[lbo-talk] Obama got Osama

[James Leveque]

I heard the news a few hours ago, just as the UK was getting up, and I've
been thinking about it and my only reaction is that I'm a little struck by
how empty it feels. After all the bullshit that 9/11 spawned over the past
10 years (Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, torture, extraordinary rendition,
wiretapping, Blackwater, Abu Gharaib, etc.), there's absolutely nothing that
feels satisfying about any of this. None of that bullshit is going away now,
and the only difference will be the slightly more tortured rationales for
keeping all that bullshit going. "Bin Laden had no real operational value,
see, so even though we had to, had to, had to kill him, for reasons of
justice, Al Qaida is still humming right along." 'Cuz that's what we need at
the end of the day, huh? Some abstract sense of justice in which not one
fucking thing changes.

And I'm checking my facebook page and I'm a little fascinated by how many of
my liberal friends are just cumming right now. "God Bless the Troop!"
"Justice is Done" Cheering Obama like he just pulled the still-beating heart
of his enemy's chest like Mola Ram in Indiana Jones. And maybe if this had
happened in 2001 or 2002, I would have felt differently - I was a lot more
emotional about 9/11 and it's aftermath then. But if I'm being honest with
myself now, bin Laden held as much presence in my mind as an occasional
character on South Park as he did an international terrorist. So maybe
that's part of the emptiness I feel about the event, because after a decade
of so much media saturation and caricature, I feel like Obama's getting a
national hand-job for wacking somebody who had all of the substance of
cartoon.

 I hope not to sound too callous in the above comments, but I guess what I'm
trying to get across is that for me, bin Laden has become so disconnected
with the consequences and aftermath of 9/11 that his death just doesn't
resonate very much.

James

On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 6:21 AM, Mark Bennett <bennett.mab at gmail.com> wrote:


> Jesus, the scenes of celebration are hard to believe.  You'd think it was
> V-J day or something.
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