I was thinking about how the killing of bin Laden complicated things for conspiracy theorists, especially those who hate our President. Of course, the simplest explanation is that Barack Obama is an American and did give the kill order on Osama bin Laden. That's what all the evidence points to. But conspiracy theorists aren't big fans of evidence. In fact, if evidence goes against their preferred theory, rather than simply dimiss it, they often absorb it into the conspiracy itself; every piece of evidence to the contrary becoming fake evidence which proves the conspiracy. Only, in this case, the ideological underpinnings of the conspiracy are the problem. Folks who hate our President often claim that he's not tough enough on terrorists, and this plays into their belief that he's not only a foreigner, but a secret Muslim who is probably in league with terrorists. So when he orders the assassination of bin Laden, what is a Birther to do? On the other hand, if you're the kind of jihadist conspiracy theorist who thinks 9/11 was a big fake by the U.S. Government to create a war with Islam and bin Laden is innocent or a hero or whatever, you now have to deny his death in order to avoid giving credit to America. Unless, that is, you can deny that Obama, who ordered the hit, is American, in which case a Kenyan killed your favorite terrorist. Or you can deny both Obama's natural born status and bin Laden's death.
But these positions can't overlap. Obama can't be both the American responsible for killing bin Laden and not American. He also can't have ordered and not ordered the hit. So how will patriotic Birthers handle the fact that they want America to take credit for bin Laden's death, but they don't want to acknowledge that Obama, the President who made the call, is American?
Perhaps President Obama, using his Kenyan-born Muslim genie-powers, teleported George W. Bush into the White House so Dubya could make the decision to go for it. (Seems this theory is getting some play already.) Then Obama whisked Bush II away so he could take the credit, all the while having bin Laden quietly escorted to White House basement so the two of them could spend an evening bowling with the robot that carries the floating brain of Richard Nixon?
Oh, I shouldn't even joke, because someone will voice that "theory" and cite "the internet" as their source.
