A remaining realm of American excellence
Saturday, Oct 22, 2011 2:29 AM Pacific Daylight Time
By Glenn Greenwald
When President Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden on the evening of May 1, he said something which I found so striking at the time and still do: “tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history.” That sentiment of national pride had in the past been triggered by putting a man on the moon, or discovering cures for diseases, or creating technology that improved the lives of millions, or transforming the Great Depression into a thriving middle class, or correcting America’s own entrenched injustices.
Yet here was President Obama proclaiming that what should now cause us to be “reminded” of our national greatness was our ability to hunt someone down, pump bullets into his skull, and then dump his corpse into the ocean. And indeed, outside the White House and elsewhere, hordes of Americans were soon raucously celebrating the killing with “USA! USA!” chants as though their sports team had just won a major championship.As I wrote on the morning after bin Laden’s death, this gleeful reaction was understandable given the slaughter Americans witnessed on 9/11. But there was still something notable, and troubling, about this episode.
Such a rare display of unified, chest-beating national celebration is now possible only when the government produces a corpse for us to dance over. Some suggested at the time that Osama bin Laden was sui generis and that no lessons could or should be drawn from his killing; for that reason, even many people who are generally uncomfortable with such acts proudly celebrated his death as the elimination of a singular evil. But it seems clear that the bin Laden episode was no aberration, no exception: the American citizenry rarely finds cause to exude nationalistic pride except when the government succeeds in ending someone’s life.Since the bin Laden killing, we have witnessed a similar joyous reaction when the U.S. assassinated its own citizen, Anwar Awlaki (along with another American dubiously claimed to be “collateral damage”) — even though Awlaki was never indicted as a Terrorist, charged with treason, or accorded any due process, and even though the government never showed the public any evidence supporting its accusations. Instead, Obama officials, with no evidence offered, simply declared him to be a Bad Terrorist, and that was all that was needed: hordes of his fellow Americans did not merely approve — but cheered — the news that a drone had found and killed him.<snip>
That character-degradation is produced at least as much by conditioning the citizenry to stand and cheer, to beat its chest, to feel righteous and proud, each time the government produces a new dead Bad Guy. Even at its most necessary and justified, the act of ending a human life with state violence should be a somber and lamentable affair. There’s something bloodthirsty about reacting ecstatically. To react that way when guilt is unproven (Awlaki), or when the person is unknown (most drone victims), or is killed by acts of pure barbarism (Gadaffi) is the mind of a savage. But it’s now been more than a decade since 9/11, and this has been the prevailing mentality in America continuously since then (to say nothing about the lengthy, brutal wars fought before that). What happens to a citizenry and a nation that so frequently erupts into celebratory dances over the latest dead body its government displays?
Read the whole piece:
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/22/a_remaining_realm_of_american_excellence/singleton/
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