Michael Moore ‘thrilled that the Osama bin Laden era’ has ended

• Tweet
• 
• 

• Tweet

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore may have criticized the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, but that doesn’t mean he too didn’t feel some relief at his passing.

“When I heard the news a week ago Sunday, I immediately felt great. I felt relief,” he wrote in an essay published to his website Thursday morning. “I thought of those who lost a loved one on 9/11. And I was glad we finally had a President who got something done.”

“I was thrilled that the Osama bin Laden era was over,” he opined.

RELATED: Keith Olbermann taps Michael Moore for new show on Current TV

However, it’s not exactly a reversal for the lauded and reviled filmmaker. He goes on to make the analogy between the killing of bin Laden and the nuking of Japan toward the end of World War II.

“When the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, people didn’t pour into the streets to whoop it up,” he went on. “Yes, people were happy that it might help end the war, but there was not a public display of ‘Yippee! A hundred thousand Japs have been fried!’ If they had done that, well, who could have blamed them after so many tens of thousands of their sons and fathers had been lost in the war (including my uncle, a paratrooper, killed by a sniper near Manila). But the sailor kissing the girl in Times Square was on August 14th, 1945, when the Japanese surrendered and the war was officially over. That’s when America went crazy with joy – not over a killing, but over an announcement of peace.”

It’s essentially the same argument he made during a recent CNN appearance, suggesting that America has lost a part of it’s “soul” since that time.

“Something that separates us from other parts, other countries where we say everybody has their day in court no matter how bad of a person, no matter what piece of scum they are, they have a right to a trial,” he told Piers Morgan last week. “After World War II, we just didn’t go in and put a bullet to the head of all the top Nazis. We put them on trial.”

Read his full essay here.