Salon.com: There is ample reason to feel relief that Osama bin Laden is no longer a threat to the world, and I say that not just because I was among the many congressional staffers told to flee the U.S. Capitol on 9/11. I say that because he was clearly an evil person who celebrated violence against all whom he deemed “enemies” — and the world needs less of such zealotry, not more.
However, somber relief was not the dominant emotion presented to America when bin Laden’s death was announced. Instead, the Washington press corps — helped by a wild-eyed throng outside the White House — insisted that unbridled euphoria is the appropriate response. And in this we see bin Laden’s more enduring victory — a victory that will unfortunately last far beyond his passing.
For decades, we have held in contempt those who actively celebrate death. When we’ve seen video footage of foreigners cheering terrorist attacks against America, we have ignored their insistence that they are celebrating merely because we have occupied their nations and killed their people. Instead, we have been rightly disgusted — not only because they are lauding the death of our innocents, but because, more fundamentally, they are celebrating death itself. That latter part had been anathema to a nation built on the presumption that life is an “unalienable right.”
But in the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys. Indeed, an America that once carefully refrained from flaunting gruesome pictures of our victims for fear of engaging in ugly death euphoria now ogles pictures of Uday and Qusay’s corpses, rejoices over images of Saddam Hussein’s hanging and throws a party at news that bin Laden was shot in the head.
This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory: He has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history — the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed.
Again, this isn’t in any way to equate Americans who cheer on bin Laden’s death with, say, those who cheered after 9/11. Bin Laden was a mass murderer who had punishment coming to him, while the 9/11 victims were innocent civilians whose deaths are an unspeakable tragedy. Likewise, this isn’t to say that we should feel nothing at bin Laden’s neutralization, or that the announcement last night isn’t cause for any positive feeling at all — it most certainly is.
But it is to say that our reaction to the news last night should be the kind often exhibited by victims’ families at a perpetrator’s lethal injection — a reaction typically marked by both muted relief but also by sadness over the fact that the perpetrators’ innocent victims are gone forever, the fact that the perpetrator’s death cannot change the past, and the fact that our world continues to produce such monstrous perpetrators in the first place.
When we lose the sadness part — when all we do is happily scream “USA! USA! USA!†at news of yet more killing in a now unending back-and-forth war — it’s a sign we may be inadvertently letting the monsters win.
My apologies to the blog’s viewers, I’ve been sick for the past 10 days and I’ve had to take finals, grade exams, and move out at the same time. But now I’m better, done with all my grading and exams, and I’m home in southern California. I first learned about bin Laden’s killing last night when my plane touched down and after I turned on my phone. Needless to say, I was shocked because it came so unexpectedly. Experts had long argued that OBL died or was killed years ago, but now he is dead for certain (though I still think it’s important to post the photos of his body!). I think it should be noted that his death really only carries symbolic significance and that significance goes in a number of directions. First, it is a major victor for the Obama Administration. He did in half a term what Bush failed to do in 2 full terms. Second, OBL’s death is both a blow to the jihadi movement and a victory. It’s a blow because its symbolic head has now been killed. But this will probably not affect the network’s abilities since it is so loosely structured, if at all structured to begin with. All reports suggest that he had long since played a minimal role in the command structure in the network. His death is also a victory for the jihadi movement. He was not taken alive and humiliated like Saddam nor did he die of kidney disease or, say, prostate cancer. He died by the barrel of those who promised to fight to the death. For him, this is the ideal way to die. For this reason, the manner in which he died can also be seen as a victory for the jihadi movement. And I don’t buy the official reports that they stormed his residence with the order to kill and not capture him. This is mere propaganda to rob him of what many jihadists will surely consider a martyrdom. If he were to be captured, it would have been seriously humiliating and it would have demoralized those who lionized him. Furthermore, he would have served as a treasure trove in terms of intelligence had he been captured. Yet, he most likely went down fighting and the manner in which he died will inspire some, if not many. My biggest concern at this point is two fold: 1) His death will inspire many jihadists and the revenge will affect me and you; 2) Now that he’s dead, US officials and Americans will, consumed with their air of victory, once again fail to address the core issues that have promoted and instigated such militancy. Now is the time to address the root causes of terrorism.