Bin Laden is dead

Is there anyone else out there who feels ill this morning? That is to say, nauseated and despairing at the reactions of media, politicians, and thousands of the American People...?

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Hunted down and assassinated by United States special forces, the ones so many Americans thrill to see, bristling with weapons and menace -- Americans feel safe, moral and meaningful. Then these intrepid agents followed through some prescribed procedure for formally identifying the corpse, which they transferred to a conveniently placed United States warship and disposed of at sea with a sickeningly hypocritical attempt at Islamic protocols.

The Land of the Free appears to have erupted with joy. One newspaper, I don’t know which, bannered a headline, “UTU...!” I thought that was a Maori word, but perhaps potentially useful words spread far and wide. Another, the New York Daily News, headlined, “May he rot in hell...!” There was some light relief from Fox News, the TV channel I tune up briefly whenever I want to remind myself how awful the American Republican party can be -- their newsreader evidently misread the cue and announced, “President Obama is in fact dead.” That newsreader must be some kind of over-paid automaton.

Our own NZ Prime Minister promptly announced that the world is now a safer place. That’s curious, because the opposite is the case. It has just got a lot more dangerous because of the deep wells of rage that have been plumbed.

No political leader today dares to say hang on, this may have been clever, but was it wise... humane... just...? No -- for the moment revenge is all. Utu. An eye for an eye. As Gandhi said, it makes the whole world blind.

Justice...? Justice turns out to be a negotiable concept. The Americans claim that apprehending this man, blasting him through the head, disposing of his weighted corpse in the Arabian Sea before anyone else knew, proclaiming it a just and moral thing... is justice...? Ye gods. It is lynch law. It is stupefying to realise that Americans actually do still follow it.

I understand that there may have been serious difficulties in arresting this man and taking him into custody. I see indeed that the processes of bringing him before a suitable court somewhere, and hearing and deciding on his crimes, would have been lengthy, involving all manner of complications. I know that finding a place to house him in secure and somewhat humane conditions might have been difficult. It could all have been done.

The Americans decided on behalf of all of us that it couldn’t be done. They also decided that it shouldn’t. They assumed that the attack on their territory on what they call 9/11 took precedence over all else, and they sent some elite military unit to act as prosecutor, judge, executioner. That is what they call justice.
It is lynch law.

I don’t know what Bin Laden deserved, but Justice deserves better. And somehow the rest of the world needs to be stating to the USA that we do not wish them to be making our decisions for us, that the killing of American citizens is no worse than the killing of anyone else, that we do not recognise them as the world’s moral police, that we do not see their limited and corrupt democracy as a model, and that, in company with Plato, Jesus and Augustine, to say nothing of various better-inspired Americans, we believe that Justice is more than sending in the marines.

But all that having been written... I suspect it is better said by the NZ Anglican bishops this week:

Reflections at the time of the death of Osama bin Laden
The news of the demise of Osama bin Laden has been felt to bring a measure and a form of closure for thousands affected by the acts of terror over the past decade. It is crucial that the acts of terror in any form, including those masterminded by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, be challenged and overcome.

However, the death of Osama bin Laden is no cause for gloating, or unthinking jubilation. The biblical record is clear in Ezekiel 18:32: “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord GOD. Turn, then, and live.” We are therefore not called to relish the death of anyone. We are called to grieve the fact that turning and living was not chosen in the first place by Al Qaeda, who chose the way of death, but also to grieve all deadly spirals of violence and fear, hatred and prejudice with all their various causes.

Learning to find a way of understanding the causes of the way of violence and death can, by grace, lead to a measure of God given forgiveness of enemies, as the Gospel calls us to do: Matthew 5:43-44, John 13:34, Luke 6:27-28, Romans 12:14, 1 Corinthians 4:12, Romans 12:17-21, 1 Peter 3:9, 1 John 2:9-10. We need insight under God, rather than vengeance. Vengeance belongs to God (Romans 12:19, Hebrews 10:30). An eye for an eye (Matthew 5:38) and the whole world goes blind. This means jingoism and enjoyment of the death of Osama bin Laden can find no place in Christian prayer or Christian thinking.

We can do no better than end with the words of a Christian leader who gave his life for the cause of justice, freedom and abundant life for all people: "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."--Martin Luther King, Jr.

++Brown Turei
++David Moxon

Archbishops of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia