“…to suggest that “justice has been done”, as President Obama did on Sunday night, seems perverse. This was not justice, it was an extra-judicial execution. If you shoot a man twice in the head you do not find him guilty. You find him dead. This was revenge. And it was served very cold indeed.
Given the nature of the 9/11 attacks a popular desire for vengeance in the US is a perfectly understandable and legitimate emotional response. It is not, however, a foreign policy. And if vengeance is a comprehensible human emotion then empathy is no less so.
Americans have a right to grieve and remember those who died on 9/11. But they have no monopoly on memory, grief or anger. Hundreds and thousands of innocent Afghanis, Iraqis and Pakistanis have been murdered as a result of America’s response to 9/11. If it’s righteous vengeance they’re after, Americans would not be first in line. Fortunately it is not a competition, and there is enough misery to go around.
But those who chant “We killed Bin Laden” cannot display their identification with American power so completely and then expect others to understand it as partial. The American military has done many things in this region. Killing Bin Laden is just one of them.
If “they” killed Bin Laden in Abbottabad then “they” also bombed a large number of wedding parties in Afghanistan, “they” murdered 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha and “they” gang-raped a 14-year-old before murdering her, her six-year-old sister and their parents near Mahmudiyah. If “they” don’t want to be associated with the atrocities then “they” need to find more to celebrate than an assassination. Vengeance is, in no small part, what got us here. It won’t get us out.”
I’m sure lots of piggingtons could honestly say they dont share any feelings of justice or joy in the news, but I would guess they’re a vast minority. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that from constituents, but I feel our leaders should perhaps be a little more balanced in their rhetoric.
