On the evening of Sunday, May 1, 2011 the American people were informed that an era had ended. That Osama bin Laden, the boogeyman who had haunted our nightmare, the man whose agents we saw in the shadows every time we had boarded an airplane for nearly ten years, had been killed by members of the special forces of the US military. Upon hearing that news, to borrow a phrase from Monty Python, "There was much rejoicing."
I joined in that rejoicing. I called my parents to share the good news. I pumped my fist. I stayed up to participate in the moment. I linked to a picture of President Obama on Facebook with the caption, "Sorry it took so long to get you a copy of my birth certificate. I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden." I did this out of pride in my country and my president. In terms of celebration, mine wasn't the most demonstrative. I wasn't out in the streets. I wasn't holding a sign, or having a party. However, this wasn't a huge moment for me, personally. Osama didn't cost me nearly as much as he did those in the streets. I didn't know anyone who died on 9/11. I don't know any soldiers who died in Afghanistan or even in Iraq, which I know is only tangentially related to bin Laden's activities at best. Most of what I have lost has been minor compared to those who have lost people they loved. All I lost is a few hours at an airport now and again and perhaps his existence as a danger to my country caused me a vague sense of unease.
After the sense of jubilation lifted, however, the American people began to consider the ethical ramifications of celebrating the death of another human being. Was it right? Was it perhaps not so much a moral issue as one of taste and decorum? How does it fit with the ideals of our country? It is these questions that we now need to address. But before I address them, let me say this: whatever conclusion can be reached about the propriety of the celebration, whatever you think about it, one thing must be noted. Forty-eight hours removed from the hearing about the death of the man responsible for the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people, the man whose forces wounded our national sense of security worse than any enemy since the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, the American people are engaging in a debate on whether or not we should have celebrated. Even if it was a mistake to celebrate, even if joy at a human death is unseemly and wrong, the fact that it's take us all of TWO DAYS to take a deep breath and evaluate our actions says something about the character of the people of the United States of America. Whether we were right or wrong, the mere fact that we're taking the time to think about it and talk about it shows a depth of caring and compassion that is hard to deny.
What were we celebrating?
First and foremost, in order to evaluate the propriety of the celebration we need to think about what we are really celebrating. Almost any victory worth celebration means someone else was defeated and is suffering. When my favorite sports team wins a championship and I'm celebrating, I'm sure that to the fans of the team who just lost, my celebration feels wrong. It seems tacky. When Kentucky beat North Carolina to go to the Final Four, I was celebrating while Harrison Barnes was suffering. And the cause of my celebration and his suffering were the same. But I wasn't truly celebrating his suffering. I was celebrating Kentucky's victory. The same can be said for celebrations of military victories, there's just a different scale. And, in this case, the scale was altogether different, being the death of one man.
I believe most Americans celebrating Bin Laden's death, when you really get down to their motivations, were celebrating a fact that a significant threat to their lives, the lives of their friends and neighbors, had been removed. There are still other threats, sure, but that one was removed. It happened to be removed by the death of a particular man, but the essence of the celebration is the celebration of an American victory and the removal of a threat. It was more fundamentally a celebration of an American success than bin Laden's defeat, although the two are obviously intertwined, just like the celebration of a sports victory is intertwined with the defeat of the opponent. In that light, I find the celebration wholly justifiable. I have friends who live in New York City and Washington DC, as well as some living near other places that could be targets for Al Quaida, and I believe the death of Osama makes them safer today than they were two weeks ago. And I refuse to apologize for being happy that the death of a madman who was a threat not only to the United States, but to humanity as a whole, made my friends safer.
With that said, I'm obviously putting a whole lot of rationalizing thought there that was quite possibly not present in the initial flurry of emotion. Some of the visceral joy may clearly have been of a directly vengeful sort. Much of it may have been. I don't know, I wasn't there. But at that point, I'm quibbling over motives, not content, and it's not to me in particular to judge another's motives. In addition, even if it is a bit squicky, even if it does fall slightly short of the highest ideals of humanity, I think we can all admit that it was a simple, very human reaction, and one that, even though it may not be wholly admirable, is not completely blameworthy. We've all been caught up in a groundswell of emotion that carried us away, and while that doesn't make it right, it does make it understandable and something that ought not be judged too harshly.
Our Shared Humanity
I've had a friend or two compare this to the celebrations in the Middle East, such as some of those over 9/11 itself. Maybe there's some truth to that, although distinctions can clearly be made (the death of one mass murderer versus the death of thousands of innocents, for instance), but if there is some truth that should be drawn from it, it shouldn't be as a form of some cheap point-scoring off of those who celebrated, either the average Americans OR the average Middle Easterner, but rather as a reminder that we're all human. That the average Middle Easterner and average American are very similar, and while our circumstances and our leaders have placed us on opposite sides, that perhaps the differences don't run as deep as both of us like to imagine.
On the Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart made a point worth repeating. He indicated that for too long bin Laden and his ilk have been the face of the Middle East for Americans. Perhaps with his death, we can move past him, move past his type. We can see the people of Egypt and Tunisia fighting for their own freedom and see our brothers and sisters. Perhaps that should be the legacy of Bin Laden's death: that those who attempt to divide us fundamentally, those who view their opponents as less than human, will ultimately be defeated, and it's perhaps fitting that in death he should evoke a reaction that reminds us all of our shared humanity.
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