The Myth and the Trophy

Osama is dead. Long live Obama! The score was settled for the Americans. The world felt avenged at first. We all remember what we were doing when, nearly ten years ago, a barbaric attack killed around three thousand innocent people in the Twin Towers. We are not crying now for the terrorist. But what happened last week does not ennoble democracy. The muddle of contradictions in the official story reinforces the Osama myth and helps enshrine him in the collective unconscious.

“I think it’s great to kill him. You want to capture him to ask what? And the three thousand he ordered killed?” said our poet Ferreira Gullar. That was the typical reaction, and not only from Westerners. Muslims, interviewed the world over, said they were relieved at the “disappearance” of Osama bin Laden, for a simple reason: Terror and fanaticism distort Islam. Osama was the face of a cruel, minority aspect of Islam, which preached the sacrifice of innocent civilians and suicide of young martyrs as tactics of power in the holy war. Charismatic, the scion of a wealthy family, Osama harassed by commanding al-Qaida from the shadows.

Barack Obama was a presidential candidate when he promised to find, capture or kill the enemy that was humiliating his country. He kept his promise. His popularity jumped. He stopped being seen as a leader who was lukewarm, reluctant. The American people are nationalist, protectionist and imperialist. They like demonstrations of force; they idolize the flag. This may be a generalization — but it characterizes the norm in the native population and naturalized immigrants. Obama was elected by a tide of economic disappointment. He won over young and old, idealist and disillusioned, of diverse ideologies. His great slogan “Yes, we can” was vague enough to be finished as each person found most convenient. Yes, we can do it all?

We can go into another country to capture a terrorist without local authorization? Perhaps so, in rare, exceptional cases. Violating this rule of international law seems more acceptable in a country that harbors a murderer like Osama bin Laden. His walled fort was in Abbottabad, a middle-class city inhabited by military families, only 56 kilometers from the Pakistani capital. If a country — in this case Pakistan — positions itself as an ally, but is suspected of protecting a terrorist who preaches mass murder, would it be crime or caution not to alert the government in Islamabad?

Can we torture prisoners to get to the terrorist? Can we execute the terrorist, even though he does not threaten with a weapon? Can we throw his body into the sea without burying him? Morally, no. Can we censor the release of a photo of the dead man? Ethically, no. Can we confound public opinion with a different lie every day? Clearly, no. Can we pretend that the world will be more secure and better from now on? Nobody believes this. Can we say, “Justice was done”? Yes, but with some deviation. The images of Osama dead are in the public interest. Their censorship provokes more harm than good. And the communication from the Pentagon must be disciplined — because not even they understand each other about what really happened.

One understands that the United States is concerned about not inflaming the ire of fanatics by parading Osama dead. One does not understand why the crack marksmen of the secret Navy troop, known as Seal Team 6, needed to disfigure his face at short distance — he could have remained a presentable cadaver, couldn’t he? One understands that they had preferred to kill him rather than capture him to avoid him, behind bars, continuing to exert a malign leadership. One understands that it would be better to kill without witnesses than to make a spectacle of the public execution of Osama condemned to death by justice. One understands that it would be better not to create, with his tomb, a place of worship, pilgrimage and acts of hatred on both sides.

“Osama is not a trophy. We do not want to make him into a myth,”* affirmed Obama, to justify the death without a body. Osama bin Laden is a myth and a trophy, no matter what is claimed now. And his disappearance into the sea, without pictures, surrounded by secrecy and contradictions, only reinforces the double aura that Obama wants to avoid.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.