Finding Berlin has a great photo series of Berlin club entrances by daylight. You wouldn’t notice them when you passed them. Some of these I know, most of them not. They’re way more recognizable by night anyway.
You’re drunk and helpless, and the bright sunshine came a bit unexpected (it hurts). How long were you in there? Seven, eight hours without fresh air? The night is over, your mind is in the gutter. You look around: fuck, you were the last person to leave the club. You’re blinking, looking at the closed entrance doors. You look around again, trying to find a balance for your feet and for your mind. You don’t recognize this place anymore. Without the likeminded party kids, without the bottles on the pathway to the doors, without the faint sound of the bassline from inside those walls, without the night, this club has become something else.
In the gargantuan media frenzy surrounding an event like this, there’s only so much a tiny blog can add.
First off, I must say I’m against the death panelty and against this kind of ‘rogue justice’. Like the Dutch Minister of Defence said, I’d been better if Bin Laden had been captured and tried in a fair trial. So, I can’t really engage in the kind of gung-ho victoriousness that I’m seeing now in the news and on my Facebook feed. But congratulations, I guess, to all those who lost friends and family on 9/11; and of course Bin Laden had it coming.
Having said that, I wonder what the impact of this event is, and to what extent it changes anything. It might have some impact on Obama’s 2012 re-election chances, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the current glow dissipates pretty soon, and politics goes back to business as usual. Whether the death of Bin Laden has any effect on global terrorism as a phenomenon, other than a symbolic one, I very much doubt.
What I would hope is that now America as a constitutional democracy with the rule of law could return to its pre-9/11 state of being. As Joan Walsh on Salon.com says:
I also wish this achievement could mean we get our country back, the one before the Patriot Act, before FISA, before rendition and torture and Guantanamo; before we began giving up the freedom and belief in due process that makes us Americans, out of our fear of totalitarians like bin Laden. It won’t happen overnight, but I’m going to choose to think this could be a first step.
Because that would be the real victory in the struggle against terrorism: closing Guantánamo Bay!
- Edit: This observation from the NYT, by the way, is also very true. The political uprisings of the Arab Spring had already delegitimized Al Qaeda, and this is a (symbolic) double blow.
Analysts said Bin Laden’s death amounted to a double blow for Al Qaeda, after its sermons of anti-Western violence seemed to be rendered irrelevant by the wave of political upheaval rolling through the Arab world.
“It comes at a time when Al Qaeda’s narrative is already very much in doubt in the Arab world,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “Its narrative was that violence was the way to redeem Arab honor and dignity. But Osama bin Laden and his violence didn’t succeed in unseating anybody.
Obama’s remarks, though, were very decent and modest. Read them in full here. I’m very happy that he didn’t talk about “war” too much other than in the contexts of Iraq and Afghanistan (imagine how Bush or a fool like John McCain would’ve been standing there), and this I thought was very good:
As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.
Despite all the rightful criticism against Obama concerning the rule of law, I think we can be very happy that this guy is the president of the United States.
I also kinda like, as a political thing, that Obama already announced in 2008 that he would re-direct American efforts from full-scale wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to taking out Osama bin Laden - like in this presidential debate with John McCain, who actually protested that notion. And that’s what he did. Of course, the US is still in both countries and in a third one, but still.
Well that’s pretty much it. Check the NYT here, and the 7-page obituary of Bin Laden here. HuffPost here. Andrew Sullivan here (although you may not want to read him if you’re not into dramatic wallowing). Here’s some cool stuff:
Free Pussy Riot
Peaches, the twenty-first century torchbearer of feminist punk, just released a video and track in support of Pussy Riot, the Russian female anarc...
EHRM handhaaft SGP-uitspraak Hoge Raad
Dat ging nog best snel: het Europese Hof voor de Rechten van de Mens (EHRM) heeft zich uitgesproken over de vrouwen uitsluitende praktijk van de S...
