My post on the announcement of the killing of Osama bin Laden and the reaction to it stimulated a fascinating debate. As a way of continuing it, I asked the contributors to Deliberately Considered to add their observations and judgments. I invited each to write a short note responding to the following:
What is the meaning of the killing of bin Laden and the American public’s reaction to it? Is the Obama administration correct in not releasing photos of the bin Laden’s body? And what do you think about Obama’s visit to “ground zero today? I asked them to respond to all three of the questions, any one or any combination.
A number of the responses seem to be shaped by the specific location of the contributors. I first post these. I will post the rest over the weekend, and will add my reflections on the contributions and on reader responses on Monday. Again, I invite Deliberately Considered readers to add their judgments. It would be particularly interesting to know how people see this global media event from a variety of other specific locations, here in the U.S. and around the world. -Jeff
Ahmad Sadri, Illinois
As the news of the killing of Usamah Bin Laden broke I was on a live radio show (WGN’s Extension 70, Chicago.) I was asked about my impression. The most prominent feeling that I had was relief. I wasn’t relieved because UBL had been killed by American SEALs. The man had little influence on the operations of Al Qaeda. He had been made irrelevant by the Arab Spring that is the farthest possible thing from the demented dreams of his militant Islamism.
I was relieved because the execution of UBL was a denouement for a vendetta. Americans have been consumed with rage because the perpetrator of the horrific acts of terrorism on that bloody Tuesday ten years ago was never caught. It is my belief that this public fury was partly responsible for . . .
Read more: DC Forum: The Killing of Osama bin Laden – Part One
In the wake of the trifecta of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his colleagues have donned the blue uniforms of first responders, suggesting they are working tirelessly. But despite his efforts to handle the biggest crisis in Japan since Hiroshima, Kan has not won the hearts of his countrymen, whose apprehension and distrust increases each morning when they turn on the news to learn of increasing radioactivity, the plummeting stock market, and the soaring death toll. As it turns out, blue uniforms are not enough.
History has taught us that disasters and mass emergencies can transform a mediocre politician into an inspiring leader. The 1944 San Juan earthquake in Argentina that killed more than 10,000 people, earned Juan Perón instant esteem, as well as a glamorous wife, Evita. Ten years ago, the rubble at Ground Zero in New York City transformed George W. Bush from an alleged illegitimate president to a folk hero shepherding the nation through crisis. For Kan, the challenges of Sendai have opportunities and pitfalls. But so far, Kan’s focus on the rubble has not brought the Japanese together in common purpose.
Where did Kan go wrong? To be sure, there is a Japanese cultural style, But nowadays politicians must be aware of new global expectations, which call for a man of compassion and empathy, a man of the people. Consider Wen Jiabao. Two hours after China’s 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he jumped on a plane bound for the area struck by disaster. Soon he was seen walking around in the devastated community, telling children who were buried in a half-collapsed building that “Grandpa Wen is here with you.” The politics of emotion in action. Hundreds of millions of Chinese watched Wen shedding tears, angrily slamming his cellphone at slacking officials, and hugging wailing orphans. Just as Bill Clinton, Wen realized that a politician must feel your pain. As a result, the Chinese felt sheltered instead of afraid. A few cynics have called Wen “the best actor in China,” . . .
Read more: Post-Earthquake Politics in Japan and China
By Gary Alan Fine, May 3rd, 2011 
In a post submitted before Osama Bin Laden was eliminated, Gary Alan Fine poses a question that is especially pressing after this latest development in the ongoing global wars. –Jeff
Coming out of a bar late one night, a patron finds his friend on his hands and knees searching desperately beneath a streetlamp. “I lost my keys under my car and I must find them,” moans his friend. “But why, if the keys are under a car, are you searching under this lamp?” “Well, the light is much better here.”
This is an old chestnut, none too clever, but one that has powerful political resonance, helping to explain flawed policy decisions. Why, if we worry about the menace of Al Qaeda, have we gone to war against two states – Iraq and Libya – that have distant, even hostile, relations with our terrorist foes. The light is better there.
A student of mine, Michaela DeSoucey, currently at Princeton, wrote her doctoral dissertation about the battles to ban foie gras. She asked the question why is it that animal rights activists chose to make the banning of foie gras a central issue, despite the small amount of foie gras consumed by Americans, as opposed to veal, much more common on American tables – or chicken. Neither baby cows nor poultry sleep under 300-thread count sheets. Her argument is that battling foie gras producers is a far easier task than the cattle or poultry industry. Yet, each battle provides a rich vein of publicity. Foie gras is what DeSoucey labels an easy target: it is, if one can pardon the culinary-mixed metaphor “low-hanging fruit.” Activists hope, but do not expect, that such targets can provide a wedge for other bigger enemies. Not yet.
But my concern is not with the pantry, but with the atlas. Here we are battling in Libya, while Syria falls into chaos. Americans and our NATO allies have determined that it is crucial that we overthrow the Qaddafi regime, even though that regime is opposed to Al Qaeda as are we. And, frankly, it is becoming a vexing pattern. We are . . .
Read more: Easy Targets
I find myself puzzled by the response to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Listening to President Obama’s speech, I immediately wondered how this would affect the war in Afghanistan and our relationship with Pakistan. Since it seems to me clear that the terrorist threat has less to do with a specific network called Al Qaeda, more to do with fanatics around the world, I wondered about their response.
I then turned on CNN and was bewildered. Why were all these young people in New York and Washington, and at the Mets – Phillies game celebrating? And why the wild chants of USA, USA! What were they thinking? What were they feeling? Why were they so enthusiastic?
Bin Laden was not a nice guy. He was a master of destruction. He inspired his supporters and his enemies to wage war, torture, attack human rights and civil liberties and the like. He was a global anti-democratic force. Without him, globalized terrorism and anti-terrorism are less likely. But the Arab Spring is much more consequential in this regard, I believe, as it points to promising alternatives for people around the world. Democracy is “in,” fanaticism is “out.” The heroes of Tahrir Square are the real answer to the “Clash of Civilizations.” This confirms for me ideas I had soon after 9/11, leading to the writing of The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times.
Yet, no doubt, I am underestimating and not understanding the response of people here in the U.S. and around the world to the elimination of a force and symbol of mass destruction. Understanding how they see and feel it is important, because these feelings and perceptions are important political realities. An interesting overview of reactions today were posted on Al Jazeera.
I found particularly interesting the contrasting takes of the key leaders in Israel – Palestine:
Ismail Haniyeh – head of . . .
Read more: Osama bin Laden: Thoughts and Questions
By Rafael Narvaez, April 27th, 2011 
In the mid-eighties a young woman was hired as a receptionist at a local TV station in Lima, an anonymous and fortuitous circumstance, which set in motion one of those bizarre episodes in Peruvian politics. A possessor of ambition and bodily capital, Susy Diaz was quickly promoted to semi-exotic dancer, working for a prime-time TV show named “Laughter and Salsa Music.” “Salsa,” to clarify, meant women dancing in thongs, and “laughter” meant, in general, men demeaning the women in thongs. Diaz soon took the central stage. Her fan base grew rapidly, and so, almost as with Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s “metamorphosis,” one fine morning she woke up to find herself transformed into a tabloid celebrity.
I remember one of those tabloids run by Fujimori with a front page devoted to Diaz’s sexual exploits, photographs of purported anal sex included. Confident with her popularity, she also expanded into picaresque theater, as well as singing. One of her theater pieces was entitled “The Erotic Congresswoman,” and one of her songs was “Let Me Blow Your Horn.” “Catharsis for the masses,” as Adorno would say, “but catharsis which keeps them all the more firmly in line.”
Susy Diaz’s ambitions grew in proportion to her newfound fame. Inspired by Cicciolina, the Italian porn star turned parliamentarian, Diaz used her popularity to launch a tumultuous, one-of-a-kind political career. Convincing members of the Agrarian Party (a caucus devoted to peasant-related issues) that she would be a good addition to their ranks, she soon found herself running for Congress, with a campaign that was simple and faithful to her style. She first inscribed her ballot number on her buttocks to thus remind fans and cameras of the reasons to vote for her. If it had worked in the domain of tabloids and TV, why wouldn’t it work in the domain of politics?
Naturally, she also . . .
Read more: Junk Politics
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 26th, 2011 
I am convinced that the success or failure of historic political transformation has less to do with moments of violent confrontation, more to do with the politics that precede and follow violence, or are non violent from beginning to end. If the repressive forces back down before a society is torn asunder, success is more likely. This provides the grounds for political creativity that actually make what seemed to be impossible one day, likely the next. Two pieces by informed scholars I’ve read recently notably still think that this is the case in Tunisia and Egypt. Indeed, I just read a piece in today’s New York Times that seems to confirm their optimism.
Alfred Stepan, a long time student of democratic transitions, reports in a post on the Social Science Research Council blog, The Immanent Frame: “Tunisia’s chances of becoming a democracy before the year ends are surprisingly good.” And that “Democratization in Egypt in the long term is probable, but it does not share the especially favorable conditions that we find in Tunisia.”
Deliberately Considered contributor, Hazem Kandil, gives a precise overview of the historical developments and background of the fall of the Egyptian old regime in an interview he gave to The New Left Review. He paints a vivid picture of the interactive forces that made up the old order and of the forces that are going into the making of the new. He also is realistically hopeful. He concludes:
“So the outcome will really depend on how strong the revolutionary tide is in Egypt. If the movement remains as it is now, moderate and pragmatic, we will have a much better Egypt than existed before, not a perfect democracy. If the movement gains strength and momentum, there is no telling what might happen. For, there is no revolutionary movement with the capacity to take over control of all the institutions that need to be purged. Nasser had the army—he could send soldiers out to enforce his agrarian reform, or to . . .
Read more: Positive Prospects in Tunisia and Egypt
By Rafael Narvaez, April 18th, 2011 
Ollanta Humala, a left-wing nationalist, and Keiko Fujimori, the daughter and number one fan of a former right-wing dictator, will shortly compete for the presidency of Peru, after having obtained the first and second places, respectively, in the first electoral round (which took place on Sunday, April 10th). Notoriously unpredictable as the country is when it comes to politics, no one can foresee the results of the runoff. But given the correlation of political forces and interests today, Fujimori has a good chance of winning the elections. This would entail, as Mario Vargas Llosa puts it, “opening the prisons for all the thieves, murderers and torturers –beginning with her father, Alberto Fujimori, and the sinister Montesinos [Fujimori’s lieutenant]– for them to take the streets once again, to show their tongues to everyone who has defended democracy in Peru. The criminals would go directly from prison to the government.”
Keiko Fujimori, a populist vaguely speaking on behalf of liberal capitalism, has a main goal in mind: liberating dear Dad, who is in prison for having led one of the most corrupt and violent administrations in the world –a mafia state whose dealings (as suggested in a previous post) were meticulously recorded by the administration itself, particularly via videos from the Intelligence Service, which were at some point leaked to the press, setting in motion the inevitable, but perhaps temporary, collapse of the regime.
Consider a couple of glimpses into Alberto Fujimori’s administration: Transparency International calculates that Fujimori embezzled roughly 600 million dollars from public funds, which would rank his regime as the seventh most corrupt of the past twenty years –worldwide. Beyond “normal” channels of embezzlement and piracy, Fujimori also used his creativity to procure illegal funds in almost risible ways. For example, he set up a charity organization in Japan to collect funds for “poor children in Peru,” funds that then he gluttonously diverted to his personal account. He reminds me of Garcia Marquez’s Patriarch, in The Autumn of the Patriarch, a banana republic character at once comical and evil, a childishly wicked being who . . .
Read more: Presidential Elections in Peru
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 16th, 2011 
Thursday, I considered President Obama’s speech, informed by William Milberg’s analysis of Senator Ryan’s budget proposal. My conclusion: the terms of the political debate for the 2012 elections are being set to the President’s strong advantage. I am pleased, but even more pleased because two serious opposing views of America and its public good will be debated. A rational discussion about this seems likely. There will be smoke and mirrors to be sure, but this is a time for grand politics in the sense of Alexis de Tocqueville and a grand political contest we will get.
This is especially important given the present state of affairs in the United States and abroad. But Presidential leadership will not solve all problems. Indeed, much of the politically significant action occurs off the central political stage, in what I refer to as “the politics of small things.” This dimension of politics has been on our minds this week in the form of three very different cases: the Tea Party in the United States, and The Freedom Theatre and the International Solidarity Committee in occupied Palestine.
The Tea Party is a looming presence in American politics. But it is in a sense “no thing”, as Gary Alan Fine puts it. It is a social movement that emerged in response to major changes associated with the election and early administration of Barack Obama, and a response to the global economic crisis. Fine and I disagree in our judgment of the “Tea Party patriots.” Indeed, I, along with Iris, am not sure how rational they are, but that is actually a political matter. As an objective observer of the human comedy, i.e. as a sociologist, I am particularly intrigued by the no thing qualities of the Tea Party which Fine considers.
A media performance occurs. An agitated announcer denounces policies said to be supporting losers, calling for a new tea party demonstration. People, who can’t take it anymore, come together in small groups all around the country, using . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Ryan’s Budget, the President’s Speech and the Tea Party between Two Assassinations
By Benoit Challand, April 15th, 2011 
Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian peace activist, was abducted in Gaza City yesterday, and then killed, apparently by a Salafist group opposed to Hamas. The news already has shaken Italy and Europe, and it will also make for some somber headlines here in the USA.
Arrigoni arrived in Gaza three years ago as part of the International Solidarity Movement, a network of foreign activists who deliberately choose to live in the heart of the occupied territories to bear witness to the continuing harassment of the Palestinian population at the hands of the Israeli occupier (be they military or of the radical settler movements). Some of these activists live in remote villages, some accompany ambulances through checkpoints. Often IDF soldiers let the vehicles through simply because there is a ‘white’ person onboard. Others organize protests around Israel’s Separation Wall or in Palestinian villages, such as Budrus, Ni’lin, non-violently protesting. All confront the apartheid nature of the occupation. For this reason, Israel tries to prevent them from entering its territories, attempting to silence these annoying witnesses.
Arrigoni was such a witness-activist. Choosing Gaza as the place of his activism, he was one of the very few non-diplomat foreigners present during the Operation Cast Lead (Dec. 2008-January 2009). His blogs and reports were published on the Italian leftist daily Il Manifesto for which he kept sending reports.
Gaza has been off limits to most foreigners and at times fully inaccessible to journalists and even ambassadors. Israel controls all of the borders around the Palestinian territories. Based on his experience in the 2008-2009 war, Arrigoni published a poignant book entitled Restiamo Umani, which can be translated in the affirmative as “We Remain Human” or in the imperative form as “Let Us Stay Human.” Giving a human face to the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza was Arrigoni’s mission. His was an urgent sense of witnessing the ordeal of ordinary Palestinians.
But why would a Palestinian group execute him? The official line is that a radical Salafist group, opposed to Hamas, had captured him hoping to exchange his release for the release of . . .
Read more: On the Assassination of Vittorio Arrigoni: We Remain Human
By Irit Dekel, April 11th, 2011 
“As I came to Jenin in 2003, I found a swamp, a jungle, steaming with struggles to survive. Here they need hospitals, not a theatre, I thought.” Mr. Juliano Mer-Khamis, in an interview to the Berlin Newspaper Tagesspiegel in early 2010 in Jenin, re-published after his assassination on April 6, 2011.
Mr. Mer-Khamis (53), an Israeli and Palestinian actor, was shot dead on April 4 by masked militants at the entrance to the theatre he built in 2006 in the west bank city of Jenin, “The Freedom Theatre.” He started the theater in Jenin in 2006 following a call from his friend Zakaria Zubeidi, an Al-Aqsa-Brigades fighter, or what we Israelis usually think of as a terrorist. Moving with his wife and children to live in the refugee camp of Jenin, Mr. Mer-Khamis said in several interviews, was a choice he made between being on the side of the soldier and the checkpoint, or on that of the little girl who has no future and no hope.
I first read about the assassination in the Israeli press, linked on friends’ Facebook pages. I was surprised to discover how many of “their friends” reacted directly to the question of whether Mer-Khamis’s actions were just (many users expressed their loathing of his activism, much like replies to the same articles in Israeli news sites).
Journalists and bloggers also asked themselves whether this terrible murder stands as a warning sign to not mix art and politics as Mer-Khamis did in his acting in Israeli theaters, and to not openly criticize both Israeli militarism and the occupation and Palestinian society for its religious narrow mindedness.
There were two camps mourning the murder. On the one hand, there were those who concluded that it was the result of the inhuman, dark and theocratic Palestinian society. It could not tolerate boys and girls acting and playing together and rejected the secular content of the Freedom Theatre’s plays. The other camp lamented the tear in the very identity of Mer-Khamis himself. He tried to be a bridge between the “impossible worlds” in his . . .
Read more: On the Assassination of Juliano Mer-Khamis: Fighting for the Freedom of the Everyday
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