Below, a guest-post by Harold Pollack on Osama bin Laden’s death. (Pollack is Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration, and faculty chair of the Center for Health Administration Studies at the University of Chicago. He recently joined The Century Foundation as an adjunct fellow focusing on issues of Economics and Inequality. This post originally appeared on the Foundation’s blog, www.tcf.org )
Pollack suggests that bin Laden’s death signals a time for reflection, not celebration. I totally agree. I found the televised spectacle of college students, high-fiving and cheering, as if their team had just won a football game, unsettling. War is not a sport.
I fully understand why anyone who lost a loved one on 9/11, along with families of soldiers killed in the Middle East, would feel a great sense of relief, as well as a certain grim satisfaction upon hearing that bin Laden had left this planet. His death will not fill the holes in their hearts, but it is something.
By contrast, these college students were not involved in 9/11, and they have not fought in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Indeed, I fear that they think of war as a spectator sport, a game to be enjoyed on television. (Without question, this is how the media presented the Gulf War– “boxed in” on a television screen, as if it were a movie, leaving viewers feeling safe and detached.) The jubilant students I saw didn’t seem to comprehend the reality of battle, the stench of burned flesh, or the tragedy of young lives snuffed out. In the past, old men sent young men to war. These days, some young Americans seem all too ready to send other young Americans (who, by and large, have fewer opportunities) to war.
As Pollack suggests, even when we are victorious, celebrating war is not good for our health as a nation: “There is something subtly corrupting about too-readily embracing and celebrating our impressive paramilitary capabilities to find and to annihilate specific ‘high-value human targets.’”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Time for Reflection, Not Celebration
By Harold Pollack
I’m grateful to the men and women of our intelligence services and armed forces who tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden. Their bravery and methodical professionalism is remarkable.
To tell you the truth, I’m glad we just killed him, that he did not survive the firefight with our forces. Dragging him back to Guantanamo or wherever for interrogation and some sort of legal proceeding promised to be either a ghastly global spectacle or an unworthy show trial. As Hannah Arendt once put things: He didn’t want to share this planet with me, and I don’t want to share it with him, either. Ignominious burial at sea is a fitting end for him–not because he defied American power, but because he was an apocalyptic mass murderer. Good riddance to him.
Despite my grim satisfaction at the outcome, I’m not joining the people high-five-ing in front of the White House or shouting USA! USA! at major league baseball. Some of my friends wish that President Obama had been a little less somber, a little more celebratory, in his announcement last night of bin Laden's death. I don’t feel that way. This was a valued victory, but nothing to celebrate. A man was shot twice in the head and dumped in the ocean. Others were killed, too. It was a bad day’s work that needed to be done, not an occasion for gloating.
It’s predictable and understandable that people are fascinated by intelligence sources and methods, and by science-fiction tactics and gear used by our special operations forces. I’m fascinated by that stuff, too. There is something unsettling about this fascination, too. Black ops have their place, but our worst military and counterterrorism challenges won’t be addressed that way. Warfare is not a remote control affair conducted by drones and surgical kill teams. We have learned to our sorrow, repeatedly, that war has a way of bringing home its grimmer and grimier human realities.
There is something subtly corrupting about too-readily embracing and celebrating our impressive paramilitary capabilities to find and to annihilate specific “high-value human targets.” I’m glad we have these capabilities, but it’s a little too tempting to launch decapitating strikes at a military adversary, a little too tempting to destroy a command bunkers not long after (say) a Libyan strongman just happens to pass through. At the most tactical level, we are unwise, as a relatively non-hardened society, to dabble in such things.
Here at home, America came together for a brief moment after 9/11. We then squandered the moment. Rattled by the atrocities in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, we tangibly diminished both our world position and ourselves through our dubious venture in Iraq. Given a real whiff of fear, our government enjoyed broad public support in violating core constitutional principles in counter-terrorism efforts.
Our most notorious nemesis is dead and gone. I hope this provides us the space and the moment to find our bearings. I hope we spend the next decade being more intelligent and less bellicose in engaging others in the world. Efforts such as President George W. Bush’s PEPFAR initiatives did more to improve our global standing than any hit team or drone ever could. I’m not sure he fully understood that. I hope and believe President Obama does.
In today’s world, we must remind ourselves that security, peace, and prosperity are rarely achieved at gunpoint, however bravely and skillfully Sunday's necessary raid was accomplished .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pollack’s post reminds me of a petition I received the day after Bin Laden was found and killed. It takes the form of an open letter to President Obama. You will find it here:
“Mr. President:
“Bin Laden's death should be a time of reappraisal, not celebration. Much has been lost since the 9/11 terror attacks – beyond the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians and nearly 6,000 U.S. soldiers. A decade of war and occupation has helped push U.S. society to a breaking point: in debt, divided, with an unprecedented assault on social services and public employees coast to coast. Civil liberties have been trampled.
“It's time to rein in empire. Time to end the wars and ask why we have troops stationed in 177 countries. Time to finally hear Martin Luther King's lament about "a society gone mad on war." Time to rebuild our country by redirecting money from war to education and health and environmental cleanup. Time to reject the military's call for four more years of combat in Afghanistan.
“We sign on to this open letter to say there are large numbers of us not inclined to gather outside the White House for triumphant chants and flag-waving. We are too worried about the future. . . ”
A postscript: I cannot help but think of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation. Eisenhower understood war better than many of our presidents. He had been there and would always remember what he described as “the horror and lingering sadness.” It is no accident that, as he stepped down from the presidency, he warned that we must “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
Eisenhower recognized that we must avoid viewing ourselves as an Empire. To do so would be to guarantee our fall: “During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect,” he told Americans in January of 1961. “Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength.
“Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative,” he concluded. “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”
Today, I am afraid that some of those college students who partied to mark Obama’s death would dismiss General Eisenhower as a “mewling Peacenik.”
While I am pleased that Bin Laden is now stopped I would have preferred his live capture to kiliing him.
I don’t celebrate any death.
After all I am a doctor?
Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton,Pa
Dr. Rick–
I tend to agree with Harold that if Bin Laden had been captured alive, “Dragging him back to Guantanamo or wherever for interrogation and some sort of legal proceeding promised to be either a ghastly global spectacle or an unworthy show trial.”
Either way, he would have died, and this would only have extended the process.
So it may have been more merciful–for all of us– that he died immediately when he was found.
I also tend to believe that the Navy Seals who found him were probably not in a position to capture him alive. They did very well in managing to find him, and kill him as they did.
But I do wonder about the burial at sea. It would seem easier to quiet any doubts in the Middle East as to whether this WAS indeed Bin Laden if they had kept the body. I also don’t know how burial at sea is viewed within the Islamic relgion.
Once he had been found and killed, there was no point in offending Moslems by treating his body in a way that they would find horribly offensive. When an enemy treats the body of one of our slain soldiers in a disrespectful way, our military is (understandably) enraged.
But perhaps burial at sea is accepted as a peaceful end within Islam. I just don’t know.
I would add that we have a military/industrial complex as well as a medical/industrial complex, and quite likely a financial/industrial complex. These three in all likelihood account for our massive deficits that we are currently experiencing and we need to counter the influence of each on our political process. It is time we rein in all three before their joint efforts devour us.
Trying to somehow link Osama’s death with healthcare reform is a pretty hard thing to do, so why try?
Keith, Joe Says, Jenga
Keith–
I agree. And it’s interesting that in Eisnhower’s speech he talked about the growth of technology and the danger that it would get out of control.
It made me think of medica technology as well.
And of course when it comes to runaway “innovation” Wall Street’s non-stop invention of new financial products–without fully understanding the risks inherent in those products.
Joe Says,
This post is not about “health care reform.”
It is about health and our health as a nation.
Jenga
There is no comparison between torturing a prisoner whose hands are tied (water-boarding) and trackng down and killing a murderer who is most likely armed– or has a weapon near at hand, and will use it rather than be captured becausehe knows that if captured, he will be executed.
It is perfectl legal for the police or the military to shoot the fugitive in that situation.
Torture is always wrong–both moraly, and at a matter of international law.
If you don’t see the difference, I don’t know what to tell you.
Sure, I was little relieved that they finally got him, but after a few seconds, I was seriously alarmed of the implications of his death. His death didn’t signify the end of terrorism, it might have even triggered a flurry of vengeful actions on his camp.
I really enjoyed your blog post; Time to end the wars and ask why we have troops stationed in 177 countries. Time to finally hear Martin Luther King’s lament about “a society gone mad on war.” Time to rebuild our country by redirecting money from war to education and health and environmental cleanup. Time to reject the military’s call for four more years of combat in Afghanistan. I always got good, relevant and useful information from your new and unique posts, i am sure your blog will keep us continues update. Thanks for providing us such useful information.
I’m not sure our “involvement in Iraq” has “decreased our standing.” That seems the statement of someone who views Arabs as expendable, not worth intervening for.
Even per JAMA, Hussein was a butcher (“Exhumation of Mass Graves in Iraq
Considerations for Forensic Investigations, Humanitarian Needs, and the Demands of Justice”, JAMA. 2003;290(5):663-666, http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/290/5/663.extract).
The current protests in the Middle East, which in some countries, have peaceful protestors being shot – by an ophthalmologist no less – suggest these people want more Saddam Husseins taken down.
yeah, death/murder is just so much simpler…
The US has blood on its hands as a result though…
I totally agree! The fact that people are selling T shirts about this is repulsive, even if you hated the man and everything he stood for. This does nothing to improve our standing in the rest of the world and inflames factions that already hate us.
Maggie:
I agree with your and Pollack’s sentiments. The jubilation coarsens us, I think. I say this as a Quaker, and therefore a pacifist, whose baby brother was a long-time SEAL and former member of SEAL team 6, the group who carried out the mission
Chris, Critical Thinker, Laruen, Tanya, Lou
Chris–To say that the “jubilation coarsens us” is a good way to put it.
And that is exactly what worries me, especially as I see young people who know nothing about war chant, “Yeah, yeah, USA!! while unwinding toilet paper, festooning trees around college campuses.
This is what happened at Wake Forest where my son teaches. A small group of his students were appalled–they had been studying war poetry in his Victorian poetry class, and those poems are far from celebratory.
But these days, most students don’t study history, or poetry, or art, or cultural studies.
By sticking to economics & business courses they never learn what war can do to a culture and to a people.
I’m not quite a pacifist, but pretty close to it.
I’m not sure that we had a choice about entering WW II. At the same time, I’m not sure that we went in for the right reasons. (From my point of view, we had to go in because we just couldn’t let the extermination of innocents continue, and once the Holocaust machinery was set in motion, I don’t think there was any other way to stop it.
But we could have done a much, much better job of getting more Jews and others who were being sent to the camps out of Europe and bringing them to safety here. The fact that we didn’t do that calls our motives into question.
Ideally, we would have recognized what was happening in Germany before Hitler cemented his power, and stopped the Nazis through diplomacy (collaborating with other European countries that feared Hitler) and espionage.
There were some very brave people in Germany who tried to assassinate Hitler. In this case, I don’t think it would have been possible to capture him and put him on trial. But again, a successful assassination wouldn’t have been be a cause for rejoicing–just a reason for great relief.
Yet even if Hitler had been removed, you still would have had the problem of the corruption of German culture in the late 1920s and 1930s–the combination of despair, decadence and sheer mania that corrupted the country, and created a breeding ground for the Nazis .
When you speak of the “coarsening of the culture,” I think of Germany during that period.
After WW II, I really don’t see a war that could be justified when you think of the young lives lost.
As for Iraq, I’m sure many citizens of Iraq were glad to see Saddam go–but they certainly didn’t want to see their country destroyed.
Critical Thinker–
My objections to the celebration has nothing to do with whether Arabs are worth fighting for.
As I said in the response above, many people in Iraq wanted Saddam removed from power. But they did not want their country destroyed–as it has been.
And the citizens of other Middle-Eastern countries who are rebelling against their governments also do not want to see their nations turned into war zones.
With the exception of the Civil War, this nation has escaped becoming a war zone. 9/11 gave us just a taste of what it is like to see innocent citizens perish as your nation is bombed into the ground.
We were horrified. No sane person would invite that type of destruction.
This is why the majority of Iraqis ultimately regretted our
help/invasion.
Lauren–Yes, violence tends to breed more violence.
Tanya- I agree, the t-shirts are a symbol of what is repulsive about all of this.
Lou- Yes, war always leaves everyone involved with blood on their hands.
This is part of what Eisenhower meant when he referred to the “lingering sadness” of war–and he was talking about a war that we won.
“All War is Deception” Sun Tzu
The Chinese in Shenzhen asked me if we are celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. My answer was that some were in celebration of his death. To this Managing Director of a large company, I lso added it is not a good thing to celebrate the death of an enemy one has created as there are many things we could hav done beforehand to prevent this from occuring.
Where one falls two will rise up. This is far from over.
run 75411
Yes.”All war is deception”–especially when one thinks that they have “won.” There is no
“winning” — too much loss.