Today, we remember “9/11.” It’s a depressing day. I feel it personally, having lost one of my best friends, Michael Asher, 11 years ago, a victim of a terrorist attack, an attack that initiated deep and wide global suffering. Distant suffering, the deaths and mortal wounds of individuals and groups large and small, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan and elsewhere, including the four corners of the United States, combines with personal loss. The day is doubly depressing in my judgment because, tragically, remembering poorly has provoked more suffering than the terrorist act that started the whole mess, and this continues, guaranteeing that the suffering will not end. The term “9/11” and its remembrance are dangerous.

When I went to the ceremony commemorating the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks with my dear friend Steve Assael, a survivor, I heard too many blind patriotic cries, saw too many signs celebrating retribution and military might.

On the day Osama bin Laden was killed: I viewed with dismay the wild celebrations of young people outside the White House and elsewhere in the country. As I wrote here, their enthusiasm confused me. I didn’t understand it, though later with irony, I pretended I did as a way to call for the end of the war on terrorism.

And even as I shared my enthusiasm for the clarity and fundamental soundness of the Democratic Convention last week, specifically as it contrasted with the Republican Convention, the repeated reminders that Obama killed Osama turned me off. “Osama Bin Laden is Dead and GM is Alive,” Biden’s favorite slogan, I believe points the American public in the wrong direction. I understand why this served good partisan purpose, but find this deeply depressing.

Action is the major antidote for depression, and I have been self-medicating here at Deliberately Considered. Thus, over the past year, I have published at Deliberately Considered pieces that try to open up more careful remembrance. These are all highlighted on the home page today, as featured pieces and as favorites. My modest attempt to contribute to a higher quality memory is to invite readers to take a look at these, organized as they are around two themes: 9/11 and Osama bin Laden.

Note how forgetting is natural, as Gary Alan Fine explains, but also consider what should and what should not be forgotten. My suggestion: remember the loss, forget the impulse for revenge. It is interesting to me that this morning NPR reported that now three quarters of the American population doesn’t think the war in Afghanistan has made us safer.

Consider how we look in the eyes of the world with Anna Lisa Tota reporting from Italy. Perhaps wild chants of USA, USA, USA! is not in the national interest. Either at ground zero, or after the killing of Osama bin Laden, or at a national political convention. Read through the thoughtful reflections and debate we had here about this, and don’t stereotype all Americans, note the diversity of judgments and opinions.

I am committed to writing a more scholarly paper on collective memory. Its title will be “Against Memory.” It will be informed by the discussions here.

One of our rhetorical tics, so common and so universal as to be unremarkable, is the shared assertion by liberals and conservatives alike that our soldiers are our heroes. We may disagree about foreign policy, but soldiers are the bravest and the greatest. That mainstream politicians should make this claim – Obama and Bush, McCain and Kerry – should provoke little surprise, but it flourishes as a trope among the anti-war left as well. Political strategies reverberate through time as we refight our last discursive war.

In the heated years of the War in Vietnam there was a palpable anger by opponents of that war that was directed against members of the military who bombed the killing fields of Cambodia, Hanoi, and Hue. While accounts of soldiers being spat upon were more apocryphal than real, used by pro-war forces to attack their opponents. According to sociologist Jerry Lembcke in his book The Spitting Image the story was an urban legend, but it is true that many who opposed the war considered soldiers to be oppressors, or in the extreme, murderers. This was a symbolic battle in which the anti-war forces were routed, and such language was used to delegitimize principled opposition to the war and to separate the young college marchers from the working class soldiers who were doing the bidding of presidents and generals. In the time of a national draft, college students were excused from service, making the class divide evident. (For the record, I admit to cowardice, fearing snipers, fragging, and reveille. I was a chicken dove).

After the war, war critics learned a lesson. No longer would the men with guns be held responsible for the bullets. All blame was to be placed upon government and none on the soldiers, even though the draft had been abolished, and the military became all-volunteer (and the working class and minority population continued to increase in the ranks).

By the time that American adventures in the Gulf and in Afghanistan became part of our political taken-for-granted, so did the rhetoric of soldier-as-hero. Perhaps these rhetorical choices were strategic, but they also served to give our military a moral pass.

When Barack Obama was a candidate he assured voters that he would conclude this national nightmare. Yes, politics involves bluster and blarney, but bringing the troops home in an orderly process seemed a firm commitment, a project for his first term. I trusted that this hope and change was not merely a discursive sop to those who found long-term and bloody American intervention intolerable. Here was a war that seemed hopeless in year one and now in year eleven it seems no more hopeful. To be sure it is a low-grade debacle, but a debacle none-the-less. If, as some have suggested, we invaded Afghanistan to put the fear of God into the hearts of Pakistanis, the strategy has been charmingly ineffective. It seems abundantly clear that our choice is to determine when we will declare the war lost, and when Americans and Afghans will no longer die at each others hands.

Wars cannot be conducted without the connivance of soldiers. Soldiers are the pawns that permit State policy. I recognize that in parlous economic times there are many strategic reasons for desiring the benefits of a military life. And spittle is not political philosophy. But choice is always tethered to responsibility. Members of the military are accepting and even benefiting from a misguided and destructive policy. The nation of Afghanistan deserves self-determination free from our boots on the ground. And the absence of complaint among the all-volunteer military underlines the complicity of our soldiers.

So I do reject the choices of the members of the military whose presence and obedience makes possible the fantasias of foreign policy strategists. They have moral responsibility for their decisions. But the responsibility is not theirs alone, but ours. That we have been unable, unwilling, or unconcerned to stop an unending war against a nation that did not attack us is a mark of shame. It reveals the American public as timid and craven.

Are soldiers responsible for their actions? Surely. Should soldiers be hated? Not until the rest of us are willing to hold a mirror to our own acquiescence in a system that reveals in our political priorities that War and Peace matters far less than Standard and Poors.

With these actions, journalists had turned this ship into a floating television studio, building a sense of suspense. The situation was carefully scripted, except for its outcome of course. However, in a way, the nature of the outcome did not matter. Either the Israelis would allow the flotilla to successfully challenge the Gaza blockade, which would show a sign of weakness, a defeat, a form of surrendering, or the Israelis would intervene to stop the flotilla. In that case, cameras were at hand to record violent actions: Israeli commandos attacking civilians, soldiers attacking “pacifists,” even if the latter are using weapons. Like in all reality shows, the narrative was built around a confrontation that took place on a small stage surrounded by cameras. The event was constructed as emblematic and endowed with a sustained visibility.

Let us now look at the explosion in the Argana café in Marrakesh, Morocca last month. The bombing occurred without warning. This suddenness is strategically understandable since an advance warning would have undermined its success. However, because it went unannounced, its impact has been enormously diminished. Of course, the number of victims in Marrakesh was much higher. If human lives count, the bombing at the popular Moroccan café should be considered a much more serious event than the odyssey of the Turkish flotilla. Yet, the victims, among them quite a few visiting foreigners, have stayed anonymous. The bombers are unknown and no camera was present to record the explosion while it happened. The photos in the next day’s newspapers showed only the aftermath of the explosion: destroyed walls, bloodstained shoes, overturned chairs and hospital beds. A carefully crafted dramaturgy is absent. The attention for the Marrakesh bombing was essentially quantitative. Seventeen people were killed. Twenty-five were wounded.

Put this in perspective with another bombing in Pakistan. On May 13, at least 80 people were killed and more than 150 were injured in a suicide bombing in Pakistan. Does this mean that this event was more important than the Marrakesh event? Does a scale on which to rate importance exist? In fact, it does. Human lives have become a media currency. This currency is heavily depreciated. There are simply too many dead people. There is too little attention.

In terms of expressing hatred, a suicide bombing is quite efficient. In terms of justifying this hatred, it represents a waste. In contrast to the masterfully run Mavi Marmara event, bombings feel amateurish. Of course, the Mavi Marmara is a big production. It delivers stars, a cast of hundreds, two major TV channels and the backing of one government. Bombings are rather do-it-yourself projects. The difference in style between both bombings and the Mavi Marmara epic is nevertheless stunning. While all are political events and all are meant to attract attention, only one provided a dramatic composition. As the perfect attention-trap, the flotilla was geared towards denunciation (of some), justification (of others). In the other two cases, there was just bare violence and poor dramaturgy. Perhaps the dramaturgy of the poor?

Osama bin Laden has been killed and what do we get to see? A group of distinguished spectators watching an invisible screen. Vice President Joe Biden is close to the screen. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seen covering her mouth with her hand, perhaps in horror. President-elect Barack Obama is leaning forward. A New York City subway newspaper has speculated that this was “the moment the president watched bin Laden die.” The visibility of an event has been replaced by the image of a group of officials who are watching what is invisible to us.

Bin Laden’s death is one of this year’s major events. Transpiring less than a week after the British Royal Wedding, it reveals the futility of the London bash. It reminds us that from time to time there are events that are truly historic, events that end a period of intellectual and affective unrest. Yet, there is something puzzling about the death of bin Laden. Important events tend to be visible. Can we believe in their magnitude if visibility is missing? In fact, can we believe they truly happened? Why do we feel short-changed, almost disappointed, waiting for the rest of the event to occur? Perhaps because bin Laden’s death was a deed but not a discourse, a blow but not an expressive event. Or perhaps we are not used to events that are both blind and mute.

A Blind Event

In the absence of images, testimonies and narratives curiously vacillate. They start to stutter. During the raid, bin Laden attempted to resist and was shot in the head. Bin Laden threatened the American commandos with a gun and was shot in the head. Bin Laden hid behind a woman, using her as a human shield, and was shot in the head. Bin Laden’s wife rushed the assaulter and was shot in the leg. Bin Laden was unarmed but shot and killed.

Here is another example of an indecisive account. “Bin Laden was buried at the North Arabian Sea from the deck of a US aircraft carrier at 2 am EST after having been washed following Islamic custom and receiving a religious funeral.” Military sources said that “his body was washed before being covered in a white sheet and religious remarks, translated into Arabic by a native speaker, were read over bin Laden’s corpse.” Counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan has confirmed “the burial of bin Laden’s remains was done in strict conformance with Islamist precepts and practices.” Yet, Reuters introduces a dissonant version by reporting, “Special Forces set out to kill Osama bin Laden and dump his body in the sea.”

Let me note that the description of the ritual seems a bit surreal. Muslim blessings do not need to be translated into Arabic as they already are in Arabic. As a comparison, a sentence from Harry Potter would not turn into a Catholic rite, if translated into Latin by a “native.” Also, if Abbottabad is about 30 miles from Islamabad, the only sea to be found is at the other end of the country. This makes a sea-burial highly unusual, as Islamic custom requires the death to have taken place on a ship. Even then, a land burial is the preferred option. By the way, three other men and one woman were also killed during the raid. Where these, presumably Muslim people buried at sea as well?

So, was it a funeral, a burial or a dumping? Was it a body, or remains? Was bin Laden threatening the soldiers or hiding behind his wife? The dangerous bin Laden must have brandished a weapon. The coward bin Laden must have hidden behind a woman. In the absence of pictures, connotations overpower descriptions; testimonies turn into first hand rumors. One role of pictures consists of harmonizing eyewitness reports, in validating denotation, in eliminating the temptations of legend. Pictures do not replace narratives; they stabilize them. Yet, can this current major historical turning point merely consist of the pictures we got: a bed with scattered pillows and rumpled sheets, reddish stains on a carpeted floor, the medications and pill boxes of an aging recluse?

Possibly, the corpse of bin Laden is too gruesome to be shown, which could be inflammatory. Nevertheless, various media have offered us substitutes. The bloodstained face of a man that was pasted over an old photograph showing bin Laden’s mouth and beard was widely distributed on the Internet. Too static? Here is something livelier: A Nintendo team taking agile steps and making simplified gestures, breaks into bin Laden’s toy house. It is a brightly colored animation show involving martial dancers, a death mask. We are only one step away from Sicilian popular theater in which puppets reenacted strikingly similar events. In the absence of images, we get mythical scenography. Aren’t images more sober?

A Mute Event

In the strategic realm, the former Saudi millionaire no longer made much of a difference. Perhaps he had never made a big difference, except as the product of Western journalism that needed to put a face on a political movement. Just like in pop music, the disappearance of one group only leads to the proliferation of others. Osama is dead. Vive someone else. In other terms, the event only matters on the symbolic level.

As a symbolic event, the death of bin Laden ends a ten year parenthesis. It gives a sense of closure, completing what was perceived as unresolved business. It mends a gaping wound. However, is this really what bin Laden’s death has done? No! The symbolic importance of this event has been begrudged. As an “expressive event,” it would not only have provided a powerful editorializing of the meanings of what happened during the last ten years, it would also have organized an “abreaction” of the original event (9/11) and a way to symbolically declare the trauma over. This is precisely what has been missing. Despite a visit to ground zero and laconic statements about justice rendered, the event has been stripped of its expressive dimension.

One can understand the reasons that guided the decision to make bin Laden’s death an a-symbolic event. A ceremony of any kind would have to make strong statements. Such statements would hurt sensitivities; lead to reactions proportioned to the visibility of the event and would serve as “incitements to further violence.” A gruesome photograph of bin Laden’s destroyed face would unavoidably deliver an “imperial” message. Like the decapitated heads exhibited on poles by monarchs of earlier times, it would rapidly become an icon, a cult object, a Middle Eastern replica of the Che Guevara photograph. Yet, how can a symbolic event be devoid of any heightening of visibility? How can an expressive event be conducted behind closed doors? Can you just whisper that a page in history has been turned?

Imperial symbolism is what Obama wants to avoid at all costs. However, ironically, avoiding visibility only enhances the high-handed brutality of the killing. Bin Laden was shot without trial. American soldiers breached the sovereignty of Pakistan and assassinated him. Avoiding a trial may have a pragmatic dimension: not offering a target for terrorist retaliations, blackmail, kidnappings and ransoms. If there would have been a trial, bin Laden could have turned the tables and put the USA on trial. The result would have been an exchange of arguments, a display of reasons (good or bad), a “disputatio.” Yet avoiding a trial means avoiding the rule of law. Mengele and Eichmann had a trial. In the case of bin Laden, the trial was skipped. Ironically, the absence of a trial takes the president back to what his presidency was meant to avoid: the War on Terror.

Event as Searchlight

In addition to the invisibility of the attack, the invisibility of the corpse and the invisibility of the burial, the absence of a trial offered a fourth invisibility, an even more serious one, the invisibility of judicial process and of law. Despite this litany of invisibilities, the death of bin Laden has acted like a magnifier or a searchlight. It has pointed to the Pakistani situation, revealing a mixture of duplicity (the Pakistani army protecting those it received billions to combat) and incompetence (the same Pakistani army never reacting to an incursion on Pakistani territory). It pointed to the feelings of the Pakistani man in the street. Randomly chosen inhabitants of Abbottabad expressed their anger at the killing of bin Laden, their intention to pray for him, their view of him as a holy man. Such images were quite telling. They spoke of a quiet consensus among the Pakistani population. Of course, none of this is really a scoop. However, our knowledge of this ambivalence was in a way peripheral. It took the form of uneasiness, of doubts about the ally-enemy. After this event, it seems difficult to go on with the Chiaroscuro. The sadness of the Abbottabad mourners and the mere counting of miles between bin Laden’s mansion and the Pakistani capital are irrefutable. In this case, we have maps and images.