Retaliation Carried Out

The death of bin Laden, seemingly the ultimate solution in this case, is actually nothing but a populist chorus. Is this where enlightenment is heading?

He did not raise his hands immediately because the large nightgown he was wearing probably kept him from doing so. Clearly, he was not naked, although his youngest wife was beside him at the time, and the SEALs could not see whether he was wearing an explosive belt. Seriously, was someone at the Pentagon really expecting that bin Laden sleeps with his wife and an explosive belt around his waist every night? How thick would such a belt have to be, and where exactly would you wear it? Beneath or above your belly button? And how would the explosive be activated? By touching it gently, by human body heat — or simply by a wiggle?

Although this theory has recently been made public in Washington, it does not seem like officials are going to provide us with further details. According to them, U.S. forces expected that bin Laden would be wearing a suicide vest — at 2 a.m., in his bedroom. That is to say, at all times. Of course, all this might sound ridiculous to some people, but news from Washington gets more and more ridiculous each day.

Following a series of new details and interpretations of “what really happened,” CIA Director Leon Panetta explained that bin Laden was unarmed, but showed signs of resistance. Signs of resistance? What would the Joint Special Operations Command forces have considered a sign of resistance when they entered his bedroom? The leader of al-Qaida protruding his tongue in pitch-black night? Bin Laden asking his wife to leave the room so that he can have a chat with his surprise guests — who were registering every move the two of them made?

No, there was not the slightest chance bin Laden would survive the “Geronimo” operation. It was Republican Senator John McCain who put it in a nutshell shortly after 9/11 when he said: “May God have mercy on you, because we won’t.” Such statements, which sound much like the law of retaliation in the Old Testament, have a long tradition in the U.S.

First, Americans had to defend themselves from the British during the Revolution, and then the newly founded nation had to fight slavery in the South. Surrounded by oceans, Americans felt quite safe for a while, but at the same time, threatened. Their fight against all evil finally turned into the conquest of the West and later the world.

Americans considered expansion into the West their destiny. The West was conquered, because it had to be civilized, but also because the successful expansion into the West proved the moral superiority of the conquerors. The frontier became a symbol of American sovereignty. Imperialism — a system that Americans adopted equally late as the Germans — emerged from the belief that the conquest needs to be continued and that American civilization needs to constantly prove itself. Outer space was declared the new frontier under John F. Kennedy.

Well now, bin Laden somehow represented the issues of the secular Arabic part of the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, the former member states of the Soviet Union in Central Asia and the Islamic south of Asia. And now the crisis of Muslim societies keeps moving from East to West and from West to East at high speed. If the search for answers around the death of the world’s number one terrorist is currently the predominant occupation of humanity, a number of questions will arise — the main one being if there is going to be more or less terrorism after bin Laden.

His assassination was a seemingly essential act of absolutism, and it is very unlikely that his spirit will not live on. What is more, bin Laden’s murder could in fact have a contrary effect: namely, the spread of terrorism. There are no easy answers to difficult questions. The death of bin Laden, seemingly the ultimate solution in this case, is actually nothing but a populist chorus. Is this where enlightenment is heading?

In the end, the question remains whether only repression and even more repression can lead to security. Or is absolutism the only answer to fundamentalism and terrorism?