I got a late night text message from a friend who told me the news: FYI the US got Bin Laden. What?? That was my first reaction. The thoughts and emotions that followed kept me from going back to sleep, so I got online and decided to share these complex feelings, write them down, maybe it'll all start to make sense.
Many questions keep repeating in my head. Am I happy that Bin Laden is dead? I despised the man, he was a murderer, and I'm thrilled he can no longer lead, spread hate and death in the name of Islam. I don't know if that is happiness...I truly don't. I think more than happiness I feel sorrow for the lives that have been lost all over the world, I feel an immense sadness for the divide and sometimes mistrust and fear this "war on terror" has created between us and of those who are Muslim or from the Middle East. And I feel remorse for some of our misguided policies in the Middle East, policies that you and I both know are not just based on national security interests.
Do I think anything is going to change? Will we as a nation grow from this, learn, not repeat out past mistakes? Remains to be seen I guess. Were Bin Laden and Al Queda so short sighted as to not account for a plan of action should he be taken out? Will the resentment some in the Middle East feel towards us because of how we have treated them continue to grow and hurt us all? Will the actions of those like Pastor Jones - the crazy man who was so hell bent on burning the Quran - or the policies that we have implemented profiling those with Muslim or Middle Eastern backgrounds and discriminating against them...will the wounds that these and many other actions have created begin to heal?
These questions keep playing in my head. As I try to catch a few hours of sleep before I have to get up and start the week, I also keep revisiting the images of 9/11 and the feeling the devastation we all felt for the last ten year. Yes a murderer is dead, yes we committed murder to kill that murderer, we have started several wars as a result of what happened almost a decade ago and we sacrificed a lot - including our freedoms, our values of equality and anti-discrimination and our civil liberties - to get here. And so, it's up to us to make sure how this goes down in history, it wasn't just the story of an evil man attacking the US and us protecting ourselves and getting him back in the end. That's an over-simplification of what has happened and it's up to us to make sure the complexities are not lost as we write this history.
That's where I'll stop my middle of the night ramblings for now. And my search for answers, to be continued, as always.
Very thought provoking! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks Adam. As the questions continue to pile, we will all hopefully begin to figure out some of the answers as we move along, Crazy day.
ReplyDeleteIt will definitely be an oversimplification if history books report this incident in such a fashion; however, I don't think they will be able too. As we know, all terrorist organizations are established to function with or without their head. As much as I hope this will quell al'Qaida, I doubt it will.
ReplyDeleteAnother point: Don't get me wrong, I will be the first to disagree with many things the US government does, but what this has shown, is that we have prepared our nation for this new method of war. It is not won by sending troops into battle (as we have seen), it is won by developing a system of intelligence throughout the world that shares information with one another. It has taken us over 10 years to establish this method, and the capture of Bin Laden is one of many victories it has achieved, but certainly the largest. What needs to rise from this is a public debate regarding the ethics and operation of such a system a.) so we can better understand it and work to constantly improve our strategies and b.) to make sure we are not gaining victory through the frame of immorality.
Niaz, you go a lot of great questions here, i wanna hear your answers/hypothesis thow!!
You make some great points as well. I find the distinction between this military strategy and our previous one interesting. Though all military strategies - though they are a necessary evil - make me cringe.
ReplyDeleteBefore getting to the more substantive questions, I can honestly say that I don't feel anything resembling happiness because of Bin Laden's death. I feel many things, as I mentioned above, but not what you would call happiness.
Now, in regard to the other questions.... Will anything change? Not if our government continues implementing policies that profile and discriminate against Muslims or people of Middle Eastern origin. It's true, the head of one terrorist group is dead, but it was never about just one person. I have an issue with this "war on terror" overall, which I won't get into too much here, but it is a war against an inanimate object, something that is totally subjectively defined, and therefore can be used to justify whatever we'd like to do. So, until we consciously put and end to these policies, not much will change.
Unfortunately, I think the wounds we have created here and abroad will not heal if we don't change our ways. And there's a need for America to recognize and apologize for some of the needless harm caused and we have historically never been good at doing that. I think that takes an evolution of our character, and that will go a long way if we are to get over and heal the wounds we have created in the hearts and psyche of Arabs, Muslims, and Middle Eastern people.
But will we learn from our mistake? I hope so, but we've not been good at it in the past. We keep supporting people who we think are good for our interests in the short run but never calculate fully the long term impact this has both for us and other human beings that may not be American, but deserve the same security and peace that we do. We have to stop seeing the enemy of our enemy as our friend, that's how the Taliban become who they are, that's how someone like Gaddafi gets to where he is and stays there for so long.
I think the media has a huge responsibility that they have all but completely forgotten about. The reporting and delivering of news has become big business, commercialized, selective and completely objective. When they should be the ones educating us about the facts so that we can work to overcome some of the challenges that got us here...especially so that we can push our elected officials to do the right thing. And that's our job, that's why I rant and rave on here and on facebook, because we need to be aware and we need to demand for things to change, politicians often do not do the right thing on their own.
I've said a mouthful... :) I could go on, but I'll leave it at that.
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ReplyDelete