If you haven’t read Nicholas Schmidle’s fascinating feature story from the August 8th issue of The New Yorker called “Getting Bin Laden,” you should. It’s an insider’s blow-by-blow account about what happened shortly after 11pm the night of May 1st when two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters lifted off in Eastern Afghanistan on the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. The story is riveting enough, but there was one aspect of the incident I wasn’t ready for. The SEALs reported that after killing their target, and then collecting flash drives, DVD’s, and computer hardware, they found something else interesting – Bin Laden’s stash of digital pornography. One of the SEALs remarked, “We find it on all these guys, whether they’re in Somalia, Iraq, or Afghanistan.”
Since reading that report, I’ve seen his statement confirmed in other news sources as well. I think it’s a strange side of these terrorist leaders who preach a strict and unforgiving morality. Men who publicly rant for hours about the moral debasement of the West. They often have multiple wives, are driven by their ideology, and supposedly swear to a religion that’s overwhelmed by rules, with no room for grace. Over and over, these tyrants are into online porn.
What does that say about the psyche of these guys? I’d love to hear your opinion…
