The Death of Osama bin Laden: Cheering in the Streets

As I was about to call it a night at 1:30, still feeling the effects of an unexplainable warm feeling upon hearing of the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of Navy SEAL Team 6, I got a message from a friend of mine. He was asking me what I thought of the celebration being televised on all of the major networks, with America's youth waving flags and chanting "USA! USA!" I didn't know, but my friend said that he felt a bit uneasy about it; that something about it felt off. I had thought the same thing.

To try to explicate my emotions right now—never mind in the immediate minutes and hours following the announcement—is impossible. It simply has not registered yet. I think back to that sunny Tuesday when I was a sophomore in high school and being called to an emergency meeting. The rumors flying around, the announcement from the headmaster, the blurry passage of time for the rest of the day. It had taken a long time for the significance of this day to settle into my brain. I distinctly remember sobbing in the back of my mother's car at the end of September upon the sudden realization that things could never be the same again.

So I certainly understood the reaction from many of my co-generationalists. I would be lying if I said that I did not have a warm fuzziness inside of me as I climbed into bed late last night after recording my podcast. As my friend Craig Milch pointed out to me, it is almost as if Newton's Law has fulfilled itself 10 years later: the same emptiness and fear that I struggled with as a teenager was now being replaced with jubilation and a hope that things could possibly go back to the way they were. Who wouldn't want to celebrate that?

But my pragmatism tempered my naivete. It would be great if we could take back the PATRIOT Act, if we could leave Iraq and Afghanistan, if we could close Gitmo. The simple fact, however, is that we will not do any of those things. When those airliners crashed into the World Trade Center almost ten years ago, the United States and the rest of the world crossed a threshold from which there was no turning back. The fact that Osama bin Laden's body is beginning to rot at the bottom of the ocean as I type these words will not change that.

In a world with few tangible successes for peers in my generation, it would make sense to seize a moment like this to celebrate. We came of age during the War on Terror, in which bin Laden was public enemy number one. It is similar to the reaction to the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" in which the U.S. was able to defeat the Soviets in the midst of a fearful Cold War, a recession and a disappointing president. The key difference, obviously, is that one was a celebration of a sports victory and the other of the violent end of a human being. This is the origination of the uneasiness.

Some have called the celebrations disgusting and compared them to those we saw in certain parts of the world following 9/11. They share the same fundamentals: at their cores, both are celebrations of the death of human beings, it just depends which side you identify with. But the human psyche is too complicated to simply paint these celebrations with such a broad brush. The emotions involved with revenge and a feeling of some kind of karmic justice are complex. Again, it depends which side of an issue (and, too often, the world) you are on. It is too easy—not to mention a bit dishonest—to call one reaction appropriate and the other uncalled for. In a perfect world, no one would celebrate the death of another member of mankind.

But as the history of man has proven time and again, we do not live in a perfect world. Every generation has their version of the boogeyman—for our grandfathers it was Hitler, for our fathers it was the Soviets, for us it is terrorists. When Hitler's death was announced, no amount of jubilation could cloud the fact that the world had been irrevocably changed. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not see a sudden burst of warm relations between the Kremlin and the West. So it is with the death of bin Laden. Long after fish have picked his bones clean his legacy will continue to shape the way the world operates and that is nothing to celebrate.

Photo - A throng of revelers gathers outside the White House following the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death. (Flickr via thisisbossi)

Open Letter to WSJ

Dear Mr. Editor:

I recently had the trying experience of reading former Attorney General Michael Mukasey's op-ed in your publication on Monday October 19, 2009. To be honest, I expect better from both Mr. Mukasey and your newspaper.

Mr. Mukasey's overall thesis seems to be that we should not try terrorists, specifically those held at Guantanamo, in United States civilian courts because it's hard and we did it in the 1990s and that led to 9/11. Mr. Mukasey uses flimsy examples to back this thesis and leaves the reader wondering how any connection between civilian trials for terrorists led, in any minute way, to the horror this country experienced on September 11, 2001.

One danger Mr. Mukasey points out is the proselytization of individuals behind bars, insinuating that if we do not try terrorists apprehended overseas in civilian courts, the problem will somehow be diminished. As a former Attorney General, Mr. Mukasey should be very familiar with the prison system. To suggest that the type of radical proselytizing he so fears is not occurring currently and will somehow be managed if we do not try terrorists in our own courts is ludicrous. A periphery look at the prison gang system alone tells us that proselytization behind bars is an established institution that will not be effected by the current administration's policy on where to try suspected terrorists.

Then comes Mr. Mukasey's most outrageous statement. He infers that Osama bin Laden did not know that the American government was "aware" of him until he was in possession of the indictment - which listed him as a co-conspirator - stemming from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He additionally calls Mr. bin Laden "relatively obscure." Anyone who is familiar with a man named Ronald Reagan should know about the mujahideen, who Reagan called "freedom fighters." One of these "freedom fighters" was Osama bin Laden, who played a major role in the war (during which he founded Al-Qaeda) and returned to his native Saudi Arabia in 1990 as a hero of jihad. To state that Mr. bin Laden must have believed that he was flying under America's radar until he received that indictment, even as he was publicly criticizing Saudi Arabia for its supposed dependence on our nation's military, involves dishonesty, ignorance, or both.

Mr. Mukasey also points to prison violence as a reason to keep suspected terrorists in off-shore custody and to try them in non-civilian courts. He points to the case of a co-conspirator of the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings who committed an egregious act of violence against a Bureau of Prisons guard. Prisons are violent places; people are held against their will for running afoul of the law. To suggest that the act of violence Mr. Mukasey portrayed would not have occurred if the prisoner was held elsewhere seems to be off the mark. These are, after all, people accused of killing innocent people for no good reason; if they did, in fact, commit these heinous acts, what is to stop them from being violent behind bars - whether it is here or abroad?

Finally, Mr. Mukasey seems to take exception to the fact that the death penalty was not utilized in the embassy bombings case and that current Attorney General Eric Holder has taken the death penalty off the table for a sixth embassy bombings suspect. Mr. Mukasey looks past the fact the death penalty may not be a very effective deterrent to a group of individuals whose tactics include blowing themselves up to hurt others. Being held in a prison run by the very government you despise and have vowed to destroy, within the same borders of a country you have detested might be a little more ominous than becoming a martyr by being killed by that very same country to hasten your arrival in whatever twisted afterlife scheme you have been made to believe.

Mr. Mukasey says that in return for trying terrorists in civilian courts in the 1990s, our country got the 9/11 attacks. He does not delve into Middle East instability, the United States' covert war in Afghanistan and the proliferation of weapons in the area, or the lack of addressing the power vacuum instigated by the Afghan Civil War as possible precursors to global terrorist activity. Instead he points to trying terrorists in civilian courts in the U.S. during the 1990s as THE reason for 9/11. His op-ed was insulting to its readers who possess a cursory understanding of global history and should have been vetted better by the editorial board. Thank you for your time.

This letter was sent to the Wall Street Journal Opinion Editors on Monday October 19, 2009, the same day that the Mukasey editorial ran

McCain Appears to Reverse Course of Campaign; Is it Too Late?

It appears that the McCain campaign - after a week of personal attacks and smears against Obama - wants to play nice again as his poll numbers begin a sharper decline than we have seen in the past few months. The most current poll puts Obama well above McCain (50%-43%) with just over three weeks to go in the election. A month ago today, McCain was leading Obama 47%-45%. Many pundits and political insiders have pointed to the McCain campaign's tactics of the past week (namely to use personal and character attacks on Obama rather than discuss the issues in an era that, while precedented, nonetheless has people very worried), as one of the reasons for this fall in the polls.

It now appears that the negative campaigning that the McCain campaign has employed - whether through Palin and her "palling around" with terrorist accusations against Barack Obama or surrogates like McCain campaign co-chair Frank Keating (no relation to the Keating Five) bringing up Obama's experimental drug use while in college - did not have the effects that McCain and company had been hoping for. This led McCain to quickly try to calm down his hostile crowds by saying that Obama was a "decent" man when people attacked him and spread rumors that he was an Arab. While not distinctly refuting the Arab mischaracterization, he has tried to, as the Globe says, "restore civility" to his campaign.

This, of course, does not mean that he is going to denounce other disrespectful attacks on Obama from within the Republican party or at his own rallies. This video, which has been circulated around the internet for a few days now, shows a McCain/Palin supporter with a Curious George doll with an Obama bumper sticker wrapped around the doll's head. When he realizes that he is being captured on videotape, he tries to surreptitiously stash the Obama sticker away and give the doll away to a confused child in the audience:


Of course you can't take one racist that looks like a pedophile from a Sarah Palin rally and apply it as the model to all those who attend McCain/Palin rallies. You also cannot take the folks who yell out "terrorist" or "kill him" when Barack Obama's name is brought up at these rallies as representative of the entire group. But notice that when McCain attempts to take the moral high ground and repudiate these comments, he uses generalities and vagueness. Maybe he doesn't want to admit that the same people making these comments are wholeheartedly supporting him and he desperately needs their votes; alienating them would alienate a Republican base that he has worked so hard to win over following initial doubts to his loyalty to the party line. But as McCain and his aides realize, when you pander to the extreme right wing of the Republican party, you lose moderates and independents who may very well lean toward the other candidate (as we have seen with Obama's surging numbers and McCain's stagnant and slightly falling numbers).

Sometimes, however, McCain does not even turn to the vague repudiation of ridiculous attacks on Barack Obama. That was the case with Virginia GOP leader Jeffrey Frederick when he compared Obama to Osama bin Laden, saying that both had friends who bombed the Pentagon (he was referring to Bill Ayers, who Obama met later in life as they both served on a Chicago board for education but in a previous life had organized a domestic terror group that bombed a toilet in the Pentagon, which injured no one). When pushed on the comparison, Frederick stuck to it. When asked about what he thought of Jeffrey Frederick's remarks, McCain not only did not say that they were inappropriate, saying that we needed to know the full context (I wonder what context would make that appropriate), but took the moment to repeat his attack on Obama for being on the same board as Ayers:

It seems that while McCain doesn't want to find himself in Lady Macbeth's shoes, trying to wash the blood from his hands when it is already too late, he has little problem with others doing some dirty work at arms length. That way, McCain can make it look like he is above the fray, while others make the attacks on Obama that tend to alienate moderates and independents in this country. McCain is in desperate territory; some advisers and previous supporters are beginning to distance themselves from the campaign so as not to be sucked into the collapse should McCain lose November 4. Will McCain's "honorable" turn-around be enough to help him overcome a large deficit in less than a month? I'm leaning towards no, but as I've said before, the Democrats cannot get too cocky, because the sole fact that this race is even within the ten point margin with one of the candidates backing an immoral and incredibly unpopular war, among other unpopular stances, is telling. Peace.

Photo - Two supporters at a McCain rally in Virginia Beach (blog.indecision2008.com)

Next They'll Be Calling Them Freedom Fighters

If you have not read Seymour Hersh's article in the latest New Yorker, do it. If you were alive during the 1980s you may think that Hersh's article is merely a history lesson from the Reagan era, complete with toppling Iranian governments, CIA-funded middle eastern minority factions, and moronic decisions coming from the White House. Alas, Hersh's article is a startling look at America's covert operations in Iran meant to destabilize the ruling government to make an invasion easier on the ground. What is even more worrisome is that Congress's intelligence leaders - a group Hersh calls the Gang of Eight - know little about the program, thus allowing the Bush administration to wield unchecked power (kind of like in late 2002 and early 2003 leading up to the Iraq War).

To begin with, to invade Iran would be a grievous mistake. It would prove that the leaders of the current administration have learned absolutely nothing from the situation in Iraq. One would think that Vietnam would be an indication that America should stop fucking with other parts of the world where it has no business, but if that is not enough, then Iraq should certainly prove to be sufficient evidence. But when you're as thick-headed as Dick Cheney and the rest of the administration, logic is as scarce as cheap gas. Hence, the step-up of covert ops in Iran.

The most mind-boggling part of all of this is the complete and utter resemblance it has to Reagan's mistakes of the 1980s. Where do you think the Taliban and Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda came from? If you think they just popped out of the blue in the early 1990s and came to existence solely to do harm to the United States for no reason, then I truly feel sorry for you. With the millions and millions of dollars pumped through Pakistani intelligence to Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviets, the Taliban formed, followed by Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. Washington's logic was that both the United States and the ultra-extremist (and America-hating) "freedom fighters" both wanted the Soviets out of Afghanistan. It's middle school philosophy: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But 9/11 showed us how flawed Reagan's logic was. Without American help in the Middle East, Bin Laden and company would not have existed. Bin Laden has been kicked out of every country in the Middle East; only the Taliban (formed with American help) would accept this wealthy outcast. So he sets up shop in the tunnels of Tora Bora (again, with American help) and plots his revenge on America (who left him and his new country in ruins once the Soviets were defeated).

So what do we do in 2008? We pump money into minority factions, just like Reagan did in the 1980s, in order to fight a common enemy using the same philosophy, even after it proved tragically wrong on 9/11. The funny thing is, the 2008 case is almost a carbon copy of the 1980s. Instead of Khomeini spouting anti-American rhetoric to stir the masses, we have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (both figures were inspired to rail against America due to CIA reasons - Khomeini because of revelations that the CIA and Israeli intelligence helped form and fund the oppresive, brutal secret police of the Shah [SAVAK] and now Ahmadinejad due to covert American ops in Iran's borders). Replace the mujahideen, Reagan's "freedom fighters," with new minority groups like the Kurds and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq. Replace the setting of Afghanistan's mountains to the deserts of Iran. Brilliant.

Let's look at one of the factions we are funding: the Kurds. The Kurds are a significant minority spread throughout northern Iraq, western Iran, and southern Turkey. The Kurds probably do not like America too much due to our dealings with Turkey allowing Turkish forces to enter soveriegn Iraqi land to attack Kurdish extremists (some of whom we are now currently funding). Just like the mujahideen, the Kurds are not America's biggest fans. When all is over and the proverbial dust settles, the Kurds will want America to set up a Kurdistan, just like Britain set up Israel for the Jews. However, America will not set up a Kurdistan because it will bring more instability to the region, just like Israel did. Turkey will be pissed, as will Iraq (though by then we will have set up a puppet government to do whatever Washington wanted) and Iran will be in pieces and won't have time to deal with the headache. We'll be there for decades trying to sort shit out, or we'll leave after stirring the shit beyond recognition and wait 12-15 years for a major terrorist attack to happen on American soil to realize we made a huge mistake. Either scenario is unacceptable.

If Cheney, Rove, and company are not going to be put in jail, they should at least be forced to read a history book. Of course, Bush's legacy will be forever stained by the leeches he surrounded himself with. Bush is not bright enough to come up with all of this (look at his one piece of legislation - No Child Left Behind - that was his pet project). Of course, what can you expect when you surround yourself with Nixon-era crooks (Cheney and Rumsfeld in particular). To end this post I will quote Immortal Technique on a song from his new mixtape: "The government pimped 9/11 to go to Iraq / And now history repeats itself right on track / Cuz it's a tragedy and then the comedy begins / Because it's funny motherfuckers don't see it come around again." Peace.

Photos - Two men making a huge mistake (Time), Bin Laden, whose power is arguably a product of disastrous American foreign policy during the Reagan/Bush era (Encyclopedia Britannica), Neo-Cons, a major threat to American security (Writing Shop)

Short Term Memory Loss: Mukasey Surprised by Terror Threats

It seems that Attorney General Michael Mukasey is not particularly well-read on the subject of American foreign policy in the 20th and early 21st centuries. He has recently come out and said that he was surprised how varied and geographically spread out the terror threats that the United States receives are. He then declined to talk about the nature of the terror attacks and then declined to say whether there was any increased risk for the country. So why even bring it up? Beyond reinforcing the constant paranoia about Islamic radicalism (he specifically pointed out fatwas) that the current administration would like us to live under, he used this opportunity to push his agenda: he urged Congress to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Nothing like a little fear mongering to try to push legislation through our elected bodies.

Looking beyond the hypocrisy of the top lawman in the country's plea for immunity of telephone companies who broke the law, it was Mukasey's quote at the bottom of the CNN article that really struck me. When queried about Bin Laden (who has recently put out two tapes denouncing everything but Islam), he said, "Am I alarmed? I am alarmed, I guess. I wish he weren't in a position to issue them." I'm going to take this statement as "I wish Osama bin Laden were not in a position of power from which he is able to issue messages to the world."

For those who choose to remember, I would like to visit one of the last showdowns of the Cold War between the US and the Soviets: the Soviet-Afghan War. I'm currently reading Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars" which is an in-depth look at the US's involvement in the Middle East (specifically Afghanistan and Pakistan) from 1979 to September 10, 2001 and that is where a lot of the following information comes from. One of the reasons that Osama bin Laden has such a position in world affairs today can be attributed to Langley, Virginia. The CIA was pumping hundreds of millions of dollars to the mujahadin freedom fighters who were resisting Soviet influence in Afghanistan. However, through a deal with Pakistan, all money had to go through their secret intelligence force the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which was more corrupt than America's CIA. Saudi Arabian money also flowed into Afghanistan from that country's General Intelligence Directorate (GID). The CIA, both through the ISI and secretly behind the ISI's back, trained mujahadin fighters on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to fight the Soviets. America also supplied the Islamic rebels with numerous weapons and materials. While not dealing with Bin Laden directly (as far as we know), there is little doubt that both the ISI and the GID had relations with Bin Laden (keep in mind that the CIA worked closely with both these agencies). The CIA also backed the anti-Communist Taliban (who had a mutually beneficial relationship with Bin Laden) and also printed Qur'ans for mujahadin fighters in order to stir up Islamic nationalism in the region to fight the Soviets. The CIA was well aware of the anti-American and pro-radical Islamic tendencies of these fighters and rebel groups, but foresight is not a CIA characteristic and the higher ups in the Reagan Administration felt that communism was the bigger enemy. It should come as no surprise to anyone, Michael Mukasey included, that there are strong rebel groups in the Middle East who are well-armed and well-trained who want to hurt America because we are the ones who enabled them. That's like giving an alcoholic a truckload of booze and being shocked when he gets shitfaced.

But in addition to all of this, the nearly 7 year hunt for Bin Laden after 9/11 has proven to be a massive embarrassment for the Bush Administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not to mention the CIA. We had a chance to capture or kill Bin Laden. We essentially had him cornered in Tora Bora in late 2001 and he literally walked right by us. The military thought that the best way to try to capture or kill the most wanted man in the world would be to have General Tommy Franks call the shots - from Tampa, Florida. The military also denied a general's request to commit a large amount of ground troops to the area to capture Bin Laden, something that the Bush Administration has admitted was "the gravest error of the war." Instead of admitting mistakes in our past foreign policies, those in the upper echelons of our government choose to blame Islam, Arabs, and those who oppose unconstitutional "security" measures (who, through this opposition, are labeled as siding with the terrorists).

Of course, when Mukasey says that he is surprised by the geographical diversity of the origins of all of these threats, one may assume that the Middle East is not the only region in the world from which these threats are coming from. A brief look at American foreign policy might yield some answers as to where this country's image is not tip-top. Nicaragua (and subsequently most of the countries in the surrounding area), the Philipines, Bolivia, and the Congo are a few. This government need not blame others for discontent with America in other regions of the world, as the CIA (which was run by our current Secretary of Defense during George H. W. Bush's second term) has done more than enough to piss people off.

In conclusion, it is slightly worrisome that our current Attorney General Michael Mukasey is surprised that there are factions within the world's population that strongly dislike America as a country and as a society. Obviously I'm sure there are groups out there who are batshit crazy and have no legitimate reasons to hate our country. But while there are groups like that, I'm sure that there are more groups who, though their tactics should certainly be reevaluated, have legitimate gripes with America due to foreign policy blunders that this country has made. To ignore American history abroad inevitably leads to grave misunderstanding (one of the reasons that we are still in Iraq). If Mukasey wants a little background information on what's going on in the world today I'll lend him my copy of Coll's book when I'm done with it. Peace.

Photos - Attorney General Michael Mukasey (www.newsgroper.com), Osama bin Laden (www.msnbc.msn.com), The CIA shield (commons.wikimedia.org), CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia (encarta.msn.com)