There's obviously an 800-pound gorilla of an issue right now, Osama's death, that we haven't commented on. To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure how to address it. I'm happy he's dead and think the world is a better place without him, but the euphoric celebration that followed the announcement struck me as odd. I know that those celebrations Sunday night were actually mixtures of joy, relief, and remembrance, but the joy seemed to overwhelm everything. I don't know.
But, while my feelings about how to react to Osama's death are mixed, I know exactly how I feel about the current and former officials who are crowing that "enhanced interrogation" led to us catching him. It's not surprising that Cheney and co. would be saying this but every time this comes up I still find myself gaping in awe that people feel like it's okay to support torture. Thus, I highly recommend the Daily Kos summary of the facts behind this that show that standard interrogation led us to Osama while torture helped the warmongering Bushies to accumulate false intelligence they could use to support the Iraq War.
9 comments:
Dave--like the group of us involved in this blog, no doubt--I join you in feeling ambivelent about the USA!USA! reactions to the OBL raid. That what happened to him, happened to him, is for the best for sure.
I wonder if POTUS's actions in all of this will give him enough mojo as C-i-C that he will be able to use his even-bullier pulpit to address the torture/interrogation issue in the coming days/weeks?
Clearly even those on the right are lauding his actions here. So, maybe across the spectrum people would listen to him on this? Probably I'm just really, really naive.
thanks for getting the conversation going, dave. a few thoughts:
completely agree, i wasn't at all gleeful when i heard about osama. i just thought: well ok, good. then i went to bed. i was really surprised to wake up and see all the dancing in the streets jubilation, especially since many were young people --in middle school/elementary school when 9/11 happened. of course, seeing survivors and victim's loved ones felt different. i get why they wanted to be out, commemorating and remembering.
--but hopefully we won't see the rampant jingoism we saw after 9/11. that stuff makes me nervous. and i know it makes muslim americans very nervous.
--i do think this will influence swing voters in some small way. this is the kind of thing that they find important and will file away for their anguished, prolongued evaluation of our 2012 candidates.
--on the other hand, there is lots of time til 2012 so who knows how much impact this will really have. in the short term, i think it makes the republicans' job of finding a candidate at all worthy of going up against obama that much more challenging. good luck with that!
--i like the way the WH is portraying what happened. they so often miss the boat on communicating (marketing) the good things they do. this is, no doubt, a good thing, done the right way. and reinforces the complicated, thoughtful way obama goes about analyzing and decision-making. i like it.
--i also liked his address. no crazy, fist-pumping, macho bullshit. so nice to have a metrosexual president.
A couple more thoughts on all this. First, while I wouldn't call myself gleeful, I couldn't go straight to bed. I was exhausted already and told Bridget a couple times that I was going to bed but I kept on watching the coverage. Since then, I've been reading the coverage pretty non-stop. While this may not be joy, it's certainly heightened interest.
As for jingoism, we all know it'll be here. Unfortunately, I've already read one report of a mosque being vandalized. But, Obama will be forever paired with Osama's killing and that's probably a supreme mind-fuck for at least some of the jingoists who've been calling him a secret Muslim for the past 3-4 years.
I also think that this will have to help Obama politically. I'm sure that his current post-OBL bounce will level off again but it will be that much harder to the GOP to use their traditional "Dems are wimps" politicking. And, while Obama will be careful not to smirk and act macho about this he will be able to point to his measured, decisive approach to this (and the rescue of that ship captain from Somali pirates) as examples of how his personality is so well suited for the role of C-i-C.
That actually leads to my final thought: I'm so happy Obama was in charge when this all went down. I think both Bush and McCain would have acted rashly a probably blown up the whole compound. And, while the decision to dump OBL's body into the Arabian Sea right away is a bit of a head-scratcher, I suspect that W. would have had him stuffed and carried him around on the campaign trail.
quickly, i did read somewhere that muslims have to be buried within 24 hours of death but i know that a lot of muslims are pissed about the burial at sea. i guess i assumed the WH didn't want his grave to become a memorial/rallying place to/for him. yuck.
I had a much stronger reaction to the news than I would have expected, though I’m still not exactly sure how to describe my feelings. I’m hoping Dr. Visser can help me out. Closest I’ve come is relief. Even though I never would have thought of myself as being in need of relief.
I do have some discomfort with some of the more exuberant reactions, but I also I understand why folks in DC and NYC felt the need the gather together Sunday night. I even understand the “USA, USA” chants to a certain extent. In some ways, it reminded me of how the majority of the country responded in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. There was a brief time when the grief and shock of that experience bound us all together, and spontaneous outbreaks of chanting and anthem singing offered a degree of comfort. Even then, I’m not sure those moments were as much about patriotism as they were about recognizing that we weren’t alone in our grief. I still get chills when I remember the roar of USA chants when Dave and I ran by the Pentagon during the Marine Corp marathon. Of course, the problem is that soon enough, those feelings were exploited for political gain and - as Ilsa pointed out – used by some to justify jingoistic hateful behavior.
It seems to me that the news of OBL’s death brought back to the surface that common bond that we felt in the days following 9/11. My friend Patrick said it better and more concisely: "As someone who was evacuated from the US Capitol on that day, this doesn't feel so much as a celebration of his death or cheering a side in football, but long-overdue and much-needed EXHALE... and a remembrance and celebration of what was lost on that day."
Leon Weiseletier in TNR.com on the scene at Layfayette Park after the announcement:
"The scene was boorish, of course. Triumphalism is often not a pretty thing. But still distinctions had to be made. This crowd burned nobody in effigy, nobody’s flag, nobody’s books. It had assembled to celebrate an entirely defensible act, whose justice could be proven on more than merely nationalistic grounds.
After all, Osama bin Laden killed even more Muslims than Americans, and represented one of the most poisonous ideas of our time: the restoration, by means of sanctified violence, of a human world without rights.
There is no decent man or woman anywhere—and the democratizing Arab street has shown this most starkly—who does not wish to see this armed political theology defeated. If any death justifies rejoicing, the death of Osama bin Laden does."
You're certainly right about the chanting and singing being exhalations and ways of expressing togetherness. Just reading what you wrote about the "USA" chants during the marathon in 2001 brought back those chills.
thanks for that post, john. as dave said, i do feel fully engaged in this event and want to continue to reflect on what it means for the country and me, personally. since dave, bridget and i were all in dc when this happened, i suspect i should be having more than a shoulder shrug reaction to this whole thing. feelings! bury deep!
PS - Even Rumsfeld is saying that the intel that led to OBL was gathered through traditional interrogation. Hopefully that'll put those rumors about the success of torture to bed.
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