bin Laden

This is for those who cheered bin Laden’s disposal, many of whom are dear friends.

Whether your applause was outward or inward, whether you believe the murder was justified, whether this has any significant political ramifications in the quest for “justice”, it is important to ponder what it means to be jubilated at the expense of another human’s demise.

Clearly this is emotionally charged, so let me give my sentiments first.

I’ll always have images of 9/11 burned onto my mind.  I remember the missing-person flyers that covered walls and bulletin boards around Manhattan.  I choked at the sight of people leaping into the sky, deciding that a fall to death be more bearable than suffocating smoke and flames.  It was one of the darkest hours in this country’s history, no doubt.  I wholeheartedly agree that no person should have their life stolen away and I wept for days at the brutality our species can impose upon each other.

But it is for this very reason that I bow my head in shame as we replicated murder in the most significant “Where’s Waldo” manhunt in American history.

May Day has been celebrated for centuries all over the world to honor human fertility on the first day of summer.  Baskets were filled with flowers and treats and left on another’s doorstep as a sign of courtship.  However, in more aggressive countries, May Day often features parades exhibiting military prowess.  Hitler was announced dead on May 1st and now Bin Laden, too.  This year, our president chose the more animalistic of the two kinds of May Day celebrations.

Now, this is where logic comes into play and you must leave your emotions at the door.  If you can’t, or are going to take this as a personal attack against you, then feel free to stop here.  May blissful ignorance treat you kindly.  Here are some of the implications of rejoicing—

Implication #1:  You want peace or justice, or both.

You have already accepted the most important logical aspect of the situation: life is important and nobody has the right to take it away from an innocent bystander.  To approve bin Laden’s death means you are a rational human who understands that some sort of ethical system exists, or at least should exist, on our planet.  Three thousand innocent people should not be murdered.  This is something that both the cheerers and non-cheerers have in common.

Implication #2:  You want revenge.

This is where the logic gets a little unstable for the joyful.  Revenge is something unique to humans.  If you kill a deer, the family does not come after you.  If you kill a single bee, you are not swarmed by the whole colony unless you go after the hive.  Animal instinct forces creatures to respond to trauma, and oftentimes animals will fight when they feel threatened.  Life fights to survive.  But the community understands that individuals will unfortunately fall to the forces of nature.  They have succumb to the grace of universal order.  We could learn from animals by not getting too invested in the death of another.

Sometimes, humans too will fight when threatened, but we have developed a lust for revenge beyond mere biological response mechanisms.  Cheering bin Laden’s death is at best a way of showing that you want this world to be a more compassionate place (which is still ironic, for even justified murder is not compassionate), and is at worst a way of showing you are ruled by the same emotions that rule the extremists who strap bombs to their chests.  We should not be proud of being more animalistic than animals in terms of emotion-driven revenge.

Implication #3:  Your global perspective is narrow.

This is where the logic completely falls apart.  Forgive my bluntness, but to cheer, joke or jump for jubilee is another way of condoning military success, or in simpler terms, death by force.  Crowds around the world did the same thing when the twin towers fell.  To them, Bin Laden has become a martyr.  He had unconventional military success against the United States—the only powerful country without a major war on its soil in 150 years, the country that spends more on military than any other nation spends period, the country that attacks others at will and has nonchalantly funded global arms trade for decades.

When a Florida pastor threatened to burn the Koran, people around the world heard and saw.  Yes, most Americans condemned this, but an attack on a U.N. building left 12 people dead in Afghanistan as a direct result.  We are not isolated.  Our actions are not either.  When we hold up American flags and sing and dance and laugh and joke about bin Laden’s death on the Daily Show and other television outlets, the Arab world hears it too.  Whether or not they agree with Osama’s extremism, it’s still a slap in the face to watch Americans rejoice at the death of a single human, especially when no other nation has been as militaristically active as the United States since World War II—not even al-Qaeda.

Nationalism is an interesting phenomenon.  It causes people to care more for themselves and others within a randomly defined section of land (even on opposing coasts) than people from other regions.  Sounds like extremism to me.  Borders are divisive and unfortunately, only Americans understand what it means to be American (if we’re lucky).  So, how can we expect such public cheering to make sense overseas and to have a positive effect on the world?  You cheer because you admit that terrorism should end, that peace is more advantageous, that military prowess is destructively horrific.  At what point do we take responsibility and rebuke all acts of violence?

Conclusion:

Instead of hitting the streets in drunkenness, we should have somberly withheld our outbursts to show the Arab world that we a) do not support the killing that took place on this side of the world any more than we approve actively killing people abroad, and b) that we realize we are a privileged sovereignty that has no tangible understanding of the hardships other nations face just an ocean or two away.  Anti-American supporters see that we have yet to grasp our place within the global society, which can only add more fuel than water.

When you let animalistic reactions break your concentration for even a moment, even if it feels good, even when the emotions of 9/11 are recreated and stirred within your boiling arteries, we lose sight of the end goal, which I believe we can agree is peace.  Cheering is not the high road, nor should it be the American road.  This only perpetuates the chaos.  Know that you have now become a symbolic target of another human’s emotional revenge.  And I too, guilty by association.

No, you can’t take back those thoughts, feelings or actions, nor should you.  They were a part of who you were at the time of discovering the news.  But, you do have the ability to self-evolve and become a happier human living on planet earth with nearly 7 billion isolated others.  If peace is what we truly want for our friends and family and for those around the world, it should also be what we want for ourselves as individual biological creatures.