By Ronald J. Granieri, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 4:15 PM ET
I went to bed early Sunday night, and thus did not hear the big news about the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden until this morning when I received an email from the RP himself asking me if I wanted to write a response. After receiving the note, I turned on my radio (which is of course tuned to NPR, because I am a College Professor) and heard the details. My initial reaction was surprise, for two reasons: I was surprised that the search for bin Laden was still ongoing, and I was surprised by how ambivalent the news made me feel.
Historians have a bad and well-earned reputation for being killjoys, so I am sure that few will be surprised by my ambivalence, but I hope my thoughts on the subject can be a useful spur to further debate.
Certainly, the elimination of a terrorist mastermind and mass murderer with thousands of deaths on his conscience cannot be anything but a good thing, and I am happy to think that some of the families of bin Laden’s victims can enjoy the thought that the man responsible for such crimes as 9/11 has been brought to justice. I have to admit discomfort with the idea that the team of SEALs went in with explicit orders to kill rather than capture bin Laden for trial. At the same time I rather doubt that he would have been willing to be taken alive, and am aware of the enormous problems that a trial would have posed, so I do not think it makes much sense to cavil at that subject.
The real source of my ambivalence is the feeling that no one really knows what this will mean in the long run. The US has scored a major symbolic victory, but it does not mean the end of the conflict in which the US and its allies are presently engaged. Furthermore, the nature of that struggle demands that we not fall prey to complacency after one success, however satisfying.
Read the rest of… Ronald J. Granieri: The Death of Public Enemy #1
The world is safer and more free with the news that Osama Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda is demoralized, and its marginalization is on display in a vivid manner for young men and women in the Arab world trying to decide if modernity or jihad is the best principle to organize their ambitions.
I am not as quick to compare the moment with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, as some commentators have rushed to do. It elevates Bin Laden to compare his virtual, quasi-state of malcontents and jihadists to Soviet totalitarianism at its peak. At the same time, it underestimates the reach and the viral quality of radical fundamentalism to assume that Bin Laden’s demise is the equivalent of military divisions dissolving or nuclear codes being disarmed.
The best way to quantify the event, I believe, is not analogy but a nod to American power wisely and assertively deployed over two administrations and ten years. Both the Bush and Obama Administration deserve tribute for a patient dismantling of Al Qaeda over that period of time: it has been appropriately lethal and effective and has required the stretching of pre 9/11 sensibilities. At times, it has veered off course–the embrace of torture as a tactic comes to mind–but not many Americans believed on the night of 9/11 that another decade would pass without a terror attack on American soil.
I have no illusion that the exhilaration in America today has permanent political significance. Our attention span is so fleeting. It also seems to me mildly profane to turn the moment into partisan chortling over how Obama accomplished what Bush did not. But I liked seeing the exultation on television in the last 12 hours–and I loved the fact that is multi-ethnic, multi-generational, and that reaction is not splintered along the dividing lines that are all over the political landscape.
I admire both Obama’s unadorned reference to “justice” last night–that is exactly how my faith describes the rooting out of evil– and George W. Bush’s September 2001 shouts above the rubble at Ground Zero that “the people who destroyed these buildings are about to hear all of us.” After a decade of evasion, Osama Bin Laden finally heard us in the frenzy of BlackHawks descending and our bullets finding their mark. The echoes of that sound are just what a dispirited nation needed to hear.
By Jason Atkinson, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 2:15 PM ET
Today is reopening a wound for many yet we as Americans know this is healing. Today will be history tomorrow. Ten years later, we can start to walk away.
I find it difficult to be happy today, however, my thoughts are heavy with the families who lost loved ones at the hand of this wicked man. He embodied pure evil.
Late last night our forces embodied pure courage. We Americans are proud of justice and our collective resilience. Like the unity that swept the county right after 9-11, today we stand united again as Americans.
By Mark Nickolas, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 12:45 PM ET
Two quick thoughts/observations on the Bin Laden aftermath:
First, it is quite a sight to be met upon arrival at a subway station in Manhattan by police officers carrying automatic weapons in plain view. It lessens the amount of caffeine you need to get the day started.
Second, it dawned on me this morning while watching the news that, in the history of mankind, I doubt there’s ever been a more bad ass group of people going after a single man in one singular movement like there was yesterday with those 15 ‘Seal Team 6’ members — the most elite of the top secret, black-ops, U.S. special forces — landing their helicopters in Bin Laden’s backyard and then daring him to start a fire-fight. (Here’s a great link to an article about Seal Team 6’s historic mission.)
In fact, I can’t even think of a movie that assembled such a group. Just one of these guys equals Rambo. Imagine 15 of them at once…wild stuff.
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 9:30 AM ET
I wrote earlier that today is a today of celebration.
But perhaps it is even more a day of remembrance. Let us never forget the thousands of Americans — of nearly ever race, creed and ethnicity — who perished on 9/11 because of Osama bin Laden’s conspiracy of mass murder.
Did you lose a friend or loved one? Did someone you love narrowly escape death?
Please use the comments section below to share your stories:
UPDATE:
A reader, Daniel Solzman, reminded me that today is the Jewish holiday, Yom Hashoah, the Day of Remembrance, the day on which we solemnly remember the 6 million Jews and millions of others who perished during the Holocaust.
And then my daughter, Emily, reminded me that yesterday was the 66th anniversary of the day on which the world learned that Hitler had died. (May 1, 1945.)
As my wife, Lisa, constantly preaches, there are no coincidences.
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon May 2, 2011 at 8:33 AM ET
I’m traveling this week, went to sleep early, and awoke to a half dozen texts from my teenage daughters.
Uh oh.
When I read the joy and excitement in their messages, I remembered that their first politicial memory – the first real-world memory for all young Americans of their generation – was 9/11. This is America’s first post-partisan generation; they care much more about their country and their communities than partisan labels. When I turned on the TV this morning, I saw thousands upon thousands of young people, singing and dancing in the streets of Times Square, Ohio State’s campus, DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue, etc., etc.
So today is not a Democratic moment, or a Republican moment. It is an American moment. It is events like these that encouraged me to start this web site. It is my sincere hope that the unity we see today can be replicated and extended beyond this brief period of celebration.
We’ll have more to say on justice and Bin Laden. But right now, let’s bask in the joy of our kids and grandkids. As we determine to fix this broken, hyper partisan political system, remember: It is all about them.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Apr 19, 2011 at 9:15 AM ET
Pardon the interruption for some HUGE RP NEWS:
Contributing RP Jeff Smith, his stunning inaugural piece on his journey from politics to prison, and The Recovering Politician Web site, were highlighted this week by New York magazine’s The Approval Matrix, a leading national arbiter of the pop culture zeitgeist. (And now a TV show on Bravo.)
Best yet — Smith’s piece received the top rating: The Approval Matrix deemed it “Highbrow” (vs. “Lowbrow”) and “Brilliant” (vs. “Despicable”).
A pretty incredible development for a contributing recovering politician just beginning his second act and a Web site in only its third week.
Here is the screenshot of the top right corner of the matrix — click on it to read the entire page at the New York web site:
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Apr 19, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
By popular demand, today’s guest on RPTV’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame is contributing RP and former Missouri State Senator Jeff Smith. Jeff’s inaugural post for The Recovering Politician has electrified the blogosphere; already more than 10,000 people have read Jeff’s stunningly candid retelling of his post-political experiences in a federal prison.
In this morning’s interview, Jeff addresses many of the questions that our readers have posed since his article’s posting on April 4. If you are new to this site, be sure to read the following articles BEFORE you watch the interview:
Our own Contributing RP, Jeff Smith, may have never dreamed that any good would come from his required stay at a federal prison. But the unlikeliest of environments proved to be an unexpected fountain of entrepreneurial spirit.
Jeff writes about what he learned in this week’s Inc. magazine:
B.J. was one of many fellow inmates with big plans for the future. He vowed that upon his release, he’d leave the dope game and fly straight. He’d recently purchased a porn website targeted at men with a fetish for women having sex on top of or inside luxury cars, with a special focus that explained his nickname. For just $10,000, he had purchased the domain name, the site design, and all of the necessary back-end work enabling financial transactions. The only component B.J. needed to supply were the women, and due to his incarceration, he’d named his 19-year-old son “vice president for personnel and talent development” and charged him with overseeing auditions. Who says a good old-fashioned family business can’t make it anymore?
It was my first week in a federal prison, and I was beginning to see that it was far more nuanced than the hotbed of sex, drugs, and violence depicted on television documentaries. It was teeming with ambitious, street-smart men, many who appear to have been very successful drug dealers on the outside, and some of whom possess business instincts as sharp as those of the CEOs who wined and dined me six months before. Using somewhat different jargon than you might hear at Wharton, they discussed business concepts such as promotional incentives (“I don’t never charge no first-time user”), quality control and new product launches (“you try anything new, you better have some longtime crackhead test your new shit”), territorial expansion (“Once Dude on the East Side got chalked, I had my dopeboys out on his corners befo’ that motherf—er’s body was cold”), and even barriers to entry (“Any motherf—er that wanna do bidness on the West Side know me and my boys ain’t scurred to cap his ass”).
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Apr 14, 2011 at 12:30 PM ET
The one thing that I miss least about leaving the political arena is the lying.
If there’s one quality that unites Democrats and Republicans, politicians and the press corps; it is their mutual propensity for, and expectation of, fabrication.
Often, it’s the small lies that wise and wary observers can sniff out before they do harm: Sure I’ll raise $10,000 for your campaign. You can count on me to support your cause in the legislature. My, you look way too young to be a grandmother! Don’t worry, I’ve had a vasectomy.
Most common is “political spin” which, all too regularly, is simply a euphemism for lying: Barack Obama is a Socialist. The Republicans want to hurt poor people.
Every now and then, you encounter stone-cold, pathological liars in the business. They’re rarer than the profession’s reputation, but I’ve run into too many elected officials, reporters, and political operatives whose every utterance I’ve learned to disbelieve or suffer the consequences. And I despise it.
But should we put all of these liars into jail? Of course not.
Yesterday, Barry Bonds was convicted for obstructing justice by lying to a grand jury about his personal steroid use. (Which begs the question — asked by Dashiell Bennett — how could Bonds be guilty of obstructing justice for lying when the perjury charges against him were rejected by the same jury?)
Note that Bonds was not convicted of — or even charged with — illegal use of steroids. His entire prosecution was based on his lying about his use, in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to protect his professional reputation.
Bonds is not the cleanest case because steroid use is illegal, and Bonds is such an unlikeable narcissist.
The most famous example of this controversy is even more polarizing. Like Bonds, President Bill Clinton lied to the American people and gave controversial answers to a grand jury in order to protect his public reputation. But here, the underlying misbehavior was not illegal. As Republicans like Newt Gingrich have been quick to assert, the 1998 impeachment was not about the sexual affair — which is not a crime in the District of Columbia — but rather about the President’s lying about it before a grand jury. While Clinton’s verbal parsing may have technically immunized himself against a perjury conviction, it is clear that he was impeached by the House for lying about underlying behavior that wasn’t a crime.
As a former member of the Clinton Administration, I’m biased; but I am comfortable saying that, without any partisan considerations, lying about a perfectly legal action should not be the basis of removal from office. And so did most Americans.
Let’s take an even cleaner case: that of contributing RP Jeff Smith. (Again, I admit bias: Jeff is my friend.) If you’ve read his stunningly candid story on this Web site, you know that Jeff was convicted of lying to federal investigators about whether he had knowledge of a scheme to distribute negative fliers about his campaign opponent. The underlying behavior may have violated campaign finance rules, but surely did not merit a jail sentence. And I argue, neither should his lying about it.
Did Jeff deserve to be punished? Absolutely. Stripped of his public office? Perhaps. But sentenced to serve a one-year term in a jail filled with violent offenders? I believe the punishment overwhelmingly exceeded the crime.
Of course, I am not arguing in any way that perjury and/or obstruction of justice should be considered misdemeanors or civil violations in every instance. Of course, lying to an authority about illegal activity, particularly of a violent nature, must be punished severely.
Nor am I arguing that there should be no punishment whatsoever in these circumstances. Lying to an authority is wrong; and the offender must be held accountable for his or her actions.
But someone who lies about a non-violent, non-criminal activity, in order to protect his reputation and family — a very natural, human instinct — should not be treated akin to a violent criminal.
I will soon be interviewing Jeff for RPTV to discuss this issue. But I’d like to know your opinion first: Does lying to a grand jury or an investigator about a legal activity merit a jail sentence? What are your suggestions for reform? Or do you like system the way it is?
