Let’s start out by stating something that’s very important to understand. I am okay with capitol punishment. I support all the reasons you shouldn’t be okay with it, and I agree under most circumstances, you probably don’t need capitol punishment to do the job incarceration and rehabilitation can do.
But sometimes you get someone who can’t be changed, and is incorrigible. If we have someone we can’t trust to follow the usual social contract, we might have to do something about that.
Or, to put it as my 84-year-old mother-in-law put it, “We had to take old Hitler out. He had to go.”
So, what about Bin Laden, then? This isn’t for those of you who don’t want to read political stuff, so it’s under a cut.
I expected that since the media told all of us nigh unto 10 years ago, that he was Satan, many people from the U.S. will revert to post 9/11 jingoism and say, “Yeah, baby!” like their favorite pugilist just won a boxing match.
Other U.S. citizens have reacted with horror at those mentioned in the above paragraph. And yet other U.S. citizens have weighed the political pros and cons of taking out Bin Laden, and what it does for our standing in the world. Once again, our irrevocable cowboy politics look good to many of us, and the kind of politics that got us into this mess are glamorized over careful diplomacy, yet again.
Kids, we can all admit that Osama Bin Laden was a bad man. Not only did he exploit his own people by showing them that the Great White Satan (TM) had to be destroyed because they couldn’t be reasoned with, but he also did what terrorists do best: unjustly killing folks guilty by association with a society, to render a world power impotent. That it turned out in the end the U.S. wasn’t impotent was really a lucky break, not diminishing the roles and competence of the brave service people involved.
Yet, we should consider the circumstances that right now are creating more Bin Ladens, and ask if we should stop shooting from the hip. Or more to the point, if we should stop dealing with rich oil families whose disaffected sons have decided that even though the U.S. is greasing the wheels of their corruption, they’d like to stand up against the Great Satan by exploiting the truly down trodden. Our role in either of these scenarios is a problem. One is not morally better than the other.
So, I’m okay with bin Laden being gone. I am not okay with what we’re still doing out there in the world. I am also not okay that we paint ourselves as the good guys. Only peripherally related to bin Laden, because 9/11 was used as an excuse to start an act of aggression, I’m still waiting for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to go on trial for their own war crimes against the people of Iraq. Since Saddam Hussein already has, it seems their turn. Note that I’m not pushing for the death penalty. Incarceration is probably enough now that they’ve been removed from power.
We need to think less in terms of us and them and more in terms of world citizenry.
Catherine
“We need to think less in terms of us and them and more in terms of world citizenry.”
I think we are closer to this than ever. Geographic borders are becoming less relevant, and those people who cling to those divisions, separating us for their identity or prosperity are panicking.
We can only hope.