Osama Bin Laden: Slave to The Man

The news that Osama Bin Laden had Nestle and both Coca Cola and Pepsi delivered to his compound is quite astonishing.

For a man who railed against the consumer capitalism of America to be ordering in crate after crate of Coca Cola, surely the no. 1 American export, should be enough to dispel any lingering romanticism surrounding him.

Hamas, the Palestinian authority in the Gaza Strip, mourned his death as the killing of an "Islamic holy warrior". Somebody should show them the Coca Cola: what kind of holy warrior enriches the beast he is supposed to be slaying with both his money and his body?

I was so appalled by the disgusting ethics of Nestle in Nepal - how they sold poverty stricken mothers "mother's milk substitute", on the promise that it would be better for their baby than breast milk, when in fact it was lacking in vital nourishment - that I have boycotted Nestle products for seven years.

An Islamic holy warrior should at least be able to maintain the level of personal discipline required not to buy Nestle and Coke.

It isn't hard.

I know it may seem strange to concentrate on this point, what with the guy being responsible for thousands of deaths and the terror of millions, but it is telling.

There are those who we, in the UK, would call heroes, who are responsible for the deaths of thousands and the spread of terror throughout millions.

Our heroes, we might say in their defense, were just.

We know OBL was not just, but he is also not merely a hero to his erstwhile followers. Some blind fools, like those within Hamas, claim him as a martyr, so they must hold him to a different standard.

A martyr must live a life consistent with at least his own beliefs. OBL wasn't consistent at all.

With one side of his mouth he damned the imperialist, capitalist devil infidels of the west; with the other he chugged Pepsi and Coke and chowed down on Chunky Kit-Kats ("truly a confection fit for Allah himself" he might have mumbled to himself, wiping the biscuit crumbs from his lap and washing it down with some Diet Coke: "Nothing like the real thing". He smiles to himself and leans back, before returning to his Playstation 2).

Not even the shadow of a martyr, a poor excuse of a warrior, unholy is perhaps too kind: Osama Bin Laden was nothing more than a criminal, and one who was witless enough to imprison himself in a single room for 5 years, before getting his brains blown out by a nameless soldier.

What a gormless waster.