Well, I just want to ask one question and hope it reaches you.
Why do you suppose that the United States is "Western civilization"?
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
I don't know about such historical materialism. Humanity has certainly escaped from some of the 'historical laws' before, such as the Malthusian trap. If we fall of the precipice it's because we chose to, not because of some iron historical law. It's all about ideas.
Well historical materialism isn't the only philosophy that has historical laws. People who propound to see historical laws are usually laughed at by the historical community because there are no laws. Look at Francis Fukuyama and his book about the end of world history.
We shouldn't focus on it too much except to laugh at the sideshow. The thugs that are running the world are a bunch of clowns. Clowns from a horror movie, maybe, but still clowns. Machiavelli would roll over in his grave if he could see what lows his students in this generation have stooped to.
Clayton -
What do you mean, Clayton?
@Nero: I mean that we shouldn't get all wrapped up in the minutiae of the circumstances of bin Laden's death, it still ends up playing into the aggrandizement of State power. Look at all the energy poured over the years into endless analysis of JFK's death. What a waste of time. The burden of proof lies on the anti-historical claim that a political leader was killed by a lone assassin seeking notoriety. The same goes for the claim that bin Laden was an evil, comic-book mastermind at the helm of a super-elite, decentralized network of "terror cells" ready to strike at a moment's notice. Al-Qaeda is mostly a construct of the overwrought imaginations of the paranoid types that are attracted to working for intelligence agencies. UBL's death - whether in December 2001 or May 2011 - is not that important because UBL was not that important.
Therefore, it's not important to determine whether UBL's reported death on 5/1/2011 was genuine or not. My working hypothesis is that anything the government claims is false until proven otherwise, so I assume UBL was not killed in a raid on 5/1/2011 but then it's not an important enough lie to waste my time digging through the relevant news information. Whatever happened, happened. UBL's image has been used to wide extent by the US government to build an entire infrastructure of domestic tyranny and global empire so he has served his purpose no matter when he lived and died.
The rest is just comic relief; the sideshow of flag-wavers in front of the White House and burial-at-sea after a bunch of "commandos" raided a house and killed someone (supposedly UBL). Burial within 24 hours, why? They couldn't hold the body of the most important death in a decade in a fridge for another day or two while they flew out some journalists from the US, Britain and maybe al-Jazeera? Why not let the journalists take a swab home to verify the DNA claims? Even if this really was bin Laden they killed, it's still comical how badly it was handled. These people are nincompoops and they think they're going to rule the Universe with their grand global empire government.
Give me a break.