On the evening that President Obama announced the news that “Bin Laden is dead,” Americans throughout the country reacted with pride, chanting in the streets. Obama presented the news as a development in our national security policy. During this speech and after such pronouncements, I couldn’t help but question what we, Americans, understood to be “development” and progress. Does the murder of Osama Bin Laden, despite his leadership of brutal movements against the United States and other Western nations, lead to improvement or development for anyone? The obvious argument is that without the “mastermind” behind terrorist activity, the United States is at less of a threat. Aside from the fact that I completey disagree with such a simple, short-sighted conclusion that Bin Laden was the major threat orchestrating terrorist activity behind the scenes, the assumption that the murder of him would create peace is equally poorly understood. If Bin Laden is s symbolically important as we, US media and politics, present him to be, then what of the reaction by devout adherents to him? What about the security of the nation after anger, resentment and hatred is reinforced? What development proceeds from this arrangement?
My purpose in writing about the murder of Bin Laden is not whether or not the United States was in the right or wrong to conduct such activity. Rather, my concern is with the American people: the naivity and simplicity, in addition to the unwillingness to consider what development could mean, in terms of negotiation, understanding, awareness. Instead, the reaction and sentiment expressed as American (by news and other media) has been a nationalist chanting of, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
Comments