Rest in peace is not at all the thing to say upon the death of the world's most notorious terrorist. I know of no one in the Western world or, for that matter, most of the rest of the world who will mourn Osama bin Laden, a man who killed at least as many fellow Muslims as he killed non-Muslims, a man who divided the Muslim world, who caused undue hate and pain and stigma for members of his own religion who lived as minorities in Western countries. Osama bin Laden has never struck me as a man who cares all that much for subleties, and yet his masterminding of so many terrorist attacks indicates that he was not at all an unintelligent man. He knew how to plan, how to feel religious fervor and incite it in others, how to drive wedges between social and religious groups. He knew how to make himself heard, how to capture a news cycle--exactly the sort of behavior that will continue to fuel terrorism (a form of violence that takes its very power from being shocking, distressing, and widely reported) of all stripes long after we have stopped talking about his death.
His death will not bring back 3000 American citizens, or the thousands of other people around the world, Muslim and not, "Western" and not, who have died. It will not bring back the thousands of American men and women who have died running around the Mideast looking for him, trying to stop terrorist attacks, trying to democratize Afghanistan and Iraq and now, lately, other countries in the region. It most certainly will not bring back the millions upon millions of average-Joe civilians caught in the crossfire in thousands of various locales around the world, in the power struggles between religions and societies that get reproduced every day, it seems, in the Mideast in particular. Killing one terrorist, even a massive figurehead, even an Osama bin Laden, is not going to make this all go away. It's not going to stop al-Qaeda or other similar groups from continuing their fights. Democracy is going to continue to go toe to toe with Islamic theocracies all over. The success of various democratic movements will depend on the citizens themselves, not on how heavily we throw ourselves into directly fighting on their behalfs; in too many cases we're at least partially responsible for Islamic theocracies (which we preferred to socialist/communist ones in the 1950s and 60s) to begin with.
It's hard, therefore, to say what I'm feeling knowing that Osama bin Laden is dead. If truth may be told, I long ago forgot, in many ways, about him--his elusiveness simply became par for the course. He was dead to my conscious mind years ago, after we bogged ourselves down doing mysteriously uncertain things originally allegedly pertaining to him in Iraq. Right at this moment I am watching hordes of people on TV thronging around the White House, waving American flags, screaming with a combination of righteous anger and joy, climbing into trees, doing cheerleading stunts on the backs of strangers. A few minutes ago there were others here, and my RA spoke what I think so many of us were thinking: "Osama bin Laden was an absolutely despicable person, but I just can't cheer about his death."
Cheering about anyone's death does seem to accomplish exactly nothing. It's just pure energy, in a way, energy that might just as equally be turned to tears when we think about all the horrific crap Osama bin Laden has done in the past decade or two and all the horrific crap we've done trying to stop him. Right now this energy has turned into patriotism for many of these people I'm watching on my TV screen; death and carnage and rage and sorrow become symbolized by waving American flags and chanting USA USA USA. In a way I am indeed feeling some sense of joy and satisfaction knowing that Osama bin Laden's specific plans for destruction cannot hurt any more people, but I know equally well that terrorist attacks will continue and we'll continue thinking of the Muslim world as a block, as if there weren't a million subtleties in each Mideastern country and a million reasons why nothing ever has, does, or will come easily in this world. The part of me that remembers the build-up to the war in Iraq and the rapid disillusionment when it turned out that we were in a quagmire sees waving flags with a touch of fear in this context; flags and joy and overdue and pent-up rage seem to send off alarm bells in my head. Little good seems to come from bravado and trying to simplify emotions, these days. There's also the amazement that Osama bin Laden only died now. What on earth have we been doing spending so much money (billions upon billions of dollars) that could have been spent researching cures for cancer or something to kill one man (and a few million spares) after ten plus years of trying? In a way it feels like the US military has finally done its ridiculously expensive job, and it's hard to give it a hearty congratulations for doing its job.
Osama bin Laden is dead; we won that battle, in that we were the ones who directly killed him. (After all, tempus fugit--time flees, and everyone dies of something or other.) This is indeed a blow to Islamic terrorism. It is indeed a kind of long-overdue justice for the families of people killed on 9/11 and for the families of all the other people around the world dead because of Islamic terrorism. It does not mean the automatic dispersal of al-Qaeda, however. It does not mean that terrorist attacks will stop any time particularly soon. Osama bin Laden was a wealthy, powerful, and well-connected man, and thousands of similarly-minded, similarly-powerful, and similarly-wealthy men just like him are still alive and well across the Mideast, killing their fellow Muslims almost as indiscriminately as they want to kill Americans and other Westerners. He is a bright and shiny link in a heavy and complex chain of power relations, religion, society, education, charisma, and so much more, a chain many many people are trying to destroy, and a chain for which we have killed just as many people as the chain has killed.
Osama bin Laden is dead; we "won" that one, but at a horrific price. I would hope and try my damnedest to ensure that the price does not stay as high in the future, but I know, as surely as I know that the sun will rise tomorrow, that when the next push comes to shove it is going to be like stabbing water trying to fight emotions and flag-waving to remind people of the explicit atrocities and all the nuances of fact and emotion that somehow went ignored in the past and are likely to be ignored in the future.
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