There's been a lot of talk about my country losing it's soul because we finally managed to off one of the most dangerous mass murderers of the last few decades, who was still involved in plotting to kill thousands more.
I was raised to believe than any man's death diminishes my own life and that it's wrong to celebrate it, but although that's what I still believe in general, it never occurred to me to think those people famously pictured in Times Square on VJ day, were doing anything immoral or that they should instead have been in morning for the enemy dead. They were celebrating the end of the killing of millions. They were celebrating life and survival, which are as close to victory as we mortals can get.
In the celebration of the Passover, Jews customarily withhold a drop of wine in remembrance of the Egyptian soldiers said to have died in pursuit of the fleeing slaves. It's a nice gesture I've always thought well of, but although I consider the deed done by the US Navy to be a solemn one; one that shouldn't include parading impaled skulls or photos of the dead in some barbaric way, I'm glad they did it at long last. Think of what might have been and what might not have been had it been done 10 years ago instead of waging war.
I have to wonder what the world would have been like if someone had managed to invade Germany's sovereignty and Adolph Hitler's personal liberty by assassinating him in his living room in 1936. Can we really call the men who plotted to kill him morally bankrupt or brave heroes? No, I think this would be a better world if we hadn't had to do it the hard way, if you'll forgive one of the largest understatements ever made. I could think of other horrors involving the death of tens of millions and the suffering of hundreds of billions that could have been averted by such actions.
Of course, you can see that I'm not a moral absolutist who sees morality as a set of fixed rules not subject to interpretation or to extenuating exceptions, nor do I see the law as something that should stand in the way of justice or even do I believe in a mercy to one whose life has been a celebration of mercilessness to thousands of innocents. I saw no moral dilemma involved in the choice to hunt down the people who murdered innocent athletes in Munich and I see none whatever in the killing of Osama bin Laden. I find the torture of suspects far more repugnant, yet not quite so much as sawing Daniel Pearl's head off -- or most importantly the acts of terrorism bin Laden arranged. Can we even talk of such people being owed any respect or consideration or mercy much less bemoan of how wicked we are by exterminating them on or off the battlefield?
I certainly see less national soul loss than we incurred in the bombing of Iraq, the destruction of tens of thousands of lives and the exile of millions just to kill one dictator - the loss of civilian life in the bombing of Dresden or Hanoi or Tokyo, to name a few.
No, I'm sorry. Respect for human life is not diminished and in a way is affirmed by violating the 'sovereignty' of Pakistan and the sanctity of Osama's bedroom and standing on principle against it requires a kind of selective set of values that mystify me. I cannot morn the murderer in the same way or to the same degree as the murdered and if I have a soul that mourns or rejoices, I have it because of the timely deaths of all the evil men who would have killed me with a smile had they prospered. And think too of the souls that would have been lost to this man had he lived. Let's rejoice for their sake.
Perhaps because I am personally acquainted with a family who, on 9/11, lost their 41 year old son who was a husband and father of three children, it makes me able to put bin Laden's death in perspective. And perhaps because my own son missed being in one of the towers that day only because he had been traveling for the two weeks prior to 9/11, and his boss sent someone else in his stead [the young man escaped unharmed]--perhaps I am able to face bin Laden's death with cold realism.
ReplyDeleteEvil people exist in this world, and trying to find something good in them may be noble, but it also may be futile. Therefore, mass murderers do not get my sympathy, especially when one understands that their goal is to continue to kill as many innocents as they can in as many numbers as they can.
If they were real warriors, they would fight with other warriors. But the bin Ladens of the world instead plot to kill people who go about the business of living their lives. These criminals need to be stopped.
I'm sorry it took this long to rid the world of this mass murderer.
I'm not sorry he's dead, just as I am not sorry that we have eradicated small pox.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteIt’s true what you say – to draw out a bit what I mentioned in responding to Elizabeth’s excellent comments, I think it’s good that some people should maintain those strict standards, but we can’t achieve 100% compliance to them. “Mr. Bin Laden,” I’m sorry to say, shaped his own justice by placing himself so far beyond the province of ordinary law that not much else could have been done to stop him other than what was done Sunday.
What about the justice for non-Americans? What about America's support of the repressive Saudi monarchist regime—including long standing dealings with the bin Laden tribe? What about the propping up and deposing of the Shah of Iran? Or the Iran-contra deals? Of Saddam? Of Noriega and the dirty little "war" in Panama? Or the Munroe Doctrine giving the US self-proclaimed right to militarily override anything happening in the Americas? The list goes on and on. All of this international intervention to protect America's strategic resources. Now how did all these global assets get to be America's? The US created Osama. And it was more efficacious to kill him than to put him on trial and hear what he'd have to say. If we're really discussing evil, then let's put the whole show in the table. These are the real issues behind soul death. And presidents understand it far better than informed citizens do. Better to keep the public simple, uninformed and naive... and arguing about the "process" of dealing with Osama's demise.
ReplyDeleteEdge,
ReplyDeleteOh, I think we know what bin Laden had to say for himself – he had already said it many times: “it’s all your fault.” I’m sorry, but there’s no excuse for blowing up buildings crammed with ordinary civilians. I’m aware of the issues you mention, and then some – yes, the USA has done deplorable and unjust things in pursuit of its selfish foreign-policy interests. It doesn’t mean we need to give a sympathetic hearing to bloodthirsty rogues who blow up buildings with airplanes. To understand everything is not necessarily to pardon everything.
These points cannot be overlooked, Edge, if we were to honestly examine lessons from Osama's death.
ReplyDelete30 years ago, we eagerly used Osama's services in the war against the Soviets. We helped create this monster, as it is often the case in the US foreign politics, and realized too late that we had no means or ability to control him.
And as atrocious as the attacks of 9/11 were, Osama again fulfilled his purpose on that day.
After all, in the late 1990's, the PNAC wistfully predicted a large terrorist attack on the American soil -- a new Pearl Harbor -- that would enable us to invade Iraq -- something neocons desired for a long time (a welcome corollary to that was the increase in executive powers and clamping down on citizens' freedom, along with a massive boom for the military industry and its friends). Here, Osama proved useful once again.
We like those monsters as long as they obey us, or at least serve as useful tools for accomplishing our less noble goals. And when they inevitably turn against us, we act hurt and surprised -- and swiftly eliminate them.
Doing so has multiple purposes, apart from the most obvious and noble ones ("justice"), touted by the official propaganda.
First, it punishes the disloyal servant who strayed from our wishes, sending a message to other current and prospective American-created monsters of the fate that awaits them should they consider the same course of action.
Second, it exacts revenge and quenches the bloodlust -- always a politically useful maneuver during periods of popular unhappiness and instability. (Nothing calms and cheers a restless populace, restoring its hope and faith in the rulers, like a bloody sacrifice.)
Third, it shuts the disgruntled monster up, preventing him from spilling the beans about the real extent of his involvement with our powers-that-be and their shady dealings.
Fourth, it scores so many domestic political points that it cannot be resisted by the rulers whose popularity is sagging and who are attacked on many fronts (especially when seen as "soft," etc.).
Last but not least, all of the above works. Every time. Everywhere. And, what's even better, pointing it out is predictably dismissed and derided as unpatriotic, irrelevant, insensitive (how dare you question the killing in light of the suffering of so many of the monster's victims), etc. -- so strong are our drives and so effective the means of propaganda used to manipulate them.
I think that the Monroe Doctrine, at least as interpreted by Roosevelt, assumed the right to interfere with interference by foreign powers in the region, but I may be wrong.
ReplyDeleteYes, we've abused it, and our past is hardly spotless, but that doesn't dignify an act of civilian terrorism on our shores or elsewhere. I've listened to people telling me we shouldn't have retaliated against Japan in 1941 because after all, we had a trade embargo. I won't go into what I think of that. Perhaps there's a term for the kind of national self loathing and sense of inherited sin that prompts people to accept aggression against them. Perhaps someone with the appropriate background will set me straight.
We didn't deserve 9/11 or any of these attacks on innocent people: http://on.msnbc.com/mDcOlX Sorry if you think so and I don't think shooting the man was an attempt by the sinister US government to cover up our past sins.
I think we've heard more than enough from Osama bin Laden and we didn't and don't need to give him another propaganda platform or allow his followers an opportunity to create a circus with demonstrations and false accusations for months and months while he's held prisoner.
This was an act of war, not an arrest.
Do you think he would have come up with something to make us say "OK, now we understand -- never mind?" No, the issue has always been on the table and it sounds too much like you're suggesting that the US and perhaps the Western world just say 'mea culpa' and take no action.
No doubt at all that we've created and maintained and supplied and enabled monsters, but to call this a "murder," hint that because of the Monroe doctrine we should be held responsible for these bombings around the world? or ask that he be treated with due regard for his "rights" or Pakistan's rights is to me, absolutely outrageous. Pakistan forfeited its rights by harboring the most wanted man on Earth while taking billions to pretend to catch him.
The idea of kicking down a door in such a place, taking time to see if he's armed or booby trapped ( as he once claimed he would be if taken,) making time for a hundred indecisions, a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the pulling of a trigger? Sorry, if you or one of your family were on that mission, you might feel differently.
OK. So, "...yes, the USA has done deplorable and unjust things in pursuit of its selfish foreign-policy interests. It doesn’t mean we need to give a sympathetic hearing to bloodthirsty rogues who blow up buildings with airplanes."
ReplyDeleteOh really? But what if said rogues were first trained and utilized by the US for said purposes, then began retaliating for the civil disruption, demolition of rights, impoverishment and torture—and yes, murder—choreographed by America's resource-protection, strategic interventionalism? Is avenging murder murder? Does it only count if "our" people are killed. If the tallies were taken, foreign lives taken vs. American lives lost would be far greater than 100:1.
No one really wanted an honest exit survey from Mr. bin Laden. I'm not suggesting a 'sympathetic' hearing.
It is so easy to dismiss American atrocities (torture-technique training of Central Americans by US operatives in Texas, for example) as merely forgivable sins. They are not. At least not to the millions of people around the world who've been catastrophically affected.
Why, for example, have we not been able to see or hear what was actually happening on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan? (Embedded journalism and all...) The question is rhetorical, though it's worth stating that there are clear political benefits to keeping American citizens blind and naive.
You'd have to sleep for a while outside the empire to understand. Inside it's all flag and apple pie and God bless America.
Oh, and yes, Captain, I am advocating that the US and the West begin by not taking action. A sincere mea culpa to America's victim states would be a great start. Then an immediate and organized withdrawal from Iraq and the Middle East. Perhaps, if America took her role of globocop seriously, she'd begin by not manipulating and invading to secure foreign resources—oil the most notable.
ReplyDeleteThis is a dangerous precedent, one which China is beginning to emulate (buying up agricultural land in Africa and oil reserves in the Middle East and elsewhere). This militarization and escalation is not going to end well.
Captain, I read your impassioned and beautifully composed words, and I understand them well (I think). And I don't disagree -- even though I have a different take on the issue.
ReplyDeleteThe flip, shadow side to mercy as you describe it is the self-righteous egoism of suffering that allows us to elevate our own (or our own-by-proxy) pain to an extraordinary (and unique) status which then justifies any and all means to soothe it and repair any wrongs caused to us by it.
Nobody disputes the horrific nature of Osama's deeds and the need for justice for their victims. This need becomes acutely pronounced when we are personally affected by the victims' suffering, as most, if not all, Americans are with respect to people who lost their lives or loved ones on 9/11 and during earlier AQ's attacks.
That visceral need for justice, however, too often becomes synonymous with revenge when suffering hits so close to our hearts. And the need for revenge blinds us all.
Nothing seems as satisfying as annihilating the monster responsible for our, the innocents', pain. It's a universal urge to want to destroy him (and/or inflict pain on him that would be commensurate, in some degree at least, with ours).
But revenge is not justice, and our progress toward an enlightened civilization depends on recognizing this distinction, as uncomfortable as it is.
That's why we have laws, annoying as it may be to admit when we are understandably blinded by our desire for revenge. Bloodlust, driven by pain, is not unlike a drug, inhibiting reason and impairing our judgment. We all are intimately familiar with it.
Laws, imperfect as they are, ensure justice. They are meant to protect us from being victimized, but also from becoming victimizers who, driven by the self-righteous and often mob-like desire for revenge, may end up with the blood of others on our hands (and even proud of it). Laws function as an extension of our conscience and better natures, which is what makes them so inconvenient and uncomfortable, but precisely so necessary. Laws also allow mercy to enter when appropriate and sometimes when most needed, without obliterating the need for the right punishment.
Even in war, which you invoke in your last comment, laws still apply. We have laws to deal with war criminals. Justice for them may be slow to our liking, but it is preferable, I'd say, to the lawless rule of the mob driven by revenge. Because when we succumb to it, we too become monsters, blinded by our pain and seeking a bloody retribution for it (not unlike Osama himself, who, after all, decided that the only way to avenge his self-righteous grievances, clothed in ideological rationalizations, was to spill the blood of infidels).
Elizabeth and Edge,
ReplyDeleteI don’t disagree with the systemic analysis you both offer. I also think that presidents do not have the luxury of acting in a manner consonant with such a long sweep of history; I don’t see even the cleverest leaders as conspiratorial masterminds but rather as partly the creatures of the proximate. Most of the time, they must deal with history at the tail end, with what presents itself to them as contemporary and imminent. There must be times when even someone who has sound historical understanding like Obama feels like Walter Benjamin’s Angel Of History – facing backwards and seeing the ruins of the past but being unable to put the fragments back together again, finding it impossible to use the present to redeem the past. I do not suppose that President Obama sees the present as entirely cut off from the past or that his view of Osama bin Laden is cartoonish, a function of notions about pure good and evil. Be that as it may, he was presented with a man who had killed thousands and steadfastly maintained it was necessary to kill thousands more: you do not talk to people like that, you kill them. He was also presented with a public that in all likelihood does see things in an oversimplified way. Politicians who are not Machiavellian enough to take the latter factor into account quickly end up on the sidelines twiddling their thumbs. I don’t think we want to end up in 2012 with both the Congress and the presidency in the control of right-wing extremists. It is certain that nothing humane or decent will come of that.
So a vital question is, “how can a leader avoid being entirely the creature of the present and its unhappy exigencies?” In my view, the best thing President Obama could do is to use some of his current political capital in the near future to make a serious push towards non-fossil fuels. It’s true that much of our violent entanglement in the Middle East is due to fossil fuels as the driving force of our economy. If we could just kick that addiction, we would not be subject to the Realpolitik imperative of supporting rulers who do not act in the best interests of their people. Voicing genuine support for democracy in the Middle East would be another excellent thing to do.
Dino, I entirely agree with your prescription... there is no other that makes rational sense.
ReplyDeleteCaptain Fogg,
ReplyDeleteI’m always glad to see fine lines from Eliot’s “Prufrock” – I have “measured out my life in coffee spoons,” and count myself lucky to have done so. In my affections, the Great God Java is right behind The Dinosaur Gods Who Dwell in Perpetual Ease upon Sacred Mount Gondwana. If I didn’t have to make dino-water twenty times a day when I drink more than two cups of the stuff, I would guzzle it down like Hephalumps and Woozles imbibe honey: by the gallon. “I grow old, I grow old – I shall wear my trousers rolled!”
By the way -- a fine statement about revenge comes from Elizabeth I's counselor Sir Francis Bacon:
"REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office."
("Of Revenge," the Essays)
No doubt it's a dangerous thing, this revenge.
Dino, I take back my previous, ill-mannered advice. That covert (and not only) Dems' strategist position suits you perfectly. ;)
ReplyDeleteBTW, putteth? Ouch. Say it out loud, three times -- and fast!
*note: please delete if this is a duplicate post, i got an error the first time.
ReplyDeleteA dangerous thing, yes, but no matter how much I try to apply intellect, reason, and restraint, I cannot help but feel very satisfied by this particular act of revenge. Even more satisfying in light of the facts that are now coming out, showing the world's most wanted terrorist as a rather pathetic figure, vain and insecure in his dilapidated compound, sending his couriers out for beard dye.
While I do feel the occasional pang of regret that I can't seem to access my more civilized instincts in this matter, all in all I am comfortable with the President's decisions and in agreement with my fellow lizard, that these decisions have powerful political potential. I've enjoyed seeing the far right squirm and thrash around trying to turn this against President Obama (or at least take away any credit due him).
Politics aside, a monster is dead, and it seems almost silly that there has been so much debate about whether or not he should have been killed, am I mistaken in thinking that up until last Sunday there was pretty much a consensus that we (i.e., those of us who are against terrorism) wanted to kill this guy? Maybe I missed something?
Elizabeth and Edge Columns,
ReplyDeleteThank you. I think I will go ahead and quit my day job as a specimen at the local prehistoric petting zoo. Just get me a cubicle in the White House basement and access to a suitably large watering hole, and I’m set. I’ll even pay my own plane fare. As for the Elizabethan third-person conjugation of “put,” it certainly makes a body sound like Daffy Duck.
This just in: right when I had some of you high-minded libruls singing along to the tune “Shotgun – shoot ‘em ‘fore they run,” the Obama Administration goes and releases a series of home movies that might as well be called “Osama’s Funniest Home Videos.” You know – cuddly shots of him making sure his beard is dyed dark enough to look good on his next chart-topping video, eating pepperoni pizza and fiddling with the remote control while watching himself on television issuing calls to jihad. Or whatever. Oh for Pete’s sake! (See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/07/bin-laden-home-videos_n_858929.html.) They really do need to find me that cubicle, quickly.
(wiping the spit off my computer screen after practicing putteth too many times)
ReplyDeleteDino, for your valiant efforts to get us turn the habitual bleeding hearts into a proper blood thirst you deserve that cubicle in the WH, with your own watering hole and transportation suitable for a large prehistoric creature.
Yes, I saw the video clip -- a great Snuggies commercial.
They say OBL was watching himself -- this may be so; but I suspect he was channel-surfing for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (or maybe Celebrity Apprentice).
Because, damn, those Abbottabad digs are bad, desperately needing an interior designer -- or at least a woman's touch. It's hard to imagine that with so many wives around him, Osama still lived in such drab surroundings. Shows ya that money (plus multiple wives) and good taste do not always go hand in hand.
Edge opined:
ReplyDelete"Inside it's all flag and apple pie and God bless America. "
And where did you get that vision? Fox News? No it's not - but one sees what rationalization the anger seeks, I guess. I did not put out the flag, nor did my neighbors or my club or the Republicans I lunch with on Wednesdays. Nor did they rejoice, nor did I see anyone rejoicing or telling us what number we are.
Those things don't describe me any more than guilt for Wounded Knee, does or Ronald Reagan's secret war in Central America. You know, I'm sure, that during the fighting at Leonforte in July 1943, according to Mitcham and von Stauffenberg in the book The Battle of Sicily, The Loyal Edmonton Regiment killed captured German prisoners. Does that guilt weigh heavily upon you? I believe some Americans shot concentration camp guards as well. Damn me if I feel bad about it, rules of war or not.
So if you're trying to say America deserved 9/11 and England deserved her attacks, and Spain and all those places because of history, it's an equivalence so out of balance it can't stand on its own. Besides -- you cannot punish history by punishing people who inherited it.
Al Qaeda never has been about making us change our minds or our actions; about calling attention to our error or our greed or misdeeds: al Qaeda doesn't want our sympathy or to enlighten us, by their words and actions, we know they want us to die.
Elizabeth:
ReplyDeleteA good heart always bleeds sometimes. Some hearts only bleed for lost profit, but they get no sympathy from me.
"Shows ya that money (plus multiple wives) and good taste do not always go hand in hand. "
You know, there's Chinese word I can't remember, but the character for it is basically two women under one roof. Seriously.
All,
ReplyDeleteWell, the pitiless lizard in me drained away at least for a while on sight of what Elizabeth aptly labeled "a Snuggies commercial." Only Democrats could manage to allow a terrorist mastermind to elicit a lolcat-worthy "awwwwwww...." from beyond the grave. Nope, they don't call us "dummycraps" for nothin'.
Snuggies commercials... and right back to the Infotainment Channel version of reality. Why worry about root causes when it's all wrapped up in so much sporting good fun for all?
ReplyDeleteNo, Captain, history punishes those who forget its lessons.
Edge, I don't mean to preempt el Capitan, but I suspect history also punishes those who don't forget their lessons. Read yer Nietzsche again. You just can't please 'istory, or 'erstory, for that matter.
ReplyDeleteAlways nice to hear from a fellow lizard, godlizard. I'll bet all the humans here snicker at us for resorting to "squirm and thrash" metaphors. But it comes naturally to us. Let 'em snicker! Let 'em, I say!
Godlizard, I never thought we'd catch OBL -- after all, Dubya -- and Obama too, if I'm not mistaken -- declared him irrelevant some time ago.
ReplyDeleteIf pressed, I'd imagine him being either killed in a fight, or captured alive, tried and sentenced (most likely to death).
Captain, two women under one roof? -- that Chinese character must be either for bliss or trouble.
Edge, in my experience, a little levity (or gallows humor, if needed) goes a long way to maintain sanity and civility in challenging circumstances. There is always time to worry when we stop laughing; heck, we can even do both at the same time.
I hardly think, with regards to Neitzsche, that the American public is overly obsessed with history (as the German literate public seems to have been in his time)... A quick quote:
ReplyDelete"To be sure, we need history. But we need it in a manner different from the way in which the spoilt idler in the garden of knowledge uses it, no matter how elegantly he may look down on our coarse and graceless needs and distresses. That is, we need it for life and for action, not for a comfortable turning away from life and from action or for merely glossing over the egotistical life and the cowardly bad act. We wish to serve history only insofar as it serves living."
That's hardly endorsing the suppression of historical study or study of current events.
My point in this discussion was not that bin Laden was a pitiable soul, nor that the US shouldn't have gone after him. My point about the evil man was the fact that he was manufactured—by those who are still manufacturing more of the same. The real issue is, by reflecting on our (Canada is indeed inextricably connected to this) actual history, how might we redirect our future. The suggestion to move away from reliance on foreign resources was an excellent start to that line of thought.
And yes, Capt., I have some idea of how much Canadians have been involved, both in blood and treasure, and our own falls from grace.
Yes, I'm inhaling the nitrous as I write... Thx!
ReplyDeleteEdge,
ReplyDeleteI think you ought to know by now that your colleagues aren't precritical hacks who need reminding of the utter seriousness of it all, and the fact that I make a little joke about Snuggies commercials doesn't indicate that I'm on the "Infotainment" track of history. Hold on a minute -- I have to use my Sham-Wow to wipe a pizza stain off my Snuggie. Got it! Okay, there....
As for history and Freddy N, I wasn't really talking about the general public. They're as ahistorical as squirrels, and nowhere near as cute.
All points resoundingly made. Sadly, he was born without a sense of humor...
ReplyDeleteHere is Noam Chomsky's reaction to Osama's death.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Dino, I wipe my pizza stains right with my Snuggies. There is no reason to waste Sham-Wow.
Edge: certain exigencies have to be dealt with.
ReplyDeleteI spent 15 years of my life in Germany, so maybe I fit your description. But despite questions like "well, who trained him in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets?" - the important question in this case was not "what did we?" but "what should we?"
When you have a rabid dog biting children in the neighborhood, you don't stop to say "Well, who trained him? It's his fault!" You just pull on your Big Boy Pants and go do the job.
(And, incidentally, you don't abandon the search because you can get more political traction with an enemy that you can point to and say "See who I'm protecting you from?" But that's an argument for another day.)
Regardless of who trained him to begin with, Osama had killed Americans, and evidence shows that he was continuing to plan the killing of more Americans - and of more people from multiple other countries. Putting him on trial would just inflame his followers, and would have led (as has been said above) to the same result.
Now, after you take out the mad dog, you can then try to prevent other dogs from going mad. You can vaccinate, you can stop your brother from putting out bowls of beef juice and vodka, whatever it takes. But you take care of the big problem first, and then move on to the other problems in turn.
Does the US have a horrible history of intervention in other countries? Well, hell yes. (Who do you think sold Saddam the weapons he was killing his own people with?) So maybe you try to stop that from happening in the future - the future you can change. But to agonize about the past, as if you can change that, too? Waste of time.
Know your history. Try not to repeat it. But deal with the present, and do right in the future. That's the only way to live.
Nameless, couldn't have said it better myself. Though we *do* tend to blame the dog trainer or owner, we generally only do that after we've actually gotten the thing to stop chewing on the neighborhood children. First thing's first. Remember that infamous memo that came out in the 9/11 hearings, "Bin Laden determined to attack in US?" Well, that never changed, ten years later he was still determined as ever.
ReplyDeleteI've heard a lot of arguments for why we should have captured him and given him a fair trial, but so far none of them addressed the practical matters, like where would this happen, and who would be in charge. We can't even try his henchmen in the US, and there certainly isn't a cooperative location (like we had for Saddam) that would handle the incarceration and trial. Saddam didn't have the kind of fan club OBL has, and that fan club's rage is not something I'd wish on anyone, anywhere.
Elizabeth, I was fairly sure that Obama did contradict Bush's indifference at some point in his campaign, since that was rather a sticking point for many of us. Could be wrong, but if he had been of the same "Bin Laden is irrelevant now" mindset, would we have undertaken the serious, long-term surveillance operation which eventually led to killing him? Just a thought.
I must take a moment to express my deep and profound appreciation for this blog and its bloggers, and the commenters who engage in such amazing discourse. It is my antidote for the general awfulness and idiocy that is rampant elsewhere on the interwebs.
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteYou've got me there! What a typical irresponsible American I am, wasting perfectly good Sham-Wow when there's acres of Snuggie for the wiping. The shame of it makes me want to disappear into my neon Orange Crocs....
Godlizard,
ReplyDelete"It is my antidote for the general awfulness and idiocy that is rampant elsewhere on the interwebs."
So I get no credit for my awfulness? sheez.
Edge:
"I have some idea of how much Canadians have been involved, both in blood and treasure, and our own falls from grace."
Surely most any country has committed what can be seen as crimes, even though they may not have been thought so at the time.
I mentioned it in a somewhat humorous way, since I thought we could agree that if a bunch of neo-Nazis in Argentina, perhaps, managed to topple that tower in Toronto and crash a plane into Ottawa and perhaps blow up a train full of commuters or so, that it would still be considered a crime and a crime worth addressing by some sort of punative action, rather than, as you suggest, doing nothing and inviting further such acts. Sacrificing ourselves and our children - yea, even until the seventh generation - because of the sins of our fathers in some perplexing Yahwist fashion.
"Oh, and yes, Captain, I am advocating that the US and the West begin by not taking action."
At what ration do we get to say, no, you have to accept acts of war against you because on balance, your sin account outweighs your right to self defense? Japan has a pretty large one, as bad as Hitler's actually, so do we get to declare them outlaw and morally restricted from defending themselves, should China attack?
I know I'm overly fond of reducing things to absurdity, but this one, in my steadfastly enduring opinion, began at that level.
Nameless et al., about that evidence of Osama being behind the 9/11 attacks: turns out there isn't any.
ReplyDeleteI know, it's hard to accept, given how propagandized we have been to believe otherwise, but facts -- not pronouncements from our government officials -- give him a serious benefit of the doubt:
In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it "believed" that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn't know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence - which, as we soon learned, Washington didn't have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that "we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda."
Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden's "confession," but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.
So reminds us Chomsky.
Godlizard, I too remember Obama's campaign words regarding OBL. I thought, however, that as president, he's softened his stance; however, as I said, I was not sure.
ReplyDeleteBut of course catching (and killing) OBL has always been important to our presidents, no matter what they said. It is a massive -- and I mean massive -- PR win, guaranteed to make the sitting president's popularity soar. I suspect Bush was eager to minimize OBL's PR importance because he had little chances of apprehending him during his tenure.
So, yes, this operation (Geronimo, of all possible code-names) is a much needed boost to Obama's poll numbers and image.
It also couldn't happen at a better time: just a week before the raid, The New Yorker published yet another long, unflattering (and much discussed in the pundits circles) piece on the president, by Ryan Lizza, showing Obama's peculiar (and not always effective, but apparently always unpopular) style of "leading from behind" in matters of foreign policy.
At the same time, the birther controversy intensified, putting The Idiot Donald in full glory in all M$M outlets, and forcing Obama to present his birth certificate; the whole thing chipping at the already weakened president's stature.
In addition, Obama announced killing of Osama bin Laden just as Wikileaks completed its publication of Guantanamo files, which suggested that the US knew about Osama's whereabouts since 2005.
Having Osama killed at just the right moment wiped out these controversies (Trump who? Lizza what? leading from behind -- in your face! WikiLeaks, shmeakileaks). Not to mention the juicy -- and I'm sure totally unintended, ahem -- timing of Obama's announcement that cut off the most important (to Trump and the whole classy universe where he lives) 15 minutes of Celebrity Apprentice.
Timing is everything. And as FDR said,
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
I have been following this discussion with great interest and I have nothing of significance to add. I think that y'all have vetted the matter quite thoroughly. I find that my own thoughts most closely parallel those of Elizabeth. I still wrestle with assassination as justice, no matter how vile the person. Justice means due process followed by judgment and sentencing in my world. I always fear that when we make exceptions that we lessen ourselves, betray our own integrity. My concern isn't for bin Laden, but for this country's ability to claim moral authority (which we do quite often) after this assassination. Imagine any other country entering a nation uninvited and killing a person who by its own account was not armed because of some terrorist act that person allegedly committed against its people, how would we regard that action?
ReplyDeleteSheria, your imaginary (but not at all far-fetched, of course) scenario has been used -- to proper effect, I thought -- by Chomsky, who wrote:
ReplyDeleteWe might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's, and he is not a "suspect" but uncontroversially the "decider" who gave the orders to commit the "supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteOf course there are questions. Al Qaeda was a cell-like terrorist organization, with planning going on for different sections of the same action at different times; and they were aided by other terrorist groups, with differing layers of security.
Chomsky is a good man, but he's insisting on absolute proof in an uncertain world. There is a huge layer of conspiracy theorizing coating everything involved with 9/11, and it's difficult to sift out the truth. The best summary I've seen is here - there are others that are more in-depth, and take forever to slog through; there are some that are significantly more credulous, on all side of the issue.
It may well be that bin Laden didn't do it, but that likelihood is proving to be remote. Occam's razor is the best tool for this job.
Ugh. The futility of this. Forget about Chomsky, that irritating old pinko; he's just the socialist version of that other pain in the ass industry-hater, Nader, though both slightly more palatable than that flatulant media buffoon, Moore. And while we're at it, let's not wax tearful for the Kennedys, those cheap, daddy-financed socialist philanderers, and those overly-earnest blacks, MLK and his violent clone, Malcolm X, who prob'ly got what they expected. Today's Obama is a much better choice; at least he knows how to play the game. And fortunately, the good guys have prevailed: Ronnie and Georgie I and II and the whole winning support team from Ashcroft to Wolfowitz who knew how—and still know how—to look after business and keep the US of A on top. And you've gotta hand it to the good ol' boys at the CIA when it came to dealing those pesky foreigners getting in the way—like Lumumba in the Congo, Guevara in Bolivia, Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran (to make way for the Shah), Arbenz in Guatamala (for the United Fruit Co.), Ngo Dinh Diem in S. Vietnam, Allende in Chile (for Rockefeller, Pepsico and others and replaced by good buddy Gen. Pinochet), and a whole lot more of those socialist, anti-business evil-doers. Too bad they couldn't have put down Castro and that little prick in Nicaragua, Danny Ortega, but you can't win them all. It's hard to figure why some folks in the world hate America; it's trying to make the world a better place to do business. Things would have worked out a lot better if the bin Laden clan knew how to reel in their crazy cousin. But hey, that's yesterday's news. And Obama and the free world are feelin' a lot better today. And talking about assassination, damn, wasn't that Trump-roasting speech something...! And a lesson to him: leave the governing to the situationally savvy professionals, I say. They're doing a great job. Looks like 2012 is gonna be a good year!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Elizabeth, for the passage from Chomsky. It is indeed a good example of the scenario that I imagined.
ReplyDeleteEdge,
ReplyDeleteAre you seriously equating MLK Jr. and Malcolm X with Osama bin Laden? And was bin Laden really just “a pesky foreigner” like Allende? Distinctions are vital.
Alright, Edge -- now you're talking! I knew you had it in ya. ;)
ReplyDeleteYeah, too bad about Castro -- but it was not for the lack of trying, yanno.
Nameless, thanks for the interesting link. I'm looking forward to perusing it.
I don't think Chomsky insists on absolute proof, however (and what would that be, anyway?). He simply points out lack of evidence showing that Osama is behind 9/11 attacks. As you know, the officially accepted mastermind of 9/11 mayhem is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but we'll never know the truth, especially since his testimony so far is questionable (waterboarding makes one say the craziest things) and he'll never be publicly tried in the US, because of Homeland Insecurity concerns or other similarly grave matters.
Occam's razor is a neat reasoning tool, but not quite applicable in the court of law where one has to present sufficient evidence of somebody's guilt to remove any reasonable doubt. By these standards, Osama would be likely acquitted in American civil courts, at least of the crimes of 9/11.
But since you've mentioned Occam's razor, if we were to apply it to 9/11, we'd have to see what most obvious culprit (group of people, etc.) had the real means to accomplish such a complex operation and who benefited most, politically and economically, from it. And it wouldn't be Osama and his band of jihadists. So slices my Occam's razor.
BTW, Nameless, who runs the 9/11 site you linked? I cannot find any info about its authors.
ReplyDeleteSheria,
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of people are assuming that bin Laden surrendered or tried to. I have read that he was unarmed and that seems to be the case, but I do not think we know the full story beyond that. I rather doubt that bin Laden would have seen any point in surrendering; he may have just committed “suicide by Navy SEAL.”
I think that Edge is channeling his inner Jonathan Swift in his own modest proposal.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, I hadn't considered it until you mentioned the topic,but I think that you have something with the potential that bin Laden wouldn't meet the legal standards for guilt in a U.S. court. Although, I think that he would be tried in criminal, not civil court for the lives taken on 9/11. His taking credit for 9/11 provides a confession of sorts and would no doubt be used against him but still, our foundation is innocent until proven guilty and the standard in a criminal trial is indeed "beyond a reasonable doubt." In civil court the general standard is "by a preponderance of the evidence," a somewhat lesser standard than in criminal trials.
I do wonder if bin Laden had the organizational wherewithal to pull off 9/11. Your Occam's razor has a sharp blade.
Sheria, of course you're right about criminal (vs civil) court. I meant to say civilian (as opposed to military). Damn English.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction.
Oh, I'm sorry. Thought we were dealing with reality, not theory. Well, when it comes to that, I still follow the teachings of William of Ockham. Namely, fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. As was bin Laden.
ReplyDeleteYou know, the country that Bush was always courting.
I'll leave you to fill in the blanks...
Nameless, every decent theory must be rooted in reality -- after all, one of its (theory's) goals is to describe reality in a verifiable manner. And available facts (aka reality) do not support the theory that Osama was responsible for 9/11.
ReplyDeleteAs to filling in the blanks, I'm afraid this is what we, regular folks, are reduced to, given the scarcity of trustworthy information and preponderance of propagandist truthiness.
P.S. The picture you linked should come with a warning: NOT to view at bedtime. What an image to fall asleep to... Yikes!
Elizabeth, if I weren't up in the middle of the night, my mind might have been alert enough to make that connection.
ReplyDeleteNameless, guilty or innocent, in our system of justice, everyone is entitled to due process. More than half of the folks who go on trial are guilty. The question for me isn't about bin Laden's guilt it's about using assassination as a tool to deal with our enemies. We tried this back in the 1960s, when the U.S. aided in political assassinations.
We have a system of laws. If we abandon them when it is convenient to not adhere to them then what point is there to having them in the first place? Every time someone commits a particularly heinous crime such as murdering a child, a part of me wants us to simply string that person up or perhaps stone him or her in the town square. I fully understand the impulse to make someone pay for acts of violence. However, such circumstances are when it is imperative that we firmly adhere to the system of law that we have implemented.
What do we do if there is another leader like bin Laden? Do we assassinate that person as well? How many do we assassinate if our only criteria is that the person is allegedly responsible for some horrible crime against the American public? Where do we draw the line? Do we base it on the number of people killed? 500 and you get a trial, but more than that and we shoot you on sight? What's the standard for when assassination is acceptable?
In a 1976 Senate Committee report, chaired by Frank Church, the finding was that assassination was “incompatible with American principles, international order, and morality.” In 1988, the U.S. condemned the Israelis for assassinating Abu Jihad, the military leader of the PLO. The Israelis countered with the assertion that Jihad was a terrorist leader. Nonetheless we condemned the planned killing as going against the democratic underpinnings of civilized society. Author Tom Wicker wrote at the time, “Calculated murder is terrorism’s instrument, not that of decent societies, in which it must always be illegal, inhumane, immoral.”
How far we've come. People have complained because the President has taken a bi-partisan approach to governing but this basic betrayal of the democratic ideals and principals that are the foundation of our government barely raises eyebrows.
Nothing is more important than justice. Without justice, we have no guidance, no anchor and our lives will be as Hobbes describes, "nasty,, brutish, and short." The cornerstone of justice is that it is better that 99 guilty men go free than one innocent man be unfairly punished. We can't have a laissez-faire subjective standard when it comes to justice. Justice is not a matter of convenience. Obama is wrong and I am terribly disappointed in his defense of this action. Does this mean that I will abandon my support of him? No, but it does mean that I've already sent a long email to the White House.
I have my own set of dilemmas concerning the actions of my country's representatives but when taken to the simplest terms, bin Laden and Al Queda declared war on the US and the US engaged them - bin Laden took out many and the US took him out.
ReplyDeleteI am grateful that our president has not released photos or kept the body. I don't think this is cause for celebration but rather somber reflection on the sad state of the world we live in.
I think the presumption that OBL was armed and dangerous had to be made and to ask the commandos to hesitate and examine him with x-ray vision was risking their lives in unacceptable fashion. Saying he should have been arrested sounds a bit naive and a bit presumptuous. We weren't in that room or in that compound.
ReplyDeleteJustice is important. That's an understatement and yet I think it's wrong to speak of it in absolute terms or as something you extract from a law book or set of cammandments. Justice requires seeing the whole picture and justice is rarely complete or clear cut. Had we killed him with a bomb at Tora Bora, would that have been murder too? With a sniper as he stuck his head out of the cave?
I'm not going to offer all the easy analogies, minds are already made up, but I'm not too squeamish to consider the outcomes of actions vs. one another when judging them. The country could not afford to bungle this raid by affording him the presumption of innocence; could not invite the insolence of our enemies as we did by bungling the hostage rescue attempt in Iran.
I don't think the slippery slope argument is less of a fallacy than it usually is when it predicts that the result of killing OBL will cheapen justice in the US any more than civilization fell when OJ was acquitted.
I've asked before if anyone thought it was better that someone had assassinated Hitler than that 50 million or so people die and I got no answer. I asked if those who gave their lives in over 40 attempts to do so were criminals or heroes. I don't recall getting an answer. No, OBL isn't quite Hitler, but that's because he doesn't run a country with massive military resources and nobody ceded a country to him and tried to be fair. No one in his right mind would be reasonably sure he wasn't going to blow himself up or pull a gun out of his pocket, but then we're talking about this in a safe environment not some dark place where we would be shot on sight.
I don't think Obama was wrong and I am not disappointed. I don't think anyone here is getting CIA briefings and knows just exactly what is known and not known about ties linking OBL to 9/11, just how far away from firearms he was in his room or whether he was carrying out his oft stated desire to be killed in action while he was still young enough.
Chomsky? He's been called an intellectual crook and I can see why, both in his quasi-fundamentalist ideas about language and evolution and the idée fixe obsession with the US being an evil empire that does not deserve to defend itself or have the right to criticize anyone's atrocities. I like his rhetorical ability: much the same sort of admiration I have for Hitchens, but I don't think either one is objective or correct, and their ability to justify outrageously false equivalences with slick casuistry doesn't convince me otherwise. We can just assume that anything any government does, short of disbanding itself, will meet with his smug, erudite snark.
I think he's not much better than delusional libertarians on the right and the laissez faire socialism he espouses is as much utopian drivel as the teabaggers. I think I remember him downplaying the atrocities of Pol Pot with the same argument, and that is, the USA is so guilty, so evil, so deceptive, so dishonest that we shouldn't complain if the rivers of Thailand are choked with floating corpses - and of course it's the "government" building that nice man up as evil for its own deceptive purposes.
I think he's reprehensible actually, and I find my self agreeing with Edge here in my contempt for people like the Chompster who pose as Liberal, even socialist, but are really only dogmatic reactionaries with an opposite spin and a flair for the dramatic.
That an attack on foreign paramilitary leaders is a danger to civilization and justice is beyond me - further beyond me than the argument that we deserved an attack and so should sit here and wait for another.
This dino agrees with Capt. Fogg -- I've never been able to abide Chomsky and I immediately tune him out whenever he opens his mouth about politics. Very little of what he says strikes me as insightful, and what little of it I do agree with, I already knew and didn't need him to tell me. I have no problem admitting that I find the deep disjunction between people and their governments in modern times lamentable, but at the same time, I don't believe that should open the door to every conceivable theory questioning the bloody obvious and the impeccably attested. That bin Laden was behind 9/11, I believe, falls into the first-mentioned category.
ReplyDeleteI may be terribly mistaken, but I'm fairly sure that Edge's comment seemingly dismissive of Chomsky etc. was bitterly sarcastic.
ReplyDeleteI know it is fashionable among some liberal enlightened circles to pooh-pooh Chomsky.
The fact remains, however, that, regardless of our attitudes, people like Chomsky, Hedges, late Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann and a handful of others, remain the conscience of our nation, reminding us about uncomfortable truths we'd rather not see and/or deny. They do this precisely when it's most necessary, since in difficult times we prefer not to dwell on unseemly possibilities lurking just behind the more or less pleasant surface of our daily lives. They do not gain much by being such Cassandras, and have a lot to lose, as evidenced by the public derision they meet and their marginalization in the mainstream discourse.
If nothing else, that fact only -- that they've traded the comforts of securely resting at the trough and have the guts to question comfortable propagandist lies and half-truths -- deserves our respect. That's what I think, at least.
Be as it may, with Chomsky-an-old-commie-coot and whatever else we want to ascribe to him, it is difficult, I'd say, to dismiss his arguments wholesale.
What about his example of the Iraqi commandos entering Bush's house in the middle of the night, and killing Dubya, one of his daughters, three other unrelated people living in his house, and wounding Laura -- would we be OK with that? Yes? No? And why? (Let's remember that Bush started war with/in Iraq, and he is indisputably responsible for a far greater mayhem than OBL. Given that we were in a state of war with Iraq, or some elements of the Iraqi society, it seems that by our current standards of justice it should be OK for Iraqis to conduct a similar operation on GW and his household.*)
*Note to Secret Service: this is only a hypothetical scenario brought up (by Noam first, mind you!) to illustrate an ethical dilemma. Leave me be. Thank you!
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteI like Zinn quite a lot -- he was a fine historian who covered subjects very few American journalists have ever paid much attention to. Amy G I like, too. Still don't care for Chomsky's approach.
If nothing else, that fact only -- that they've traded the comforts of securely resting at the trough and have the guts to question comfortable propagandist lies and half-truths -- deserves our respect. I fully agree, Elizabeth. I particularly like Chomsky, not because I always agree with him fully but because he challenges my comfort zone and makes me think about why I believe what I believe.
ReplyDeleteCaptain, those who attempted to assassinate Hitler were neither heroes nor criminals. They were desperate men looking for a solution and they were acting in a time when there was no question that the world was at war. Should Hitler have been executed? Perhaps he should have never been born. Of course, there may have been a replacement waiting in the wings. He was a single man and he didn't kill millions without the active cooperation of many and the tacit cooperation of those who pretended not to know be aware of what was being done. I think the bigger question is would killing Hitler have changed things or would Himmler et. al. have simply continued the final solution?
I'm not naive but I'll cop to being presumptuous. Perhaps it's because in the system in which I function, lawyers draw conclusions all the time without having been in the room. Commonly, we are not present when our client commits a crime or even when he or she is arrested. It doesn't stop us from asking questions and applying legal theory. If the police had broken into someone's home and shot and killed a suspected serial killer, killed another family member, wounded another, and killed two neighbors who were visiting, I'd have a lot of questions if the suspect never fired a shot and was discovered to be unarmed, even if the dead serial killer had bodies in the basement. Indeed, neither the defense nor the prosecution would be able to proceed without engaging in conjecture based on the available physical evidence.
As for the facts surrounding the killing of bin Laden, I don't think anyone has claimed to work for the CIA or be privy to the planning that went into the attack. The shifting "facts" come from the accounts released by the government. Initial reports were that bin Laden was armed, then it was released that he was not armed. Early reports said that one of his wives was killed, later changed to wounded. So far, no reports have alleged that his son was armed or explained how or why he was also killed. According to information released by the White House, there was no exchange of gunfire with bin Laden before he was shot. Was the purpose of the mission to execute bin Laden, if so, that's an assassination, something that our government has publicly forsworn since the scandals of the Nixon administration. Guilt or innocence isn't the issue with which I am concerned. My concern is about the ethical integrity of this country. What credibility do we have in chastising other nations for violations of human rights when we clearly sanction assassination as an appropriate method of dealing with our enemies? Do other countries get to assassinate those who pose a threat to them? Who gets to decide who is expendable?
We keep talking of a war but there is no war by our own definition. We can't have it both ways: the terrorists are enemy combatants and the rules of warfare don't apply when it comes to captured alleged terrorists, but hey, we're at war so it wasn't an execution, it was a justified act of war.
P.S. I think Elizabeth is correct; Edge was utilizing satire to make a point.
ReplyDeleteRe: my earlier comment: Elizabeth and Sheria are correct; bitter sarcasm.
ReplyDeleteHitler: created by the punishing Treaty of Versailles. Quick Wiki history:
"Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required Germany to accept responsibility for causing the war (along with Austria and Hungary, according to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Treaty of Trianon) and, under the terms of articles 231–248 (later known as the War Guilt clauses), to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay heavy reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. The total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion Marks (then $31.4 billion, £6,600 million) in 1921 which is roughly equivalent to US$ 385 billion in 2011, a sum that many economists at the time, notably John Maynard Keynes, deemed to be excessive and counterproductive and would have taken Germany until 1988 to pay. The final payments ended up being made on 4 October 2010, the twentieth anniversary of German reunification, and some ninety-two years after the end of the war for which they were exacted. The Treaty was undermined by subsequent events starting as early as 1932 and was widely flouted by the mid-1930s [hello Adolf]."
World War I: a flagrant cock display between members of the same ruling family: Kaiser Wilhelm, George V and Czar Nicholas. The US didn't want to go, but went and made packs of money anyway.
World War II: cleaning up the revenge mess from WWI.
Point? It's all interconnected. The US international meddling for the past century has real world blowback. Assessing history as a series of simple revenge for single acts is foolish and naive. Hitler could have been stopped, not by a bullet in 1933-36, but by a fair treaty with Germany in 1919. But no. Britain and the Allies would have their day of revenge. OK.
Flash forward: now we have a cycling spiral of revenge, with the US at its center (for 50+ years of hardball meddling in the Middle East and elsewhere). And assassinating bin Laden was a good idea? Sure, as a reelection tactic. But as an international strategy, a complete, idiotic blunder.
So how many little Islamic (bin Laden-style) Hitlers have we just created across the Middle East? Jesus, people.
Edge: "So how many little Islamic (bin Laden-style) Hitlers have we just created ... Jesus, people"
ReplyDeletePeople in the Muslim world don’t believe in Jesus and don’t necessarily hold with your opinion. Here are a few voices in the Muslim world reacting to the death of bin Laden:
Rock musician Salman Ahmad of Junun: “On 9/11, those terrorists who flew the planes into the buildings overnight hijacked Islam so that anything that has to do with Islam, anything that has to do with Muslim culture, would be equated now with the face of Osama bin Laden. So he being taken out in a military operation I think is a great thing for the Muslim world as well as the planet.”
Militants flee Kunduz following Osama's death: The district chief, Mohammad Ayub Haqyar, said the demise of Osama served a huge setback to the morale of the terrorist group in the district. A number of Al Qaeda operatives had fled to Pakistan, with several Taliban groups following their footsteps,” he claimed.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari: “We, like many people in the world, are delighted to see an end to his mentality and his devious ideology," Zebari said. "Iraqis suffered a great deal at the hands of this man and his terrorist organisation. Thousands of Iraqis were murdered and killed because of his ideologies.”
Libyan Opposition Extremely Happy at bin Laden Death: Col Muhammad Bani - The Libyan opposition is aware that Usamah Bin-Ladin fought against it, describing him as en enemy of the Libyan opposition. He pointed out that the Libyan opposition has evidence that sympathizers with Al-Qaida are fighting it.
Finally, here is Juan Cole on Obama and the End of Al-Qaeda: “The Arab Spring has demonstrated that the Arab masses yearn for liberty, not thuggish repression, for life, not death and destruction, for parliamentary democracy, not theocratic dictatorship. Bin Laden was already a dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War and the age of dictators in which a dissident such as he had no place in society and was shunted off to distant, frontier killing fields … [President Obama] can be not just the president who killed Bin Laden, but the president who killed the pretexts for radical violence against the US … And that would be a defeat and humiliation for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda more profound than any they could have dreamed.”
That, Octo, was not exactly the point of my post. (The use of 'Jesus' was ironic profanity. But OK, I'll play it straight. Gosh, the Islamic world doesn't believe in Jesus? Gee, I didn't know that...)
ReplyDeleteI know you get the point, beyond the deconstructionist approach to a discussion. Sure, there'll be many in the Middle East who will applaud the end of Osama. But to my point, It's the hidden underculture of the dispossessed (Hitler's breeding ground) that we might want to concern ourselves with...
Edge: "the hidden underculture of the dispossessed ..."
ReplyDeleteEvery country has Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, which I consider ‘a given’ even in the best of times. My issue is in making assertions or arguments that have little or no logical connection. For example, a psychotic who hears voices in the head may be considered a ‘discontent’ but not necessarily a voice reflecting the true spirit of an age. And even when we hear voices of dissent, are these the voices of the past or the present, of a medieval caliphate or a modern democracy, of oppression or freedom?
Thus, I do not find analogues of WWI history relevant to contemporary Middle Eastern politics. The so-called Arab Spring is not about reparations or colonialism, or even about the geopolitics of energy. It is about younger citizens of the region blaming, not the West, but their own leadership for ignoring their aspirations. OBL never resonated with the people massing in Arab capitals, and the prospect of future bin Ladens springing up like wildflowers seems weak at best.
Remember, this is the Internet Age that brings disparate peoples into a global village, and this has been a democratizing force. So far, President Obama has supported the citizens of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia with words and actions, which puts this American president (despite your negative assessment of him), and unlike his predecessor, on the right side of history for the first time over 50 years.
Hope springs eternal.
ReplyDeleteObama is on the right side of business and the oil fields. As to whether he's on the right side of history, only time will tell. But so far he hasn't delivered the bacon domestically, relative to tax breaks to the wealthy, health care to the poor, etc.
As to earlier patterns, here's a quote from an Iraq-related blog:
"It's "difficult to be burning villages at one end of the country by means of an (occupation) Army, and assuring people at the other end that we really have handed over responsibility to native Ministers," the diplomat, Gertrude Bell, concluded.
"Bell wrote that report 85 years ago, as what was then Mesopotamia was struggling to rebuild after World War I and create an independent state that the British would call Iraq.
"Fast-forward to today and Bell's observations have an uncanny contemporary feel to them. In letters to her parents while in Iraq, Bell documented the difficulties that Britain faced in forging Iraq into a coherent nation."
I'm not so sure that America today has the kind of diplomatic talent that Bell possessed. Anyway, enough for now.
Edge: "Obama is on the right side of business and the oil field ... But so far he hasn't delivered the bacon domestically, relative to tax breaks to the wealthy, health care to the poor, etc."
ReplyDeleteYou seem to forget above the hyper-partisan protofascists in this country who have tried to delegitimize his presidency and thwart Obama's initiatives on: Alternative energy, closing down Gitmo, civilian trials for Gitmo detainees, health care reform, infrastructure investment, Wall Street reform, etc., etc.
The Bush tax cuts were a political horse trade in exchange for a Salt treaty, a repeal of DADT, a 9/11 responders bill, and an extension of benefits for the unemployed.
Yes, there is blame to go around, but exactly who do you think is more worthy of blame - Obama or the Republicans? Do you think Noam Chomsky is electable? Would you prefer Bush/Cheney again?
Hi Octo. Although I'm Canadian, I am definitely in the choir. I haven't forgotten anything. Chomsky, Bush, Cheney, sure, I understand. That's not the issue. It's Obama's leadership that's on issue—and America's collective ethics. A lesser of evils may still be evil. It's like the old joke: "someone told me that you like shit sandwiches, but I told them you don't like bread..."
ReplyDeleteEdge,
ReplyDeleteThink before you throw offal sandwiches at those Yankee Doodle Dandies. When the loony rightwing rabble of this country dissed your country, we were among the first and perhaps the only forum south of the border to post these:
Fox and Hounds by Captain Fogg
Canada Mourns - Fox Scorns by Octopus
A Note of Thanks from Canada by Octopus
Similarly, it does not feel good being turned into a national stereotype. Not all Yankees are shit-eating Teahoos, but I surmise you are a Newfie if …
You owe more money on your snowmobile than on your car.
At least twice a year, the kitchen doubles as a meat processing plant.
Your snowblower gets stuck on the roof.
You think the start of salmon fishing season is a national holiday.
Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
You think sexy lingerie is tube-socks and a flannel nightie with only 8 buttons.
The mosquitoes have landing lights.
Do we have an understanding?
Octo and Edge, take a deep breath and play nice. We're talking about ideologies, policies, and issues, not exchanging "yo' mama" put downs, also known as playing the dozens.
ReplyDeleteBut, Sheria, he started it first.
ReplyDeleteNaw, forget the understanding. Bring on more Canadian humor. But jus' so ya know, I wasn't aiming the scat pies at anyone. It was an example of defending bad with less bad. Tha's all. But we could exchange more stereotypes if you like... could be fun! And Sheria, dammit, enough about my mom.
ReplyDeleteEdge and Octo, I don't believe in corporal punishment for children but I make exceptions for adults. ;)
ReplyDeleteYou know you are a Newfie when ...
ReplyDeleteYou get excited whenever an American television show mentions Canada.
"Eh?" is a very important part of your vocabulary and more polite than, "Huh?"
There are handicap parking places in front of skating rinks.
You know which leaves make good toilet paper.
(Tisk)
Octo:
ReplyDelete"People in the Muslim world don’t believe in Jesus"
Sura 2.o87: We gave Jesus the son of Mary clear signs and strengthened him with the holy spirit.
2.136: Say ye: We believe in Allah and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham,
Ishmael, Issac, Jacob and that given to Moses and Jesus. . . .We make no difference between one and the other of them.
Seems the Qur'an's version of God is often kindlier and more ecumenical that Yahweh. He even says that Jews go to heaven.
Elizabeth:
"I may be terribly mistaken, but I'm fairly sure that Edge's comment seemingly dismissive of Chomsky etc. was bitterly sarcastic."
As I so often am and which fact is so often conveniently ignored according to whose ox is being gored.
As to Liberal fashion, there is no one on Earth less likely to be swayed by fashion than I. I don't give a damn about what "Liberals" think about Chomsky. If anyone is following a fashion it's those who like him, see everything through the precondition that the US and Western Civilization in general has no right to exist and has lost the right to protest: that everything virtue we might do is nullified by our inherited sins. He's like some miserable teenager who cuts herself and pulls out her own hair from self contempt, or some medieval monk tormenting himself with a whip but of course, it's our hair he's pulling and the contempt he has (while somehow excluding himself from inherited sin) makes garbage out of his pronouncements. He often makes a fool of himself simply because he needs to save face: an idiot full of self-esteem and yes, there's no idiot like an intelligent and educated idiot, as entertaining as he often is.
Sorry, I have the right to criticize Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden even if my great grandfather was a confederate soldier and my country once stole land from Mexico and George Bush captured Noriega and killed 4000 Panamanians in the process and Reagan waged illegal wars and trained terrorist death squads. This country has a right to defend its citizens against people like Osama that in this case transcends Osama's right to a trial. You can't always arrest enemy leaders - any more than you can feed the world without pesticides and aren't those Liberal fashions as well?
I'm tired and disgusted with this endless rattling on about morality. Moral problems never have final or universal solutions. And to quote Dostoyevsky,
"One cannot judge of crime with ready-made opinions: its philosophy is a little more complicated than people think"
and so I think are the facts, which in this case have been so colored by so many attempts to paint them in an advantageous way that they've begun to resemble camouflage and fade into the haze of prejudice and predisposition. Have we discussed the inconvenient information that the SEALS included a team of lawyers and interrogators to arrest and question OBL were it possible to take him alive? No, nor were we in that building nor in the mind of the man who pulled the trigger. Can we now tell him that he should be presumed not to be armed - the man who sleeps with a Kalashnikov - when a millisecond's hesitation means death? Could we have been sure that the father of ten thousand suicide bombers didn't have dynamite hidden in his robes? Really - it wasn't our lives hanging in the balance in that bunker.
We don't know much of anything, and that argues for a bit less certainty about these blanket condemnations.
OBL may just and with our help: "Accomplish by craft and subtlety, in the long run, what he cannot do by force and violence in the short one" That's Thom Paine, if you're wondering. And it's also Obiwan Kenobi, made more powerful by his death - and with our eager assistance.
And would his son now announce that he's going to sue us? without our help in making moral mud out of this?
ReplyDeleteOsama is dead, One point for Osama.