We Won! The War On Terror Is Finally Over. Bring The Troops Home!

I'm wondering today over the reaction of Americans to the death of Osama bin Laden.  Clearly the guy was an asshole, but he was an asshole with a mission.  A mission, as my son pointed out yesterday, whose approach doesn't differ much from a lot of other missions we see in the world: to get your way it is often necessary to kill steal, destroy, and lie.  For a religious man, a follower of an ethical monotheism, those are grievous sins, sins that ought to have stopped bin Laden in his tracks.  Bin Laden stands convicted by his own convictions.  But the majority of American are also ethical monotheists of one stripe or another, and look at our methodology.  The United States has killed far more people that 3000, ugly as that event was.  You could lay blame at the feet of President Bush for his role in those deaths, then move forward in time to blame President Obama for continuing.

The joy we see now has something to do with our sense of redemptive violence.  Bin Laden ordered massive killings out the pagan sense that he could push back the chaos of the world-not-as-he-thought-it-ought-to-be.  "If I can throw enough sinners into the hole, I'll restore the world to it's rightful balance." The United States kills bin Laden in the same spirit.

Bin Laden is dead, and so are the 9/11 victims, as are untold numbers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and God only knows where else.  I can understand the impulse in some people to see violence as salvific, but when it comes to my co-coreligionists, I'm baffled.  We believe that Jesus is the ultimate victim, that in him suffering comes to a final point.  Because of that, we know that killing others does nothing to alleviate the chaos; it only exacerbates chaos.  We believe that in the death and resurrection of Jesus chaos is finally dealt with, and we no longer have the excuse of fear to drive us toward violence.

AND YET .....
And yet I see people, some of whom must share a commitment to Jesus as the ultimate expression of God's active love toward creation, dancing in the streets, waving flags, and chanting, "USA! USA!" like soccer hooligans.  We didn't just win an Olympic sport, we (and I mean we, collectively, together, through the actions of our elected officials and the military we pay to protect us as well as to kill in our name) we killed a man.  Actually, a few men and at least one woman are dead.  And the myth of redemptive violence is exposed to the air and withers and dies.

Except that it doesn't.  The dead stay dead, but we dance.  The towers remain fallen, but we sing.  The wars continue, but we wave flags as though a new day has dawned, new possibilities break over us, and the world is made fresh again.

Politically, militarily, and strategically, bin Laden's death might have accomplished something, though the talking heads are still debating what.  But, dare I say it, spiritually, it has done no good, no good at all.  In fact, enjoying the death of another human being, even if we deem that death necessary, might damage us as a people more than we realize.  Kill, perhaps, but mourn at the same time. 

Maybe if the past decade had not been one of mounting death tolls under US bombs and at the end of US rifles, from rebels and jihadists and frightened patriots, from missiles and stones and swords, we'd be able to see bin Laden's demise as a tragedy.  The man more or less chose his own death, as well as the death of how many Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, Europeans, Americans, Asians, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Christians.  That ought to make us mournful, not jubilant.  These ought to be days of black armbands, not flags.  One more person is dead.  The world is no safer today.  Chaos is not appeased by his death. 

Bin Laden doesn't matter.  Miraculously, two revolutions in the Arab world came off with remarkably little violence.  The others remain to be seen.  But whatever happens, it's clear that violence and repression and extremism are not the way of change in the Muslim world.  Al Qaeda had no part to play in Egypt or Tunisia.  Bin Laden's approach was, like violence and evil do, destroying itself and becoming inconsequential.

I hope his death does not change that.