When President Obama, summing up the killing of Osama bin Laden, said, "Justice has been done," the problem wasn't simply that he misspoke -- justice, after all, can only emerge at the end of an impartial judicial proceeding -- but that, in so misspeaking, he hit the emotional bull's-eye.
"Justice has been done."
We got him, America! Oh yeah, sweet! Who can't feel the pop of satisfaction in those words? "He should have said, 'Retaliation has been accomplished,'" Marjorie Cohn pointed out recently at Common Dreams, and that's true, of course, but the president wasn't summoning the dry, sober rule of law. He was evoking, just as George W. Bush did before him, the Wild West, America's deepest font of mythology, where justice, you know, comes from the muzzle of a revolver. As with Geronimo, so with Osama: Wanted Dead or Alive.
"... it was the Indians who, by the ambush, the atrocity, and the capture of the white women . . . became the aggressors and so sealed their own fate," writes Tom Engelhardt in The End of Victory Culture, describing the first mythological enemy we created as we carved a nation out of a continent.
"From the seventeenth century on," Engelhardt continues, "Americans were repeatedly shown the slaughter of Indians as a form of reassurance and entertainment, and audiences almost invariably cheered."
In the post-9/11 decade, myth and politics -- myth and all phases of American culture -- have converged with a certain ferocity that seems unprecedented in my lifetime, and coincides with our transition to a state of perpetual war and economic free fall. As real security for most people nosedives, appeal to myth, especially the myth of the Wild West, becomes the prime tool of governance.
"... from this day on," said Mara Liasson a week ago on NPR, "his Republican opponents will always have to deal with the new and enduring fact that Barack Obama is the president who got Osama bin Laden."
This says nothing and everything in one fell swoop. The "everything" is mythological: This is a big, big victory for the prez and for America. The "nothing" is... everything else. Bin Laden's death doesn't end our wars or make us safer. Indeed, anything but. Talk of terrorist retaliation immediately began cycling through the 24/7 media. If Sen. Charles Schumer has his way, the security bureaucracy will create a "no ride" list for Amtrak passengers because some evil, though sketchy, plans were found at bin Laden's compound targeting the U.S. rail system.
"Even in death," writes Glenn Greenwald, "bin Laden continues to serve the valuable role of justifying always-increasing curtailments of liberty and expansions of government power."
The raid and assassination have also led to a resurgence of torture justifications in the media, particularly from Bush-era officials neck deep in war-crime complicity, despite zero evidence that testimony obtained via "enhanced interrogation" or "Rumsfeld interview" yielded any useful intelligence. Could it be, Carla Seaquist wondered in a piece on Huffington Post, that they're just trying to establish a protective buffer against eventual prosecution for war crimes?
The myth of the Wild West is the myth of necessary violence. It has no limits. It justifies the carpet bombing of civilians. It justifies political assassination, including assassination by drone aircraft (with unlimited civilian casualties allowed, especially if they can be labeled "suspected insurgents"). It justifies the spread of toxic pollutants. It justifies the use of nuclear weapons.
And all it asks of us is a state of endless fear.
"There's a way in which terrorism is incredibly smart and savvy," said Suzanne Ross of the Raven Foundation. "If you make someone afraid, they will destroy themselves eventually."
In several video presentations, Ross and her colleague, Adam Ericksen, examined President Obama's attempts this past week to call forth a heightened sense of national unity around Osama bin Laden's assassination. It's a devil's bargain, they maintain, because the need for more violence will never end. However, this need -- for the next war, the next political assassination -- always seems so reasonable. And as part of the bargain, "The meaning you're making around violence is your own goodness," Ross said.
The Raven Foundation, along with innumerable organizations and, in all likelihood, a majority of the American populace, want this country to reorganize not around violence and exclusion -- good guys vs. bad guys -- but around a higher human standard: compassion, inclusion, real justice.
The only way this has any chance of happening is if enough people free themselves of the myth of the Wild West, which reduces these values to the status of the fair maiden rescued at gunpoint.
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Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, contributor to One World, Many Peaces and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
© 2011 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
Maybe it is time for America to lead by example without the calculated use or threat of violence. Our actions going forward, for no other reason than the history of our misguided policies, should now be a matter of public consensus and never again ignored.
http://justfortheyellofit.blogspot.com/2011/05/mixed-lessons-yet-learned.html
The excuse for continuing the GWOT has been removed.
What Bush put in place years ago - a bogey man created according to the dictates of a Rand Corporation operational plan from the Cold War years - is gone.
But it's an excellent article about the background noise, Mr. Koehler!
Bin Laden and co. (mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets) were our erstwhile allies, as Robert Scheer's recent HuffPost column pointed out. Exactly how and why that alliance ended in estrangement and terrorism is completely unknown. A bin-Laden trial might have provided those answers.
One theory that could have been vetted is that our covert operatives induced bin Laden's fighters to do our dirty work against the Soviet and Afghan communists by making them false promises of future tolerance of these Islamic militants' post-war plans to overthrow autocratic regimes in their home countries. Our reneging on this promise (based on realpolitik, geopolitics and likely anti-Arab and/or anti-Muslim bias) might have been what provoked our former militant friends' wrath. (The first WTC bombing occurred relatively soon after the fall of Soviet Union.)
So, per Mr. Koehler: in this "Arab spring", in which politicized Muslims are participating, as is their right, can we all just get along?
Unlike communism, there is nothing in Islam that's incompatible with Western values. It's a religion in the tradition of the other two great monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Christianity. While each is patriarchal and socially conservative and somewhat countercultural to modern secular trends, at a deeper level each calls for, in sum, just our type of "bourgeois" society.
Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Los Angeles, California
The key point derived seems to be a tendency of humans to act mainly on essentially irrational beliefs as opposed to logic and objective facts.
The "belief" that our race/religion/culture/economy/government is inherently superior to others has always been the primary justification for unprovoked conflict.
Examples abound in history such as the conquests by the Egyptians ,Persians, Greeks, Chinese, Romans, Mongols, Europeans, Russians, Americans, etc.
The killing and taking of others land and property has always been justified by "beliefs".
The only true and rational justification for attacking others is self defense against REAL, not BELIEVED threats.
America's response to Al-Qaeda's small high profile attack was a massive over reaction.
To eliminate a few thousand Al-Qaeda members, America :
- Invaded and largely destroyed Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11.
- Killed over a hundred thousand innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- Squandered over $2 TRILLION dollars (wars and Homeland Security).
- Killed/wounded tens of thousands of American troops.
- Made many more Muslim enemies.
- For the "War on Terrorism", the USA has gutted many of it's own beliefs and constitution.
Habeas Corpus, the Geneva convention, prohibitions against torture, innocent until proven guilty, right to a fair trial, no eavesdropping without warrants, the war powers act, no extra judicial executions, etc. have all been trampled in the name of "public safety".
Americans have to change course before they become that which they most fear.
Excellent article.
My concern is as follows: Violence always brings more violence in a never-ending cycle. It is almost inevitable that there will be a terrorist response somewhere in the West, in the coming months or years. And when that happens, it will create enough fear and hysteria that we Americans will willingly surrender the few remaining rights we still hold.
We'll then find a new Bad Guy Icon to replace OBL, and this guy will then become the personification of all evil and another reason to invade yet another Muslim country, kill more human beings, and bankrupt our economy.
When will we learn? When will we learn?
The way he talks you would think we were just picking out innocent people and killing them. We have been and are at war with terrorism. While it is very disturbing and sad that innocents are killed, in war it is sometimes unavoidable and especially when the enemy hides behind the innocent.
These people we are fighting, muslim terrorists, are cowards that kill innocent men, women and children because to them they are infidels and therefore the enemy or their dying in the cause of their allah. Bin Laden was one of the sheiks or chiefs among them and had directed the killing of thousands of innocent people and it seems that Mr. Koehler doesn't care that some 3,000 of them were Americans killed on 9/11.
Justice is also defined as the principal of just dealing or right action. To condemn this action is to condemn the brave soldiers that got the job done. Sometimes justice is found outside the courtroom and today,sometimes, you can't get justice in the courtroom.
Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of god made he man. Genesis 9:6
Do you understand that you're rationalizing genocide in your first paragraph?
And do you understand that in our name, as Americans, we too are killing "innocent men, women and children", as well as holding others indefinitely without charges and without trials. These actions---and the torture of Muslims---have actually created more potential terrorists. The heinous and criminal actions of the United States in these countries have been described as "Al-Qaeda's Best Recruiting Tool".
And how do you wage a "war with terrorism"? Can you define what you're talking about? Are you able to comprehend that terrorism is a tactic, not an "enemy"? Do you understand the distinction?
How would you know if you "defeated" terrorism? Would the "enemy named Terrorism" show up and sign a treaty of surrender, like Japan did in 1945? Or will we only "win" when we've "Killed All Of 'Em", just like we did with the Indians?
The heroic cowboy is a myth, Rick. Just like the fearless soldier. Or the hero in general. John Wayne was an actor. He wasn't real. It's called mythology. It's like religion.
And then, at the end of your strange screed, you wrap up all of this sickening, twisted, sociopathic blather by quoting from The Bible?
Look in the mirror, sir. And see your real "enemy". It's not too late for you.
Snerd
Obtuse is not rationalizing genocide, which you should know is the attempt to wipe out a particular race of people, such as the Jewish Holocaust, but a failure by some to understand that war is a nasty, horrible, but sometimes necessary action toward an aggressor and that when it is necessary, regrettably innocents sometimes die. In the case of the war against muslim terrorism our enemy kills the innocent intentionally and it seems you look upon these terrorists as poor, misunderstood, peacemakers, which I don’t understand at all. When it is necessary to wage a war against an enemy, a soldier cannot stand and let that enemy just shoot him /her down without firing back, aiming for the enemy but when they hide behind walls and in rooms where there may be innocents, and these innocents may be hit. This enemy is not going to fight a nice clean war out in the open clear of innocents as we would like. In this instance the terrorist will not surrender normally because they believe they will go to their paradise when they die. Therefore things have and will be bloody.
Not rationalizing just trying to clarify to one who is obtuse about war.
And if you believe there are no hero’s, you don’t have any sons or daughters who have had to fight in one of these wars and, not to be harsh but, you know nothing of true history and that is twisted.
So humanity is easily lead and controlled with myth and belief.
Also, our ignorance likes a common enemy. We feel better as a family. Our sports fan style nationalism is part of this mythological stage.
Letting go of our immature thinking style [called belief ]is what much of the struggles and ideological debates around the planet are pointing us toward.
Now get over yourself.
Obamas problem in my view is that he has far too much compassion for the GOP. he needs to stand up to them and fight instead of caving in to their bullying.