Osama bin Laden: A Eulogy by a US President

Disclaimers and Cross-References:

Today, I am posting two blogs on Osama bin Laden with these titles:

Osama bin Laden: A Eulogy by a US President

Osama bin Laden: Reflections on his “death”

I am going to assume, at least for the sake of these posts, that Osama bin Laden is really dead and that he died, as advertised, at the hands of a Navy SEAL team. I make this assumption knowing full well the ease with which our leaders lie to us, and their unparalleled capacity for doing so.

Had I been President, I would not have, as Barack Obama did, order the assassination of a man whether armed, unarmed, or willing to surrender. And I would not have thrown his body into the sea. If our team could have taken Bin Laden alive, that would have been my preference.

As for eulogizing him in my capacity as US President, I can only say, “This is what I would have said publicly had I actually been elected US President in 2008. I lost that race but am trying again in 2012 – thereby giving the American people another chance to do the right thing.”

An American President’s Eulogy

Your name, Osama, means lion in Arabic. There will be many, friend and foe alike, who will agree you had lived up to that name. For better or for worse, there will be countless young Muslim men, some of them living lives of desperation in refugee camps, who will say to themselves and their friends, “I am Osama Bin Laden.” This, for much the same reason a lot of young Black American men made a similar declaration: “I am Malcolm X.”

There will be mothers who will name their sons after you. There will be those who will be more afraid of you in death than they were while you lived.

Among those who will mourn you will be CIA men who worked with you in Afghanistan when you fought against the Soviet occupation. There will be red-blooded American patriots who will silently keep you in their prayers as they remember you helped bring down the Soviet Union. You were a key player in the collapse of Communism.

Even among your detractors will be a grudging admittance: “Osama Bin Laden gave up a life of luxury to fight for what he believed in. And he didn’t fight, as is too often the fashion these days, behind a desk ready to launch a missile.” These same detractors, though, will not say these things in public for fairly obvious reasons.

President Obama made the following statement, which I will take exception to:

“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murder of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity” – http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/201/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead

It is not up to the American president to declare who is or who is not a “Muslim leader.” To be sure, you were a leader for those who chose to lay down their lives while under your command. That much is obvious. But more than that? Only history will show.

As for “al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims” – I will emphasize the word “scores” here. How does that make you a “mass murderer?” Most people would not interpret “scores” over a period of years as qualification for that title. The death toll inflicted by our side, due to collateral damage alone, exceeds that by many thousands.

When the news of your death spread like wildfire, there were too many US citizens reacting gleefully. Not with relief and not in a sense of (finally) “justice has been done.” But gleefully. Of course, there were people in Islamic countries dancing for joy in celebration of the 9/11 attacks. But I like to think we’re better than that. I wanted to think those dancing Muslims were also better than that. But I suppose not all of us can manage to be so well-behaved.

Speaking of “well-behaved,” I wonder how you would have reacted to my proposed response to the 9/11 attacks. There was about a month after 9/11, during which President Bush was weighing his options. What should be the US response? At that time, I blogged my opinion:

“If I were the US President, I would bomb Afghanistan – with flowers. That’s right – not with bombs but flowers crammed by the tens of thousands into a fleet of B52s. Roses, tulips, carnations, forget-me-nots [especially, forget-me-nots], dandelions…all kinds of flowers, great and small.”

If the Taliban had refused to surrender you to us (assuming, that is, that they even knew where you were), that would have been my kind of bombing – with flowers. My proposal had something to do with turning the other cheek but also would have had shock value. Sometimes underreaction yields greater benefits in the long-run than going ballistic. But too few of us realize this or have much patience for the long-run. But in the long-run, we pay for our shortsightedness.

Of course, if you had been a French citizen, we would not have bombed France to force your extradition. We might have fussed and fumed and maybe sent in some coverts, but we would also remember: “France does not extradite its citizens” – case-in-point: Roman Polanski. But France and Afghanistan aren’t regarded equally by my fellow Americans. Hence the ease of our decision to oust the Taliban and inflict hardship on their hapless nation.

Bombing the hell out of Afghanistan would not have brought back the thousands of Americans who perished in the Twin Towers, in the Pentagon, or aboard Flight 93. My thinking would have been, “Okay, the deed is done. Now what? The least we could have done was ask ourselves, ‘To what extent did we bring this on ourselves?’” But after 9/11, not many Americans were asking that question. Karmically-speaking, though, there are no “innocent victims” as I’m sure you know within the context of your own faith.

“But those who died in (for example) the Twin Towers were just ordinary citizens going about their daily routines. They didn’t deserve to be murdered” – or so the claim generally went. However, a moment’s reflection yields something like this: “They paid their taxes which went to support policies and a war machine which crushes or at least seeks to undermine all opponents – real and imagined. So these dutiful taxpayers were hardly innocent.”

But you’re gone now. So you won’t have to be directly involved in the ever-escalating tit-for-tat of “you did this to me so I must avenge and do this to you.” The only thing I can offer you at this point is my promise, as the US President, to stop interfering in the affairs of Muslims.

Steven Searle for US President in 2012

Founder of The Independent Contractors’ Party

“Working for a better world for my brother and his with as much fervor as for me and mine.”