My Osama bin Laden-free life appears no different than before. Except today I was a little more worried about coming into work. I live in NYC, my office is two blocks below Times Square, and I have to take the subway. The only bright side is that the city is on high alert today for exactly this reason. Safe / Unsafe balance remains wobbly.
It’s not lost on me that this announcement came exactly a year after the attempted Times Square bombing. I was in the area that day, too. I sometimes think about what could have happened to me. But you know what I think about more? How lucky I am not to live in places where the danger of being killed randomly is not just an intermittent fear, but a constant one. Living in this city has always been a risk, even if you put aside terrorism. It’s a choice I and millions of others made. You can’t say the same about many citizens in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ivory Coast, Palestine, or the hundreds of other locations on this planet where it’s not safe to… exist.
I did not join in the celebrations last night even though I am here. I don’t think celebrating someone’s death is useful. I’m glad he’s dead. He reaped what he sowed. But I will not stand in the street chanting USA!USA!USA! because of it.
Then again, I completely understand the need to be in front of the White House, or at Ground Zero, or in Times Square to mark that moment. It was an important one.
Honestly? I fell asleep waiting for the president to come on TV and tell me what Twitter had already told me an hour before. (It didn’t help that every channel waiting for him to appear had the most boring people marking time in the most boring way imaginable.) I woke up in the middle of it, and found myself impressed by the way Obama carried himself. He’s good at hitting the right notes in speeches. And I’m really glad that he was able to be a part of bringing this about.
I was also glad that he pointed out that bin Laden not only killed white westerners, but many, many Muslims as well. We in America often try to do a little shuck and jive to bring the conversation back to our own pain, but we’re not the only ones who’ve suffered because of this man. It brings to mind the whole Ground Zero Non-Mosque issue, where protesters steadfastly ignored that Muslim men and women died in the Twin Towers as well. Nothing mattered to those assholes except their own pain and suffering, their own fake pain and suffering, or the political points they could score. Last night our president made it clear that bin Laden is a criminal responsible for a lot of death, not just the death people like that want to talk about. I’m proud of him for that.
The day after Osama is not a momentous day, though. Because his death isn’t going to magically restore our civil liberties, end our wars, end people dying because of his actions, or make terrorism go away. When all of that happens, then I will stand in the street and chant. I feel like I may never get that chance in my lifetime.
The Day After Osama -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
So Israelis are not subject to existential threats or arbitrary terror attack?
Or is suffering by Joos counted as 3/5 that of other humans?
Ben David, you are to stop pulling this shit, and you are to do it right now.
If you do it again, even once, you will be banned.
It is nobody else’s job to deal with your childish trolling. You are an adult, it’s time to start acting like it and police your own behavior.
If you don’t show improvement in your very next comment, it will be your last.
—Myca
Oh, come on. This is a low blow. You may as well ask why she did not mention Sudan, or Siria, or any of the many places where the average probability to die violently through no choice of your own is similar to the one in Israel. I have not looked at the data, but I not be surprised to find that Israel is safer than any of the countries she listed.
Actually, I’m going to take this one step further. I’m going to look up the probabilities (the data exists) and if Israel’s is below the five she listed, and there are more than ten in between, I am going to come back, and whine that you’re a bigot who counts the Chosen People’s suffering as 5/3 of that of other humans.
It’s disconcerting how frequently this blog attracts political conservatives, especially at (even off-hand) mentions of Palestine. That aside, the fact is OBL’s body – dead or alive – is irrelevent. He’s never going to die. His memory will live to shape this country’s imperial savagry and national security policy for god knows how many years to come. It’ll also live to petrify Americans till the end of time. It’s a shame.
Ben David, Yom HaShoah was a particularly tasteless time to say that.
IMHO, Chris Hedges wrote a thoughtful post about the celebrations. Read it here
Thanks, Tempest.
I’ve been finding it very hard to swallow all the sanctimony about how people who are glad he’s dead shouldn’t be. I agree with what you say here entirely.
I did not like seeing the “U! S! A! U! S! A!” chanting and people carrying on like the local team had just won the Super Bowl. Leave crowding the streets and cheering at deaths to the barbarians. A man who did great evil was killed. A job well done by the Navy Seals, and I’m glad that it was decided not to capture him and put him on trial. And I congratulate President Obama for making the right call on this operation.
Mandolin, who’s Tempest?
My understanding is that this removed a figurehead. As long as he was alive he was a symbol of Al-Queda’s ability to operate and defy the West. Now Al-Queda can no longer claim that “They can’t even get Osama bin Laden”, or that America’s attention span is short and we don’t have the determination or patience to follow up on things like this, and that’s good. I don’t know if he had any operational activities anymore. He may still have been a conduit for funding. At any rate he’s gone, and that’s a good thing. Now it’s on to the next one.
I did get real tired of a half-hour or hour or so of listening to a bunch of commentators before the President came on talk about “What’s he going to say? What’s he doing to say?” followed by “Oh, he’s going to tell us bin Laden’s dead, what about that???” and yap, yap yap until the President came on. Next time this happens warn people with the crawl that it’s going to happen, but don’t cut away whatever we’re watching until the President is ready to speak. Now, if an asteroid hit Dallas and there’s actual news to show until the President starts up, fine. Otherwise, the President I want to hear. Commentators speculating beforehand on what he’s going to talk about, not so much.
Obama does give a good speech, and in this instance he rose to the occasion.
I’m not so impressed about “Oh, won’t this inspire terrorists to take revenge?” First, that line of thinking leads to hiding under the covers while the bad guys do whatever they want, including eventually shooting you while you cower under your bed. A free people have to be willing to risk their lives if they want to stay free; not just the armed forces on the field of battle, but all of us every day in our daily lives. Second, what are they going to do that they aren’t already trying to do? They’ll just tack Osama’s name on the next outrage and claim it’s for revenge, but it’s not like they’re not out there trying to pull off anything they can already.
I agree with this. I must point out, though, that we are the barbarians. We are the barbarians just as much as those funny looking foreigners who go out in the streets and chant and cheer when bad things happen to us. I’m not sure, but I’m leaning towards calling this sort of thing, “human.” It’s what people do when harm comes to their enemies. It’s barbaric, I guess, but we all seem to be barbaric at times.
In the construction
…all of the labels can be understood as including suffering by both sides of the conflict – all but one.
The term “Palestine” is deliberately used to preference one narrative in that conflict, while dismissing another.
I have no way of knowing whether this poster is one of those lefties who thinks Jewraelis deserve the violence lobbed at them, or whether they are more even handed.
All I see is the deliberate use of a deliberately one-sided term.
I strongly disagree with your assessment. For one thing, which are the two sides that we can understand as suffering in Libya? For another, it’s a stretch to say that “Palestine” cannot be understood to include suffering by more than one side.
I think that you’re flat out wrong on this, Ben David.
Sure….
that, is, so long as you fail to distinguish between “yahoo, we killed the leader of the group who has caused us immense damage, and who has personally led the fight against us to the best of his ability!” and “yahoo, someone killed a bunch of civilians in a country we don’t like!”
One’s barbaric. One isn’t. It takes a pretty major stretch of rebalancing to conclude otherwise.
(Not that we haven’t been barbaric, too. But there’s a big difference between “we’ve done it at times” and “we’ve done it just as much.”)
Why “white westerners”? There’s no black people in the west? You think that people think there were only white people in the Twin Towers or anywhere else in the West?
The argument that “He’s killed a lot more than just Americans” has been used by both the Bush and the Obama administrations when appealing to others for help in finding bin Laden or in fighting Al-Queda. But it never seemed to have an effect – at least, not overtly. Why is it that the Saudis or the Pakistanis or any of the other Arab or Muslim countries whose citizens he’s helped kill have tried to track this guy down?
Ah, yes, g&w. I remember well how funny looking foreigners throughout the middle-east celebrated 9/11. There was that crowd in Palestine and… nobody else that I recall.
You have truly shown me the error of my ways. By “funny looking foreigners,” I clearly meant that crowd in Palestine. Message received.
Except for some Christians who think that nobody but God should judge people, I don’t see why the rest of us shouldn’t celebrate bin Laden’s death.I hate it when I see that such a good opportunity for coming together and express joy is spoiled by nitpicking about boring TV anchors, splitting hairs about what “Palestine” meant in a certain context, etc.
My only (small) regret is that bin Laden was shot in the head.He should have been burned alive.
Right. You’re banned. You’ve sneered your last sneer here.
Which is a rather Seussian construction, I guess. Sort of poetic.
And now you’ll miss out on all of our poetry and our cute little rhymes. And to think, you could have continued to be part of this vibrant community, and all it would have taken was being a little less assholish. Just a little.
If you’d made it so we didn’t have to warn you after every single comment, that would have been nice. Or shown some sign of improvement over time … a growing willingness to discuss rather than insult.
Or even if you’d adopted a willingness to acknowledge when you’re shown to be utterly wrong on factual matters, like in the global warming thread. Remember that thread? Good times, man. Good times.
—Myca
I’m in substantial agreement with the angry black woman– bin Laden’s death left me feeling somewhat relieved and a little cheered up., but it doesn’t change anything currently.
And there’s no way from here to tell whether it will energize AQ or slow it down.
I don’t think I’m obligated to feel bad about his death. This doesn’t mean I think public celebration was a brilliant idea, but I’ll settle for it not being a national holiday. That would be be pathetic.
I would prefer that Israel be listed as a country subject to terrorism, but I don’t think it’s evidence of anti-Semitism if it isn’t. EVEN LOW-LEVEL TERRORISM SUBSTANTIALLY DEGRADES QUALITY OF LIFE. I don’t know why occasional terrorism seems to frighten people more than deadly crime or the much higher risk of accidental death, but it does, and there’s no point in claiming that it shouldn’t.
Stephan, there’s also a Jewish tradition of not rejoicing at one’s enemies’ deaths. “Tell Me More” (an NPR radio show) found a rabbi to argue that no one should celebrate bin Laden’s death, and an imam to be delighted that bin Laden is dead.
I hope your wish that OBL had been burnt alive is a revenge fantasy rather than a recommendation of public policy.
I’m torn on whether bin Laden should have had a trial. The evidence that the person killed was OBL may well be sufficient, and if you believe in capital punishment at all, then he’s earned it, but while my first thought was that if it’s going to be as inadequate as Saddam’s trial, why bother?
On the other hand, a proper trial that covered all of his murders would have been appropriate.