So, the great bearded boogeyman is dead, and we're all thumping our chests and waving our flags and cheering ourselves. Our president holds up the killing of this individual terrorist as a shining example of American stick-to-it-tiveness. Some example: The guy wasn't holed up in some spider hole or cave somewhere, he was living in a mansion a few miles outside of Islamabad, the main city in Pakistan. It only took us about ten years to find him; boy, talk about American ingenuity.
So why is it, acutally, that we're cheering? We are so caught up in the myth of our own exceptionalism, we don't seem to notice this small detail: Osama won.
The tactic of terrorism is the tactic of the weak and the powerless. The terrorists do not have the power to change those they terrorize. The terrorists win when the fear they instill causes the terrorized to change themselves. Think back before 9/11. Remember when the government was actually running a surplus? Remember when we were debating how we were going to spend the "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War? Remember when the President was impeached? Whether you agree or not that the President should be held accountable for lying about a blowjob, at least we all agreed that the President should be held accountable.
Who are we now? We are the bullies of the world, who shoot first and don't bother to even ask any questions later. Women, children, civilians, innocents, the whole world, it seems, is collateral damage in our reckless desire to solve all problems at the end of a gun. We now accept War as a natural and never-ending fact of life, and we are apparently willing to spend every last dime in the treasury in its pursuit. We torture prisoners, deny them their rights, and don't even bother with "quaintnesses" like guilt or innocence. If your a prisoner, you're guilty. The President of the United States declares that he has the right to order the murder of American citizens (not to mention citizens of other countries) without any due process or judicial restraint, and there's barely a peep from the populace. The once-ridiculed pronouncement of Richard Nixon -- "If the President does it, it is not illegal" -- has now become the law of the land. Our government -- you know, the one "of the people, by the people, for the people" -- tells us that we have no right to know what they do. In fact, a whole lot of those "rights" that used to define us as a nation, we are now told are optional at the government's discretion; that age-old mantra of totalitarianism "In order to give you security, we must take away your freedom" apparently has found a willing audience in a terrorized population.
Osama didn't do this to us; we did it to ourselves. The man must have died happy.
So why are we celebrating?
