Power, Death and the Spectacle

The death of Osama bin Laden, who after 10 years was only minimally capable of heading any sort of terrorist structure and whose sole concern was to flee the intense persecution of the world’s largest army and technological power, has less importance in terms of terrorism than in the shadowy paths of international order around the world today.

Here we do not discuss the obvious, like the condemnation of the barbaric crime of the monstrous death of more than 3,000 civilians in the World Trade Center.

The curious — and terrible — evidence of this episode is the imperial exercise of North American military power transforming its desire into law and its capacity for transforming its application in military-media and electoral spectacles.

Beginning in March 2003, the year prior to his re-election, Bush regained prestige from his disastrous administration with the war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was represented as an ally of bin Laden and an atomic danger to the world. In a speech to the American Congress, Bush affirmed:

“Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.”

The ridiculousness of these words, today, is so evident that no one can believe that they were the reason for an overwhelming invasion and for tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Barack Obama’s announcement yesterday is equally curious — and terrible. It was theatrical from beginning to end — including his back turned exit and walking alone through the hallway of the White House. The dramatic effect was the goal, not so much the fact that he was there to announce the death of a man.

Of one man, not of a war policy. The North American troops are not packing their bags to return home.

Evidently it was a victory of this policy. However, this policy has never been definitively victorious because it violates the principle of the sovereignty of nations.

The world welcomed Barack Obama’s election with hopes of an end to the use of violence and war as a means of resolving world problems and international relations.

The Barack Obama who is unable to close the Guantanamo prison with which Bush sullied the image of liberty, law and democracy that Americans say are sacred to them, has achieved something more complex: the death of the man who ridiculed the armed capacity of his predecessor, whose affirmation cost many more lives — including those of Americans — than the attack on the Twin Towers.

We will now spend a day — or a few days — submerged in a morbid spectacle. “How did it play out? How many shots were fired? Was the body thrown out to sea or not? (Which becomes ironic when they say this had been done to respect Islamic law) Was it him or not?” and the celebrations similar to that of winning a soccer match are the themes that are going to be exhaustively debated over the cadaver of bin Laden.

But the key issue has nothing to do with that.

What it meant in 2004 was a triumph for Bush’s Republicans. So it is probably also going to mean an electoral victory for Obama’s Democrats.

And, in any case, a defeat that gives us an international order where there is no longer a “world police,” and in its place free societies flourish. Free from even the hatred that brought the tragedy of the World Trade Center.

(Originally published in the blog Tijolaço: http://www.tijolaco.com/o-poder-a-morte-e-o-espetaculo/)