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.
From Presidential Performance to Bin Laden’s Performance of Self:
Right now, I’m watching as CNN broadcasts the videos of OBL watching himself on TV. There is something so uncanny about watching “Backstage Bin Laden.” And the man we see watching himself is not the public OBL we see; he is hunched over, wrapped in a blanket; his beard is gray, not dyed black; and he studies so intently his own performances.
Could releasing the death photos of Osama bin Laden be a moment of “ocular proof” for some? For President Obama to purport that photographs exist, but refuse to release them propels conspiracy theories. However, like Obama’s release of his “long form” birth certificate there will always be those who deny.
My concern is not so much the authenticity of the photos or veracity of OBL’s death, but the US government’s refusal to release the photos, not just these specific photos, but images and videos in general coming out of both the current US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government is not alone in this since it is also the responsibility of the media to offer a system of checks and balances. The mainstream media is too complacent and trusting of the government. Newspapers in the United States are sanitized from any graphic war imagery. When I was studying journalism in undergraduate school we were told to never put a photo on the front page that would cause someone to “lose their breakfast.” The news has to be palatable.
On the May 4, 2011 episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart made the following comment:
I could not agree more with his argument. I think President Obama should allow for the release of whatever photos and videos they have not as an “ocular event” of disclosure, as was the case with his “long form” birth certificate, but as a larger policy regarding how the administration deals with war imagery. The news does not keep body counts and we do not see images or coverage of battles, as was the case with Vietnam. The military has also placed constraints on embedded journalists, which prevent the release of certain images . The images and videos that are publicly visible, oftentimes via alternative news sources like WikiLeaks , are often leaked by those fighting the war or in positions that grant them access, which puts their jobs at risk, or were recorded by civilians who witnessed the violence
I am deeply sympathetic to Michael P. Corey’s assessment and do not doubt that releasing these specific photos would supply bin Laden loyalists with a “visual basis for building collective memories and actions.” Images do have the ability to mobilize public opinion, which was the case with the reportage during Vietnam that many have argued quelled public support of the government’s engagement in the war and directly effected how future governments deal with graphic conflict imagery.
i’m definitly of two minds on this, Stewart is right– but the difference is: “Napalm Girl,” “Afghan Eye Girl,” our soldier’s coffins draped in flags–and other “icons of destructions”–are not the same as the after-image of OBL shot in the eye. and it is not necessarily the case that THE photo of OBL would generate or incite the same kinds of responses about the realities of war for even his most staunch supporters. Perhaps it is the tapes of the raid, the spilling of blood, and the fact that we are now disseminating so many other pictures–that incite or inspire. These images, to quote Barbie Zelizer, “about to die” pictures. Often more powerful than images of a corpse–they are liminal. And clearly, as Americans, we have surely been “incited” or “inspired”–without having seen THE photo.
Then again, the mystery and secretiveness of the unreleased picture creates a mystical aura.
Do I think the pictures will eventually be seen? Yes. Probably leaked. But I don’t think the administration should produce them. In the same way, OBL’s Muslim funeral and (not) Muslim burial at sea were not simply, as the right would like to believe, “hypersensitivity” and “political correctness”–it fits the narrative of America’s ethos. (Undoubtedly imagined) This is the narrative that our military does not ask questions, follow strict codes of honor, and treat even the dead with dignity. (And after Abu Ghraib and the photos from a few months ago of soldiers parading around dead civilians, I’d much rather believe the narrative). To not release THE photo also fits with this narrative.
And the sad irony, is I’ll leave the last work to Ann Coulter (?!?!), arguing with O’Reilly, as he took up criticism about the funeral: “this is who we are Bill, we do the right thing. This is just what we do.”
Lisa Lipscomb mentioned Vietnam War photographs. In the West, a smaller number of these have had a large impact. The images themselves are frozen moments of time that are given meaning through the narratives developed to help explain them. Each moment has antecedent and subsequent actions associated with what is represented. Malcolm Browne’s AP June 11, 1963 photograph showing the immolation Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, had political consequences. It helped bring down the Diem regime. A still frame from Morley Safer’s August 3, 1965 CBS news report on a small action at Cam Ne (4) showing a Marine using a Zippo lighter to ignite a thatch hut became a metaphor for the entire Vietnam War. The report was cited as one of the Top 100 Works of Journalism in the U. S. in the 20th Century. Eddie Adam’s February 1, 1968 photograph of General, then Colonel, Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a Viet Cong suspect in the head during the Tet offensive drew rebukes from the United States and still is being debated on moral, ethical and legal grounds. Ronald Haeberle’s March 16, 1968 photograph of the My Lai Massacre published in a December 1969 issue of Life Magazine immortalized the most notorious U. S. military atrocity reported during the Vietnam War. John Filo’s May 4, 1970 photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeff Miller at Kent State University where four protestors were killed and nine others were wounded by Ohio National Guardsmen captured the agony of senseless violence at home. On June 8, 1972, Huynh Cong “Nick” Ut captured on film nine year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc (“the girl in the photo”)running naked and severely burned by a napalm bomb dropped in error by a South Vietnamese pilot who was trying to attack North Vietnamese forces. Even though no U. S. troops were involved (U. S. combat forces had been substantially drawn down by that time and most combat operations were being conducted by the South Vietnamese), this image was used to attack U. S. involvement in the war. An April 29, 1975 photograph by Hurbert Van Es showed people trying to escape Saigon on a helicopter. The image is remembered as Americans fleeing the U. S. Embassy as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation front. Van Es has complained for years that the description was wrong. He says that he captured the image at 22 Gia Long Street, an apartment house where CIA employees lived and was used as a secondary escape location for Vietnamese at risk. Images are frequently appropriated to supported narratives. They are influential, and much of their influence is created by narratives woven around them.