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Home | Murder of bin Laden | Justice Assasination of bin Laden Killing bin Laden is like throwing gas onto the fire. -- S. Hein More of my thoughts on the assasination of Osama bin Laden... --- Many are calling the killing of bin Laden an assasination. I first called it a murder. Now I agree the term assasination is more accurate. Something is wrong with the idea of someone sitting in a comfortable chair, well-protected, making a decision to have someone else killed. Would Obama have gone on the mission himself? Would he face an angry crowd? Would he face even one angry person? What was the point of killing bin Laden? To change his behavior? Punishment is the intentional use of pain by someone to change someone else's behavior. This reminds me of the "correctional center" I saw here in Sydney the other night. Is it really "correcting" anyone's behavior, or "correcting" their feelings, or their needs? So was killing bin Laden supposed to serve as an example? I remember a documentary about Israel's "intelligence" agency called Mossad assassinating a lot of people who they believed were responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics killings. That revenge didn't seem to stop the attacks against them. The documentary also showed that in one case they killed the wrong person. What if it turns out that the USA killed the wrong person? What about the others who were killed? I also wonder if the US President even have the legal power to order the assassination? And if he did, do we really want a president to have this kind of legal power? If he did not have the legal power, even according to US laws, not to mention international laws (which the US only refers to when convenient), who is going to punish the president? If the world decided that the killing was wrong and just, who is going to punish Obama? If the USA believes in democracy, why not let the world vote on things which America does since the USA obviously has tremendous influence on the rest of the world? And who is going to punish George Bush for invading Iraq? By this time it is clear there were no "weapons of mass destruction" and the invasion was personally, politically and economically motivated. To punish someone you need to have more power than they do. So who will punish those who have the most power? Killing bin Laden was an abuse of power. The USA abuses its power regularly. Who will punish the USA? Who decides if the USA deserves punishment? Since I don't believe in the punishment system, then that leaves the educational system. But we can't force Americans into French or German schools as children, for example. So that leaves trying to educate and inform Americans or more specifically the American voters. Some say that people only learn when they have suffered enough pain. It doesn't seem Obama has suffered much pain. So an argument could me made that he should be punished so he will learn through pain. But again, who would punish him? The Americans generally agree with what he did so it is unlikely there would be enough support for punishing him. But more importantly it would be more helpful if he felt a different kind of pain. And that pain would be empathy. You don't arouse feelings of empathy through punishment. Obama used to inspire me. But now I feel disillusioned by him. When he used to talk about the empathy deficit, I felt inspired and hopeful. But now I see that he also suffers from an empathy deficit. So what would I do if I had some power over him, or some influence? I would arrange a meeting between him and people who loved or cared about bin Laden. Or I would ask him to sit through hours of videos showing people crying over bin Laden's death and over the death of Palestinians by Israel. I would arrange a meeting between bin Laden's mother and Obama, and perhaps Obama's mother. I don't think many mother's really want their sons killed, no matter what the political goal. Maybe Obama's mother could scold him or punish him or express her disapproval. I suspect that Osama's mother doesn't approve of what he has done. Probably mothers have more sense than political leaders. But mothers don't run for office. They don't have to get elected. They act more out of caring than out of a desire to be popular. But my point is that if Obama had more empathy for those who care about someone who is killed, he would use his power to order the end of the use of all lethal weapons. He would lead the world into a new age of solving conflicts. He could have ordered the US soldiers to take with them only non-lethal weapons. He could have ordered them not to kill bin Laden. He could have instructed them to sacrifice their own lives before killing bin Laden. Had he done this, he would have earned my respect. But by what he did order, he has lost my respect. See "Emotionally Intelligent Petition Against War, Killing and Destruction" supporting the use of non-lethal weapons. -- By the way, in the past two days I have watched many videos and I have learned more about the US government's actions and motives. In writing the first article about bin Laden I found the video about the sanctions against Iraq which lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. When I write that now I feel a pain that so many people in the world are much more concerned with, and familiar with the number of people who were killed on 911. Almost no one is talking about the deaths in Iraq caused by the sanctions - and that is just mentioning one case of deaths caused by the American government's actions and policies. I also started learning more about Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the USA, who has denounced the US sanctions against Iraq. He has a lot of important things to say, but few people are watching videos of him speaking. Here are some quotes from him:
Below I have a link to him speaking about the US invasion of Iraq. I actually started to cry when I saw how few people had viewed that video. Yet if someone puts up a video of a girl dancing around in a bikini, it will be viewed by millions. And of course, we are much more interested in soccer and other sports -- all distractions while people are killing each other and being prepared to kill around the world. Part of that preparation is being trained to be both patriotic and obedient in government run schools, let's please not forget. By the way, I spoke with someone from the UK yesterday about the sanctions in Iraq. She had never even heard of them. But who hasn't heard of 911? I also learned about Howard Zinn. He is dead now and I feel sad that I never new of him before he died. And I saw people talking about the "plutocracy" in America. Here are some quotes by Howard Zinn
Here is one more quote by Zinn which I want to comment on...
I would take out the word "innocent". First, who decides who is innocent? We usually are taught to think it is okay to kill humans who are called soldiers. But these are just humans who have been trained and brainwashed by governments. If I am raised in a culture, and I am forced to go to their schools and practice their religion and beliefs, am I really to blame for anything I do as a result? Personally, I can't really blame the Chinese soldiers for being soldiers, or the French soldiers, or the Russian soldiers.( I want to add, in case you haven't seen me say this before, that when I grew up in the USA I was taught to believe Russians were bad. But when I actually met many Russians while living in Montenegro and running my hostel, I found out they are basically just like anyone else. ) Now let's talk about people who support the soldiers. Let's start with the people in Congress who decide on the funding which he army will receive. If they decide to equip the soldiers with guns, can they be called innocent victims if they are killed by what people call a terrorist? It sounds much worse to say x number of innocent people were killed. But is it really that much worse if 100 office workers are killed than if 100 soldiers are killed? Isn't it entirely possible that those 100 soldiers could actually become office workers or factory workers when they leave the army? So I would just like you to think about what it means to be innocent. Again, if US Congressmen vote to supply the soldiers with weapons, are the Congressmen innocent? Would we call them innocent victims if they were killed by "terrorists"? The line perhaps becomes less clear. Now what about the people who send their money to the Congressmen? Let's take the factory workers who pay their taxes and send that money to the Congressmen, who, after taking their cut, send it to the soldiers. Let's remember that the factory workers are also voters. So they vote for the Congressmen who take their money and send it to the soldiers. If they are killed, is it accurate to say they are entirely innocent victims? Maybe we need to look more closely at who is innocent and who is in part responsible for what eventually happens. Perhaps we could agree that the factory worker who votes for a politician who opposes all killing is indeed more "innocent" than a factory worker or an office worker who votes for a candidate who supports killing. If your brother or father has been killed by a US-made weapon, who are you going to feel resentful towards? Just the person who pushed the button that released the bullet or the bomb? Probably not. It is more likely you will feel resentful towards the US government in general. But the US government is largely voted into power, with the exception of the strong, basically fixed bureaucracy of course. So my conclusion is that we need a huge change in mentality. As a part of history's most powerful nation, and as the target of the most hatred in the world today, it would help the American voters, teachers and university professors to start supporting fundamental changes in American foreign policy. One small but significant change would be to encourage or even require more overseas education. At one time, before I left the USA, I used to vote Republican. I feel a little embarrassed to admit this, but I was a product of the system, a product of my environment. It is sad to me how many Americans don't realize how much the American culture has impacted them and their beliefs. Before he was elected, when Obama said, "The world is watching us," I felt inspired by him. I thought he understood the power of American actions. I thought he really believed that it was some kind of moral duty that the Americans acted in a way which led the world towards more humanity and higher standards. But the whole world has now seen him and the US government assassinate someone who was hardly armed at all and who had almost no chance at defending himself. While I don't like to tell others how they "should" feel, it is my hope that many Americans feel embarrassed and ashamed by this, and that they will join what I hope is a growing minority of those who are opposed to all killing, all revenge, and all destruction. S. Hein -- Petition for the use of non-violent, non-lethal weapons. Good listener I remember before the election I saw a video of Obama saying, "I think I am a pretty good listener." But how much did he listen to what bin Laden had to say? I feel sad that Obama will never meet bin Laden. I feel sad the two of them will never have a chance to talk and try to understand each other. Why was there no meeting between Obama and Osama? If Obama or any of his advisors understood the importance of human emotional needs, they might have realized it would benefit America and the world by helping fill some of bin Laden's unmet emotional needs. They could have done this, for example, by arranging a meeting between Obama and Osama. This would have helped bin Laden feel listened to, understood, taken seriously and important. But beyond just helping fill some of bin Laden's unmet emotional needs, Obama could have really learned something from bin Laden. I assume that Obama knows most of the reasons that bin Laden hated America, but it still would have been helpful if Obama would have spent time listening to bin Laden. Perhaps Obama could better understand the problems with America's foreign policies, for example. And if the world media were covering the meeting, then millions of people around the world, including the American voters, could better understand the cause and effect relationship between what the US government does and how people in other countries feel. -- Lack of emotionally intelligent or emotionally knowledgeable decision makers in Washington? At times it seems the people in Washington who make decisions are so limited in their emotional intelligence and emotional knowledge and skills that they believe people in other countries are only capable of one human emotion: fear. It seems they want others to be afraid of America's deadly military power. It definitely does not seem to me that American decision makers understand where resentment and hatred come from. Or that there is a connection between feelings and behavior, again excepting behavior based on fear. Or that there is a connection, as I have said before, between what America does and how others feel. Perhaps this diagram would be helpful to them
It also seems that they don't understand that those they call terrorists are not particularly afraid of dying. Those who hijacked the planes on 911 certainly were not very afraid of dying. So the fear of being killed or punished is not a sufficiently strong or effective motivator to change the behavior of those labeled as terrorists. The Oil and Profit Motive Perhaps many powerful people in America do not actually want to end the cycle of killing, as long as they themselves feel relatively safe, protected and invulnerable. This makes me realize that most oil executives, for example, probably do not fly on regular commercial jets. They are likely to have their own private jets, which are much less likely to be hijacked by terrorists. So as long as they feel relatively safe themselves, they may have little interest in stopping the killing around the world since the excuse of fighting terrorism is a good justification for US military presence in the Middle East, the source of their oil profits. And of course there are the defense contractors who make billions from the fight against terrorism. They are certainly not motivated to stop the cycle of killing. Since the profit motive is a reality, perhaps the manufacturers of non-lethal and non-violent weapons will one day have their own strong lobby groups in Washington. That, to me, at least would be some sort of progress. (See petition) People can change.. but he will never have the chance to. He was the representative of millions of people, yet they treated him worse than road kill. Even Obama would probably feel bad if he were driving and hit a small animal. He will never have the chance to look back and regret supporting violence or to denounce it, or to lead millions of people away from violence. Who knows what could have happened had he been treated differently by those who had power over him in the end. We will never know what would have happened had he been listened to and treated with dignity. |
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