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| Birds of a feather |
This article is a reply to my friend, Kartik Boddapat's post at Osama: Gandhi with a Gun! Thanks Kartik for your great article!
On the day after 9/11 when the American president declared he planned to “kill or capture” Bin Laden, why was everyone afraid to ask, “Since when did the American law allow American presidents to throw their legal system out the window, and to then declare a Fatwa on someone else whom he merely personally “presumed” to be guilty?” You are right Kartik.
On that day, there was a certain seismic shift deep underground, when without even knowing it, all of mankind took a giant leap backwards, back towards the day of the rule the fittest and not by the wisest. It was a leap back to the tiger’s rule of the jungle. The tiger rules simply because he has the longest teeth and the fiercest claws. He rules not because he has any respect for the customs and legal traditions that took us millenniums to build up. Now there were no more trials by juries for anyone who was labeled as “an enemy of the American state” (enemy combatant). Suddenly these poor men who were caught up in the new yet mediaeval American star-chambers called the “extraordinary rendition sites” were not even officially entitled to have names, but they simply called them “ghosts”. These men could be tortured by the Americans in absolute secrecy. They had secret locations, and could do this at will! Where had the great American legal system gone? Straight out the window, and few Americans were even batting an eye!! Maybe they were afraid, just as the Germans were when the Fuhrer told his fellow Germans, that familiar saying, “If you are not for me, then you are against me!”
Had not Bin Laden already won on some level? In a single day, he convinced the Americans to look back towards the dark ages for the answers to their new problems. They seemed to gladly throw the best legal system the world had ever known, into the bus and to just forget about it when it came to their crazy “War on Terror”. You are right again Kartik. How can you fight an idea with bullets? Crazy Americans!! The Americans had become so terrified of the Bin Laden, that they quickly and gladly did what one of their wise founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin had once said they would do, they “sold their precious liberties for the paltry price of a supposed security”. For 30 pieces of silver.
Now when the new president took the helm of the ship of state from the old one, true, that ship seemed to be sailing straight back towards the dark ages. “Thank God,” many sighed a huge sigh of relief when the new president first declared an end to extraordinary rendition and to torture by his security people. But the old president’s legacy lives on.
In truth, the Americans had been whipped up into a frenzy of terror overnight by the unwitting collaboration between their old president and Bin Laden himself! On a subtle and deep level, Bush and Bin Laden had both agreed, “might does make right,”or, "the tiger's claws are sharper than the civilized man's wits". They both agreed that the old rule of the jungle was better than the newer rule of the law. Whether or not Bush knew it, he made himself Bin Laden’s closest friend and ally. He had agreed to stoop to Bin Laden’s level. He had agreed to fight fire with fire, brutality with brutality, and murder with murder, instead of with the water of the modern legal system. He had unwittingly agreed to add fuel to the fire that Bin Laden had just lit. Though I doubt that either of them would have ever admitted it, in fact both Bush and Bin Laden were really in bed together!
Now the newer Obama seems to be trying to put on the water, but he is not always succeeding. He seems to be trying to re-chart the course of the American ship of state, but it is another question, whether or not he can succeed in this. Yes, the new president probably should have tried harder to get Bin Laden alive, but the new American president’s decision not to display the murdered Bin Laden’s photos, and to bury him properly and respectfully at sea, these were the acts of someone who is trying to put out the fire of hatred and fear with the water of respect and decency. I want to say “good job” to the new American president, and I hope he has enough water to get re-elected when they have their next election.
