At about 8:30 this evening, I heard the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by US special forces in Pakistan. In the hour before President Obama gave his statement to the press, CNN showed a crowd growing in numbers in front of the White House. CBS reported that a crowd had assembled in Time Square. The images of singing, cheering and the waving of flags seemed oddly reminiscent of the celebrations in many parts of the Middle East after 911. I imagine that the horror and outrage felt by hawks and doves alike almost 10 years ago here at seeing those scenes of people half a world away cheering when the Twin Towers fell, will likely be mirrored tonight by moderate Arabs watching Americans cheering outside the White House and in Time Square. While Bin Laden was seen by most - including me - as a terrorist, and few in the West will morn his death, there is still something unseemly, vulgar and frankly rather un-Christian in cheering when any human being has been killed.
The events also gave me cause to wonder whether other things might have been done to make his killing seem less like vengeance. For example, might he have been tried in absentia in a civilian court in the US or better still at the International Criminal Court in the Hague? At least then his death would have more than simply a kind of old testament 'eye for and eye' moral legitimacy. It would also have signalled that terrorists are criminals rather than warriors, which robs them of their status as heroes in some people's eyes.
Bin Laden's death won't necessarily prevent others from pursuing his and Al Qaeda's goals; indeed if he is now comes to be revered as a martyr and a saint by his supporters violence may escalate. But the event does serve to remind us that as humans beings we are all fairly close to the savagery of our not to distant forefathers, something that unites us all, even while ideology divides us.
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