The world didn’t change with the news that 9/11 terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had been killed in a raid by Navy SEALs on his sprawling compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Facts surrounding just what happened during the late-night incursion continue to shift as the White House releases conflicting, changing information every single day.
As of yesterday, President Obama has said that he will not release photos of bin Laden’s dead body to the public.
To be sure, there’s no way any civilian can truly know what happened that night. Nor with anything to do with bin Laden’s demise. Interestingly enough, while the facts around his death remain extremely mysterious despite the accepted fact that he’s indeed dead and was killed in a raid this week, the event has much less to do with reality and much more to do with how one perceives reality. That is, bin Laden’s death is a litmus test for determining one’s personal view of the world.
For those who believe that torturing KSM and other Guantanamo Bay inmates back in 2004 was a good thing will find this the essential evidence proving their case. For those who think that Osama has been dead for years can point to the whole throwing-bin-Laden-over-the-aircraft-carrier as evidence to their case. For those who think that the government is using this as way to solidify Obama’s re-election point to those same things, too. For those who placed all their anger from 9/11 into him, this is a time to rejoice and celebrate. For those who consider his death to be just as depressing as the pain and misery he caused, you’re right, too. Even if you think that bin Laden is still alive and well, you have your angle on arguing that, too.
Basically, nothing has changed. In a world where facts don’t matter – even if they’re readily available to the public – opinions reign supreme, needing no breaking news to change one’s view of the world. Even when public enemy number one gets a couple bullets through the face, the disparate factions within America can’t agree. Even when the one person that everyone, regardless of creed, party, affiliation, or philosophical stance can agree was a less-than-good human being gets wiped off the face of the earth, that’s not enough to share a moment of all being on the same side.
Within minutes, politics were involved. I posted a Facebook status update before Obama even took to the podium, where I said, “So, we can stop invading Arabic countries now that bin Laden is dead, right?” Sure there were some Likes, but there were also a number of people telling me to forget the politics for the night. As if bin Laden’s death somehow superseded politics. I didn’t, and still don’t, quite understand how someone who was the face that launched a thousand ships, troops, and tanks into wars that still rage on could possibly be separated from politics.
But after nearly ten years, bin Laden has become exactly what we all want him to be. He’s been a ghost for a decade. A specter. Vapor. A boogeyman in our collective consciousness that has embodied whatever evils we have wanted him to carry. And now there’s just us. Left to our own devices, we’ve shown that we’re only capable of using his death to serve our own ends. His demise means everything, but it means absolutely nothing. Everyone who was at odds with each other before – pro-enhanced interrogationers vs. anti-torturers, leftists vs. rightists, Obama-is-a-commies vs. Obama-is-the-saviors, birthers vs. non-birthers, Palin supporters vs. Palin haters, MSNBC vs. FNC, you name it vs. you name the other – remain at odds with each other, pointing to aspects of bin Laden’s death (and the reports around his death) as support for their side.
It’s win-win. Or lose-lose.
No matter how you slice it, this supports your view of the world. So in that sense, we’ve all won with bin Laden’s death. But we’ve also all just propagated our divided status quo. And that’s fine. Well, it’s not fine but it’s what we’ve got. And if killing the guy behind the atrocious 9/11 events can’t change that, it seems that nothing will.
Photo courtesy of The White House’s Flickr Photostream.
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