Call it a cop out, but Sunday night’s news about the death of Osama bin Laden (OBL) is big enough to breach a blog about big ideas, no? In that spirit, let’s talk Osama, shall we?
Housekeeping: I think that a very important part of this blog-project is to incorporate follower/commenter input as much as possible. So, I will start taking snippets of comments from the last few posts and make it a starting point for the next post. I feel like this will give some continuity to the posts as well as add to the diversity of the post themes.
Disclaimer: We are still getting information about this story, so we will clearly be running of what we have been hearing in the media. That said, I am more interested in the reaction that Westerners (particularly here in America) have had to OBL’s demise.
The Consensus
With all of that in mind, Anthony Norton said something particularly interesting in response to the first ever post.
It seems to me that members of humanity (broadly construed) have consistently carried out both compassionate and oppressive actions throughout history till this very day (as should be obvious in this particularly turbulent political era in which we are living.)
Agreed. While this seems almost obvious that we can call OBL’s actions extremely oppressive and horrible, it seems like his actions could only have occurred in the current globalized polity. We might be able to go as far and say that if we placed the sum of his actions on a scale, the bad would clearly outweigh the good. This is just a really longwinded way of saying he is a globalized bad guy that drew the ire of most of the world.
The Debate: We’re Supposed to Hate Bad Guys, Right?
Almost immediately after we heard news of Osama’s death, people immediately hit the streets (especially in Washington, DC and NYC). Even here in Austin, TX people were setting off fireworks and celebrating the news.
A preliminary question, are we celebrating death?
Jon Stewart says yes, but we shouldn’t be too worried about the moral implications of this celebration because OBL was a horrible man. (here's the full episode from last night)
David Sirota at Salon.com has a very different reaction. He claims that in celebrating OBL’s death, we’ve lowered ourselves to his level, recalling images of people in the Arab world celebrating the fall of the twin towers. A more appropriate reaction should be a bitter sigh of relief. (here's his piece)
But again, are we even celebrating death? I had a chance to talk to my close friend/former roommate Khaled last night about this. He doesn’t think that it is a celebration of death. Instead, he thinks of this as an end to an era.
I think in my own reaction, I agree with Khaled. The timing could not be more profound. In the midst of the Arab Spring (which may be turning into an Arab year? *looks at Syria and Yemen) the death of OBL accompanies the death of al-Qa’ida’s promise: that their brand of extremism is the panacea for an Arab/Muslim world plagued by autocratic rulers. OBL's death only punctuates then end of al-Qa'ida's relevance.
That said, I don’t think that the public’s reaction has been my own. I think that there has been a level of triumphalism that exceeds an appreciation of ideological shifts in the Middle East. It is a celebration of death, and I don’t think I am terribly comfortably with that. The U.S. military had the decency to treat his body to a proper Islamic burial within 24 hours. I’ll end with something I said on Facebook that really sums up how I feel about the news.
“Real quick, before we sober up from the drunken celebrations of OBL's death, can we go through the necessary hangover of a realization over the thousands of dead U.S. servicemen/women died for this ill conceived "war on terror", the tens of thousands of Afghani and Pakistani civilians dead, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, not to mention the civil liberties lost, and the trillions of dollars wasted?”
Questions for Discussion
What is your reaction to the news?
Is the public reaction to OBL’s death rightly termed a celebration of death?
If it is, is that appropriate?
If it is not, is it ever appropriate to celebrate death? And what is the focal point of the public celebrations if not OBL's death?
