By this time, there have been hundreds of published reflections about the death of Osama bin Laden and the ensuing elation over the news. My thoughts come so late in the flow of opinion that they may well be lost in the tide, but I offer them nonetheless. My motivation has to do with my uneasiness with they way in which we celebrate the destruction of another human being. I had similar queasiness with that now infamous cell phone camera footage depicting the hanging of Saddam Hussein.
I know someone—possibly a friend—will be quick to remind me of what a bad man Osama was. Please don’t. I too remember the horror of 9-11, an event that directly prompted me to become a fire service chaplain. Furthermore, I am not a pacifist—a contradiction of my Christian faith and an admittedly inconsistent stance that simply does not square with my otherwise unqualified embrace of the message of Jesus. I like to believe that I am spiritually and morally astute enough to recognize my too easy acceptance of sin when it serve my own purposes, or when such acquiescence is employed in the pursuit of “the greater good.” Better that one evil man should pay with his life for his atrocities. And make no mistake: Osama bin Laden was a mass murderer.
The range of actions we seemingly accept in the name of national security—Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, water-boarding, extraordinary renditions, torture memos, sanctioned assassinations, etc.—serve to remind us that we are first and foremost about security. There seems to be an all-too-easy acceptance of things that might otherwise be deemed unworthy of America, not to mention a contravention of espoused Christian values.
Some commentators have made much of the post-announcement celebrations that many college student engaged in on Monday night. I heard a good NPR program about the celebration that was held on the Boston Common. Several students shared their reactions, ranging from one student who said he was disgusted by the spectacle to the young woman who expressed annoyance that the media speculation about the president’s late evening announcement interrupted the last few moments of Celebrity Apprentice.
From where I sit, we are all less than genuine if we pretend that violence is ever cured by more violence. I am glad that there is now some closure to the grief of 9-11, but I wonder if this escalating violence is where we wish to go. No doubt that there will be repercussions, and I believe President Obama and the most thoughtful of our leaders have considered that. We are many centuries from the development of the so-called “just war” doctrine, and as I have said in this space before, most of us would readily dub WW II that way. But what about the fact we have waged a war in Iraq that has already seen more civilian casualties than the total dead on 9-11? And all of them died because of either a horrible miscalculation about weapons of mass destruction, or a trumped up rationale that was known to be false from the outset.
The poet John Donne’s words are apt: “…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” Osama bin Laden’s murderous actions on 9-11 were evidence of evil, to be sure. Perhaps Sunday’s death was inevitable—necessary even. But the taking of life is always short of what God intends. We should do better. We should want to do better. And if we cannot, we ought not to gloat about it.
Raising Basileia 