In this second post of three, DC contributors continue our discussion about the killing of Osama bin Laden and its implications,  seeking to formulate critical perspectives, moving toward judgment and political positioning. -Jeff

Michael P. Corey, A Direct Accounting

In simple terms, it appears that a JSOC strike team was dispatched on what was for all practical considerations a kill assignment to eliminate the head of Al Qaeda and retrieve all available documents. The mission was a risky way to accomplish the first objective; the only practical way to achieve the second; and had the potential to cause the least amount of collateral damage. It is unclear if this was done as a military operation or civilian operation. It is also unclear what was used as the moral, ethical and legal foundations for killing.  It demonstrated the resolve of the Obama and Bush administrations to seek out and kill Osama bin Laden, and presumably other terrorist leaders.  For the most part, the decision making and operation have been represented in the United States as difficult, courageous, and heroic, and as might have been expected, there have been political overtones on all sides.

Euphoric reactions to the mission are consistent with releasing pent up tensions related to terrorism; a national social, economic and cultural malaise, and a loss of national pride. Not releasing the photographic evidence is a good idea. If released, the photographs could have been used as the visual basis for building collective memories and actions by bin Laden’s followers. I’m uncomfortable with a Presidential visit to “ground zero” at this time. The tenth anniversary would have been better as a symbolic mechanism for pulling people together.

Gary Alan Fine, The Human Comedy

Turning on the television last Sunday I was startled to witness boisterous, ecstatic crowds. Americans gathered in the dark outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square to cheer for their team. “U.S.A., U.S.A. “Hoo-yah.” Were it not for the messages at the bottom of the screen, one might have been forgiven for assuming that America’s team pulled off another Olympic hockey triumph.

We’ve won. Not in the battle of sport, but in the sport of battle. Navy seals with CIA support had terminated that most evil of Hitler’s spawn, Osama bin Laden. Rot in Hell, Osama!

I wanted to be joyous, but I could not rid a sour taste. Yes, the killing of Osama bin-Laden was legitimate. His commitment to attacking secular, Western institutions was profound (his firm pro-life stance didn’t make him any more cuddly). You live by violence, you die as you live. And perhaps without a jazzy figurehead, radical jihad will be a less happenin’ ideology. Perhaps soon I won’t have to untie my shoes or have government agents inspect my privates when I travel.

Still, bin Laden’s death justifies a piece of his global critique. Bin Ladenism recognized the arrogance of a unipolar world, seeing hubris in America’s global overreach. We deserve a modest, respectful foreign policy, but often we are an international pufferfish, deadly when aroused. With our power, we set the terms for international conflict that – surprise! – benefit our strategic capabilities (smart bombs, good; anonymous attacks, nasty). We set the rules of intervention so that justice is ours. Hello Muammar!

The stance we select fits our discursive morality. And this choice might be the least bad of those flawed, authoritarian systems that we have bolstered. But should the cheering crowds be correct that Osama will rot in Hell, he surely will learn much in the University of Hell’s distinguished graduate program in International Relations.

Bin Xu, Presidential Performance

Obama performed well during his visit to Ground Zero. He performed well by fitting himself into instead of manipulating the scene. Political figures’ performances enjoy much less freedom than we usually assume. Try to imagine we mentally airbrush Obama out from pictures of the commemoration and focus more on the scene. We would find Ground Zero now is not filled with relics, dusts, and corpses, but giant cranes and the unfinished memorial hall. Relief instead of anger, and even a little festive mood are expressed in firefighters’ peaceful smiles. We perhaps could also hear murmurs of suspicions and laughter of jokes in the background. Will the President imitate his predecessor by exploiting death, tears, and triumph to divert attention from various problems, such as the birth certificate issue and the grave economy, or to strengthen his bid for reelection? In a nutshell, this is not a stage for a “tough guy” delivering a bullhorn speech and calling for revenge. It demands a low-profile and ambiguous performance to close the wound.

Now we put Obama back in to the pictures. He did not deliver a formal speech. Nor did he do any grandiose symbolic practices. He placed a wreath and observed a moment of silence. He quietly shook hands with relatives of the victims. When he did speak, informally, with the firefighters, he smartly called attention to “justice” that “transcends politics” and the sacrifice of “your brothers” in Pakistan. Therefore, as in the Vietnam War Memorial, this lack of conspicuity kept the whole commemoration open to various interpretations, which surprisingly reached a minimum consensus on value of individual life and dignity. What he smartly did was simple: tuning his display of emotions to match the emotive demand of the scene. As Goffman observes, “Not, then, men and their moments. Rather moments and their men.”

Benoit Challand, Judgment

Juan Cole is right in saying that showing pictures of Bin Laden would give him undue charisma down the line. But it is sad to see the spin doctors active in the last days justifying very shallowly that “justice has been done” (so what comes next?  Let us get rid of the remaining Guatanamo prisoners to satisfy the needs of the populus juventusque?), that torture (let us call a spade a spade) has produced marvelous intelligence results, or that the killing was simply self-defense in a moment of “split second” decision? On the other hand, it is remarkable to read the reactions of survivors’ families and their ambiguous feelings about the killing of Bin Laden. This suggests that paying tribute to the memory of the victims of 9/11 can be done in more complex and subtle manners.