Playing the Wet Blanket....As Usual

It is the unfortunate but vital task of killjoys to shine at moments when most people would like them to fade away and hide. This week, as Osama bin Laden was executed in a scene that came straight out of a Tom Clancy novel, it was obvious that it was time to get out the old water hose and reprise the familiar wet blanket impersonation.

When I saw the first headlines, I thrilled and exulted as much as anyone around. While bin Laden never threatened me personally and I didn't lose any relatives to his terror, nor risked that loss, he has declared a war on the West in general, and the USA in particular and having chose to make my domicile in these more temperate climes, I consider his declaration of war a threat to my personal comfort at the very least. I never believed he could win, unless his intended opponents allowed him to win through fear; there were moments when I feared that America would hand the man greater success than his achievements ever warranted. Fear was what bin Laden dealt in, and America increased his stock and infamy every time they reacted in fear to the actions of his minions. America striped herself of freedom and dignity in a vain attempt to guard themselves against a terrorist who actually posed almost no threat whatsoever, and for that I help bin Laden responsible. He did not cancel our rights against government eavesdropping or spirit us away to secret prisons, but he inspired a fear in the population at large that condoned such actions in a false search for safety. He was the boogieman, the monster under the bed at night, and missteps had built him to a level that only defeat or capture could ever change that mindset. My one fear, greater than any fear of another terrorist attack, was that he would die quietly in hiding and we would never vanquish our fear of him.

And so when I heard that a US commando raid had invested him in a few pound of parabellum and stamped his exit visa, as I said, I was happy. Bin Laden finally got to personally experience the martyrdom he craved for others and that alone was cause for happiness.  Not flag waving, chest thumping happy - for one thing thumping my chest leads only to a dull cottony sound, and I leave that atavistic form of behavior to our great ape cousins, while  descending into the streets waving the flag to which I nominally owe allegiance would likely get me shot, something I fear I may be allergic to. As the news spread and scenes of tumultuous celebrations poured in, I began to feel a sense of disquiet. This was not the mature closure I hoped for, this was Rome watching Vercingetorix in chains and screaming for blood. To be sure there was plenty of restraint on display, but on every forum they were jostled equally by jingoistic posts claiming exceptionalism, and damning bin Laden to the innermost circles of hell.

President Obama spoke, as always, in measured terms, striking a great balance between triumph and somber realism, but his words were largely drowned out in the din from the population in general and the talking heads of television and politicians fighting for a share of the reflected glory. Two issues struck me above all. Firstly, this was almost universally declared an act of justice and it fell to a lone writer at Slate.com to point out that this was anything but. Amazingly, for a man declared our most wanted terrorist, bin Laden was never charged with the attack on the World Trade Center, much less tried and sentenced for his crimes. To be sure, he claimed personal responsibility, but so do terrorists often for the acts of others. And that omission by our arm of justice troubles me of many levels. If we intended to capture bin Laden, as George Bush promised immediately after the Towers fell, what would we do to him? Were we so afraid of a single man that we were going to lock him away in a secret prison to never see the light of day again? What does that say for us as  a nation and a people that a scruffy old man, with little charisma and no towering intellect, terrifies us to the point that we would not dare try him for the crimes we accuse him of committing? Do we accept the concept of two levels of justice, one for citizens and another one for people who scare us? Today that person is bin Laden, but it could be expanded to include others, as it has in the past. We were too scared to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and forced the Obama administration to drop their plans to finally try the one terrorist we had from the WTC attack. We locked away dozens if not hundreds of suspected al Qaida supporters - not all terrorists mind, just supporters - and took years to determine if they were even threats to us. Sixty years ago, we locked up thousands of Americans of Japanese descent in an action that was eventually acknowledged to be wrong, yet we've not learned from Roosevelt's admonition that there is nothing to fear than fear itself. We tried Slobodan Milosevic for his crimes in Kosovo on the reasoning that shining a light on his barbaric actions would rob them of the power to terrorize and would bring liberation and closure to his victims. But in the end, for all our brashness and chants of "USA" and braggadocio, we were as scared of bin Laden as the puniest kid confronted by a bully in a dark street. Killing bin Laden exorcised our fears for a day, but the near hysteria in our reaction is a pointer to the deeper fears that will only be buried and never confronted.

The other troubling factor was the return of the supporters of torture. They still dance around the term and hide behind the fig leaf of "enhanced interrogation techniques" but I fear very much that the day when America accepts torture as a legitimate police action has just become so much closer. When the debate first began, torture was justified in vague terms about the need to collect urgent actionable information that would save American lives. It was easy to blast aside traditionalists by invoking the safety of these imaginary victims; who would shed tears for a few dirty terrorists when their hours of pain would save lives? It was impossible to prove that torture was not needed, because the debate was argued within the framework defined by the supporters of Torquemada. But till now they shied away from calling torture by its true name and cited it only as a final resort to be used in direst need. Last week, they were emboldened to claim that the execution of bin Laden was justification for torture in wider circumstances. If torture of al Qaida operatives in 2007 led the SEAL team to his lair four long years later, that alone should suggest that it was never needed in first place. that there was never the urgency that was used to justify it in first place. Add in the  fact the actual actionable intelligence was collected not under torture, but months later by regular interrogation and one would imagine that the case for torture would be weaker than before. Yet in a bizarre reflection of the world we live in,  just the fact that the men who gave up information on bin Laden had been tortured at some point previously is now justification that torture works. It doesn't, and this should prove it. More importantly, we should be rejecting torture as a method, irrespective of its efficacy. Today it's a technique talked about in the abstract, to be used against unknown others, who are mostly Muslim, Arab and non-American citizens, but when we legitimize the idea we open the door for all of us to share that fate in future. And by then it will be too late to object.