laden and other combatants "certainly did use women as shields." Jay Carney “revised” that part of the narrative, saying, "a woman, rather, bin Laden's wife, rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed."

3. Kill Team?
Bin Laden's daughter alleges that the special forces operators first captured bin Laden and then executed him, though that story hasn't been confirmed. But (yet another) unnamed administration official told Reuters that the team “was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him.”
Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that the killing was an act of “self-defense,” but the account given by another official to NBC appears consistent with the idea that they were ordered to kill the terrorist leader. After entering the bedroom where bin Laden was holed up and shooting a woman in the leg, “without hesitation, the same commando turned his gun on bin Laden, standing in what appeared to be pajamas, and fire two quick shots, one to the chest and one to the head.” There were reports of weapons in the bedroom, but bin Laden was “unarmed at the time he was shot.” When asked if the al Qaeda leader had said anything to the operators, CIA chief Leon Panetta told PBS' Jim Lehrer, "To be frank, I don't think he had a lot of time to say anything."

4. Larger Force
According to the New York Times, the team comprised 79 special forces operators and a dog, 3 times the number of troops originally reported. This is relevant to the question of whether they could have taken bin Laden alive had that been their goal. As David Dayen noted, “the SEALs were well-trained and had the element of surprise, and this overmatched their foes, who were not plentiful – there was not a phalanx of bodyguards protecting the al Qaeda leader.”

5. No “Picture-Perfect” Operation
According to the Associated Press, “Navy SEALs carried out what those involved call a textbook military operation that killed the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden.” It's an odd assertion, given that the raid appears to have resulted in a coveted, highly classified technology falling into the hands of a rival state.
ABC reports that one of the four helicopters used in the raid was damaged and destroyed by the SEAL team. But the parts left behind in the compound revealed a “top secret, never-before-seen stealth-modified helicopter” that had previously only been “rumored to exist.” According to the report, “photographs emerged of large sections being taken from the crash site under a tarp,” and former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke “said U.S. officials may have reason to worry about where those parts end up.”
"There are probably people in the Pentagon tonight who are very concerned that pieces of the helicopter may be, even now, on their way to China, because we know that China is trying to make stealth aircraft," he said. The Chinese military is known to have a close relationship with the Pakistani military.

6. Not Living in Luxury
On Monday, defense officials told reporters that bin Laden was holed up in a million-dollar compound and wondered what other terrorists might make of the situation "when they see that their leader was living, relatively speaking, high on the hog."
But footage from inside the compound shows little sign of luxury. Cooking equipment was shown on the floor, the decor seemed shabby, medicines were left on a shelf with no cabinet and the pantry seemed rudimentary. The paint was peeling outside the building and there was no sign of air-conditioning.

7. White House Wasn't Watching the Whole Operation Unfold
On Monday, John Brennan said, "We were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the operation from its commencement to its time on target to the extraction of the remains and to then the egress off of the target.” This gave way to the now iconic images of Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others watching intensely from the White House situation room. But the next day, CIA Director Leon Panetta told PBS, “Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. There were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.”

Now we need to be ashamed of ourselves. Who said honesty - not deception - is the best policy?

Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week-end.

Love,

Adv. Alex Abraham Odikandathil

Why is Laden killed NOW?

You might remember a Shekhar Suman gag on Zee TV's Movers and Shakers
several years ago:
An angry George W Bush announces that the United States will bomb the
place where Osama bin Laden is found to be hiding.
Hearing this, Vajpayee looks under his bed, pauses, and with a
characteristic flick of his wrist says: "Thank God! He isn't here!"
Over in Rawalpindi, General Musharraf looks under his bed, sighs in
relief, and says: "Thank God! He is still here!"
Shekhar Suman, more than most Western analysts, got the plot right.
Keeping Osama bin Laden out of Washington's hands was vital in order
to prevent having to publicly deal with revelations of how the
Pakistani military-jihadi complex not only was connected with
al-Qaeda, but might also have been involved in the conspiracy behind
the 9/11 attacks.
Moreover, when the Pakistani military leadership was getting paid
hundreds of millions of dollars per year to hunt bin Laden down, it
made little sense to give him up quickly. As early as October 2001, a
month after 9/11, wags in Islamabad coined the phrase "al-Faida" (the
profit) in anticipation of the rewards Pakistan would reap for joining
the war on terror that it had played a part in creating. Pakistan was
in an international doghouse at that time. Its economy was crumbling
under the weight of sections imposed by the international community
for having carried out nuclear tests in 1998. Its government, then
under General Musharraf's military dictatorship, was seen as odious,
not least for supporting the original Taliban regime in Kabul. It was
barely surviving on Saudi largesse until September 2001, when General
Musharraf's ditching of one set of allies for another changed his
country's fortunes -- from being nearly toast, Pakistan was the toast.
Just how much was the al-Faida worth? According to data compiled by K
Alan Kronstadt, of the US Congressional Research Service, between 2002
and 2010, US direct overt aid and military reimbursements to Pakistan
amounted to $19.6 billion, of which $13.3 billion was for
security-related heads. Obviously, if there is "direct, overt" aid,
there is likely to be "indirect, covert" aid. There is also the money
from other countries and loans from the IMF. Because the
military-jihadi complex dominates the Pakistani political economy, it
is the primary beneficiary of this largesse. Between 2002 and 2008, my
estimate suggests that the business of shipping US and NATO containers
from Karachi to Kabul alone made $500m per year for the military
establishment and $300m per year for the militant groups. Why would
they want the gravy train to stop?
They wouldn't, but the Obama administration had other ideas. It made
three changes that caused the Pakistani military establishment to redo
its sums. First, the Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation made it harder for
the military to capture the funds. It also came with more strings
attached. Second, the Obama administration increased the number of
drone strikes against targets in Pakistan, while increasing pressure
on the Pakistani army to go after the taliban groups in its tribal
areas. Finally, by indicating a timeline for withdrawal of US troops
from Afghanistan, Washington triggered the endgame.
With the Obama adminstration taking a harder line on the Pakistani
army, the al-Faida from the war against al-Qaeda began to be less
attractive. At the same time, with a US withdrawal in sight,
Afghanistan began to look more attractive as a prize. For General
Kayani to stand a chance for claiming this prize, it is necessary for
President Obama to prevail over other members of his administration
and get US troops out earlier.
Playing the bin Laden card is a brilliant way to achieve this outcome.
Although US officials claim they did it without Pakistan's knowledge
or permission, it is hard to believe he could be found without the
Pakistani military establishment permitting it.
Either way, bin Laden's elimination provides the right political cover
for President Obama to declare victory and order his troops out of
Afghanistan. Once withdrawal starts, President Obama will be
politically dependent on General Kayani to ensure that it takes place
in a manner that doesn't damage his re-election prospects. Expect the
latter to use the leverage to ensure that the military-jihadi complex
gets its proxies into the government in Kabul.
As I wrote on my blog yesterday, "the United States is unlikely to
punish Pakistan for the decade of duplicity, subterfuge and violence
that consumed innumerable lives and astounding amounts of money."
President Obama will not ask why Osama bin Laden was living it up in
Abbottabad, a bus stop away from the Pakistan Military Academy, and
not in a cave somewhere in Waziristan. You won't find Washington too
interested in confronting General Kayani on when bin Laden moved in
there and why his presence went undetected for so long.
Rather, Washington will seek plausible reassurances that after it
leaves, Afghanistan will not play host to terrorists targeting the
United States. It will place some anti-Taliban and anti-Pakistan
Afghans into positions of power in Kabul to balance Pakistan's
proxies. It might retain some troops and drones in Afghanistan just in
case it needs to use a stick. That apart, it will accede to Pakistani
demands that Kabul be made over to a pro-Pakistani regime.
In time, the Pakistani military-jihadi complex will seek to reconquer
Afghanistan (called "gaining strategic depth") with China's support or
connivance.
We are staring at a return of the 1990s. This is a bad outcome for
Afghans, Pakistanis and Indians. The military-jihadi complex will gain
in strength. Pakistan's civilian government will be more powerless. It
will only be a facade with which to seek foreign assistance. It will
also be the whipping boy, blamed for the worsening state of Pakistan.
Hundreds of thousands of triumphant militants will need to be given
new targets. Compared to the early 1990s, it is far more difficult
today---strategically and operationally---to push them across into
India. Yet, the interests of the military-jihadi complex and the
absence of a miracle job-machine will pose a serious threat to India's
national security. We may be, at best, two summers away from an
escalation of the proxy war in Kashmir and elsewhere.

Triumph or Tumult?

The murder of Bin Laden will win Obama kudos at home, but will it
further destabilize Pakistan?

The subways were shut down in the wake of the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. The workers of Washington filled the
streets, tuned out of their office buildings, many with no way home,
moving dazedly along the pavement on a brilliant fall day against a
sonal backdrop of screaming sirens. That was 2001.

Yesterday morning, the screaming outside the White House came from a
gathering of hundreds of young people waving American flags, hooting
and hollering gleefully, in celebration of the death of Osama bin
Laden, whose demise at the hands of U.S. troops was announced very
late Sunday night by President Obama.

It's hard to overstate the symbolic victory, both for the Obama
administration, and for the American people, of the news of Bin
Laden's death. And for the family members and friends of those whose
lives were taken by the al Qaeda attacks, a sense of justice is no
doubt felt served by most. All the same, one thing that is easy to
overstate is whatever negative impact the Bin Laden killing will have
on the daily operations of the terrorist organization he founded,
which, according to national security experts, he wasn't really
running himself anymore, anyway. Meanwhile, his second-in-command,
Ayman al-Zawarhiri, remains at large.

But it's also hard to estimate the amount of blow-back the U.S. and
its allies will encounter as a result of the killing. Already there
are calls for photos of the body, of which Obama said the U.S. has
custody, to be released, an act that would likely serve as an
incitement to extremists. Those who think the killing of Bin Laden
signals an end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan may want to think again,
for it's quite possible that Pakistan will be further destabilized by
Bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. forces on a compound so close
to the capital. At this point, the Afghan war is no longer about
Afghanistan, which many believe to be a lost cause; it's about the
nuclear-armed Pakistan, and maintaining a U.S. presence in a tinderbox
region that could blow up a good part of the world.

It's difficult to believe that U.S. could have gone in to the compound
in Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was found, without the acquiescence of
Pakistan's President Zardari, already a weak figure whose reputation
is unlikely to be enhanced by any role he may have had in allowing the
U.S. to conduct a military operation on his nation's soil. The U.S.
was unpopular in Pakistan long before it began launching drone attacks
on villages in the hinterlands of Waziristan, but repeated operations
that yielded civilian deaths have soured even moderate Pakistanis on
their government's rather tortured alliance with the Western
superpower. U.S. officials now claim that Pakistan was not notified
before the raid on Bin Laden's compound, though.

Yet while U.S. intelligence operatives likely located Bin Laden's
location via government insiders, the location of Bin Laden's hideout
suggests that the late al Qaeda leader had more than a little help
from inside the Pakistani intelligence community, where he had always
found a significant measure of support. There was a time, of course,
when Bin Laden also had the support of the American intelligence
community -- back when the U.S. was arming Afghan warlords and jihadis
to take on the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan. Bin Laden
used his fortune as the scion of a Saudi construction magnate to
gather a force of foreign, mostly Arab, fighters to fight alongside
the Afghans and the CIA was only too happy to help Bin Laden's
fighters get the arms they needed.

Pakistan was the conduit for the supply chain of rocket launchers and
Kalashnikovs supplied by the U.S., and through its madrassahs,
sustained by both the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
operation, young men were turned into fighters. However noble the
cause of Afghans reclaiming their nation from the Soviet invaders, the
U.S. was not in it for the nobility of the cause; America was fighting
its own proxy war against the Soviets, and the devastation America's
Cold War foe endured at the hands of the Afghans surely facilitated
the Soviet Union's demise as a nation.

But after the Afghans all but won the Cold War for America, the U.S.
turned tail and left, leaving stockpiles of arms in the hands of
unscrupulous warlords. The Taliban was initially born as an antidote
to rapaciousness of the warlords, only to become its own brand of
oppression, aided and abetted by Osama Bin Laden, who, until yesterday
was more than a living, breathing symbol of extremism; he was a
living, breathing creature of the blowback to America's first
intervention in the region.

Now that he is gone, the question of blowback re-opens. While Bin
Laden's death by U.S. bullets may not operationally change the
function of al Qaeda, it changes the dynamics around the world. Barack
Obama will forever be the guy who got Bin Laden, surely a triumph for
him at home. But in the part of the world where U.S. arms have killed
children, and where U.S. history is too often a story of alliance with
dictators, the outcome is far less certain.