To Celebrate the Death of Bin Laden
Cross-posted to Tumblr.
Almost instantly a public debate arose when the announcement came late Sunday night that Osama bin Laden had been killed by Navy SEALs: is it okay to celebrate the death of a human being?
Several public figures admitted a personal bias and mixed emotion about celebrating. Some were so audacious as to claim no difference between the crowds celebrating bin Laden's capture and death and those that celebrated the 9/11 attacks.
How did I personally feel when I found out bin Laden was captured and killed? The same way I do now. Patriotic. Proud. While I wouldn't exactly dance in the street over it, I understand the sentiment.
Does that make me, as well as those that celebrated and continue to celebrate, a bloody person, ignorant of the realities of war?
In some ways, that's certainly true. I'm not a member of the military and have certainly never seen combat.
I had to ask myself if I was a hypocrite: I've studied forensics and when I found out crowds celebrated with champagne outside Raiford Prison prison in Florida when Ted Bundy was finally executed by the state, I found that inappropriate.
Is celebrating the death of bin Laden any different?
My answer: yes. My problem with the champagne and fanfare of Bundy's death is that it gives fame to a murderer at the expense of his victims, whose individual identities were taken along with their lives when they became, by varying degrees of necessity, "Bundy victims", lying forever in shadow of their increasingly infamous murderer. Individuals that brought their children to the execution and spectacle only added to Bundy's fame, unwittingly helping to obscure even the identity of his victims (to say nothing of how one would explain serial murder to a child).
But what about, you rightly argue, the thousands that died as the result of 9/11? And the service men and women that have died as a result of the two wars that began in the name of 9/11?
You are right, of course.
But the difference between the two lies in the fact that bin Laden was more than a murderer, or, more accurately, someone who ordered murder and declared mass genocide, sending the brainwashed poor on his suicide missions while he lived in luxury.
Bin Laden is a national symbol, and was one long before his death. He represents not only "the enemy" but the anguish of post-9/11 America, an anguish that includes events that don't even necessarily bear a direct relation to 9/11, but exist all the same. An anguish that has led some social scientists to speculate that Generation Y has been so thoroughly purged of the post-Boom hubris that it has the potential for another "Greatest Generation" (as well as the potential for another "Lost Generation": only time will tell).
So when people celebrate the fact he's dead, my theory is by and large they aren't celebrating the murder of a human being so much as a symbolic (and yet very real) victory. It's been observed that in these celebrations, people aren't yearning for a bloody coup so much as a V-Day.
That is what I believe. I cannot speak for everyone, but I personally celebrate what I hope is a point of victory for America and our allies. I'm not suggesting that those that oppose celebrating or professing happiness in bin Laden's death are in any way "unAmerican", or unpatriotic, or otherwise invoking the "us versus them" rhetoric. I'm merely trying to explain why otherwise peaceful, intelligent, and rational human beings would take pleasure in the death of another human being.
Are all revelers celebrating the same thing, let alone sharing the same sense of cultural significance?
Of course not.
Frankly, some of the drunken crowds I know would show (and have probably shown) just as much enthusiasm for a sports victory as they have for what is potentially our generation's V-Day. Plenty of people are quick to make this into a twisted, knee-jerk anti-Muslim and anti-Islam sentiment. But unfortunately, plenty in favor of just quiet reflection for the victims share that same ignorance and readiness to blame. It is not the matter by which we react to bin Laden's death so much as the conclusions we rightly or wrongly draw.
And because I celebrate his death, does that in any way mean I oppose or put lesser value on quiet reflection for the victims? Absolutely not. Our war dead and wounded (so frequently forgotten by the press) and the thousands that died or were injured (I include in this the responders that are still fighting for their lives from the toxins inhaled at Ground Zero and the Pentagon) should never be something that is set aside when any discussion of 9/11 occurs.
But I don't think celebrating what I and many see as a victory for America excludes (nor should exclude) that same quiet reflection.
You know what would be utterly ideal? These celebrations not existing in the first place as bin Laden's attacks never existed in the first place. But they happened and our culture is forever changed for it, as we are as a culture are changed (for better or for worse) by bin Laden's death.
So the next time one is eager to brand someone expressing happiness at bin Laden's death "bloody", "thoughtless", "insensitive", and "almost as/just as bad as the terrorists" (all accusations I've seen leveled at revelers), I urge that person to consider the greater culture context and symbolism in which bin Laden's death occurred and not be so quick to necessarily brand those taking pleasure in his death as those celebrating carnage. Let's not have this be an opportunity for bin Laden to get his wish in death: to divide us even further.
Almost instantly a public debate arose when the announcement came late Sunday night that Osama bin Laden had been killed by Navy SEALs: is it okay to celebrate the death of a human being?
Several public figures admitted a personal bias and mixed emotion about celebrating. Some were so audacious as to claim no difference between the crowds celebrating bin Laden's capture and death and those that celebrated the 9/11 attacks.
How did I personally feel when I found out bin Laden was captured and killed? The same way I do now. Patriotic. Proud. While I wouldn't exactly dance in the street over it, I understand the sentiment.
Does that make me, as well as those that celebrated and continue to celebrate, a bloody person, ignorant of the realities of war?
In some ways, that's certainly true. I'm not a member of the military and have certainly never seen combat.
I had to ask myself if I was a hypocrite: I've studied forensics and when I found out crowds celebrated with champagne outside Raiford Prison prison in Florida when Ted Bundy was finally executed by the state, I found that inappropriate.
Is celebrating the death of bin Laden any different?
My answer: yes. My problem with the champagne and fanfare of Bundy's death is that it gives fame to a murderer at the expense of his victims, whose individual identities were taken along with their lives when they became, by varying degrees of necessity, "Bundy victims", lying forever in shadow of their increasingly infamous murderer. Individuals that brought their children to the execution and spectacle only added to Bundy's fame, unwittingly helping to obscure even the identity of his victims (to say nothing of how one would explain serial murder to a child).
But what about, you rightly argue, the thousands that died as the result of 9/11? And the service men and women that have died as a result of the two wars that began in the name of 9/11?
You are right, of course.
But the difference between the two lies in the fact that bin Laden was more than a murderer, or, more accurately, someone who ordered murder and declared mass genocide, sending the brainwashed poor on his suicide missions while he lived in luxury.
Bin Laden is a national symbol, and was one long before his death. He represents not only "the enemy" but the anguish of post-9/11 America, an anguish that includes events that don't even necessarily bear a direct relation to 9/11, but exist all the same. An anguish that has led some social scientists to speculate that Generation Y has been so thoroughly purged of the post-Boom hubris that it has the potential for another "Greatest Generation" (as well as the potential for another "Lost Generation": only time will tell).
So when people celebrate the fact he's dead, my theory is by and large they aren't celebrating the murder of a human being so much as a symbolic (and yet very real) victory. It's been observed that in these celebrations, people aren't yearning for a bloody coup so much as a V-Day.
That is what I believe. I cannot speak for everyone, but I personally celebrate what I hope is a point of victory for America and our allies. I'm not suggesting that those that oppose celebrating or professing happiness in bin Laden's death are in any way "unAmerican", or unpatriotic, or otherwise invoking the "us versus them" rhetoric. I'm merely trying to explain why otherwise peaceful, intelligent, and rational human beings would take pleasure in the death of another human being.
Are all revelers celebrating the same thing, let alone sharing the same sense of cultural significance?
Of course not.
Frankly, some of the drunken crowds I know would show (and have probably shown) just as much enthusiasm for a sports victory as they have for what is potentially our generation's V-Day. Plenty of people are quick to make this into a twisted, knee-jerk anti-Muslim and anti-Islam sentiment. But unfortunately, plenty in favor of just quiet reflection for the victims share that same ignorance and readiness to blame. It is not the matter by which we react to bin Laden's death so much as the conclusions we rightly or wrongly draw.
And because I celebrate his death, does that in any way mean I oppose or put lesser value on quiet reflection for the victims? Absolutely not. Our war dead and wounded (so frequently forgotten by the press) and the thousands that died or were injured (I include in this the responders that are still fighting for their lives from the toxins inhaled at Ground Zero and the Pentagon) should never be something that is set aside when any discussion of 9/11 occurs.
But I don't think celebrating what I and many see as a victory for America excludes (nor should exclude) that same quiet reflection.
You know what would be utterly ideal? These celebrations not existing in the first place as bin Laden's attacks never existed in the first place. But they happened and our culture is forever changed for it, as we are as a culture are changed (for better or for worse) by bin Laden's death.
So the next time one is eager to brand someone expressing happiness at bin Laden's death "bloody", "thoughtless", "insensitive", and "almost as/just as bad as the terrorists" (all accusations I've seen leveled at revelers), I urge that person to consider the greater culture context and symbolism in which bin Laden's death occurred and not be so quick to necessarily brand those taking pleasure in his death as those celebrating carnage. Let's not have this be an opportunity for bin Laden to get his wish in death: to divide us even further.