A Proportional Response
From The West Wing:
Bartlet: Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the Earth unharmed, cloaked only in the protection of the words civis Romanus — I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens. Where was Morris’s protection, or anybody else on that airplane? Where was the retribution for the families, and where is the warning to the rest of the world that Americans shall walk this Earth unharmed, lest the clenched fist of the most mighty military force in the history of mankind comes crashing down on your house?! In other words, Leo, what the hell are we doing here?!
Leo: We are behaving the way a superpower ought to behave.
Bartlet: Well our behavior has produced some crappy results, in fact I’m not a hundred per cent sure it hasn’t induced it.
Leo: What are you talking about?
Bartlet: I’m talking about two hundred and eighty-six American marines in Beirut, I’m talking about Somalia, I’m talking about Nairobi-
Leo: And you think ratcheting up the body count’s gonna act as a deterrent?
When I was in New York last September, I visited St. Paul’s Chapel which is across the road from Ground Zero. It is one of the oldest churches in the US, and, following the attacks on the World Trade Center, became a memorial to that day and the people that lost their lives.
I didn’t know how I would react, but I found myself sitting in the middle of the church sobbing. I’m not a big cryer, but it was hard not to be moved by it all.
Watching yesterday’s events unfold was a strange experience. I will never know what it was to be American, let alone in New York on September 11th, 2001. I can’t begin to imagine seeing that sort of thing unfold in my country. I do think it is better that the world does not have someone like him in it, but there is something vulgar about celebrating the killing of another, regardless of what has transpired.
I was thinking this as I read a piece from Good’s Cord Jefferson who titled it “When You “Piss on Osama’s Grave,” You Make America Unexceptional”. As I say above, I will never be capable of feeling what an American would have felt on that day, but I felt something very particular towards America as I watched the footage roll in on MSNBC. I’ll let Cord (an American) do the rest:
Where is the patriotism in finding joy from gory photos? Where is it in “partying” at Ground Zero or the University of Delaware? What’s particularly American about making out with your girlfriend at news of an assault that left dozens of people in a third-world country dead?
I’m happy that Osama Bin Laden is gone. He unabashedly dedicated himself to the wanton destruction of people around the world—remember that not just Americans are killed by terrorists—and the likelihood of him ever stopping that pursuit was nil. Still, in America, where we’re taught from a very young age to not kick your enemies when they’re down, all this chest-thumping in the wake of a man’s execution seems misplaced at best, especially among “progressives.”
American citizens often like to think of themselves as good Christians—decent, kind God-fearing people who defend what’s right even when that’s difficult, just as Jesus would have. Last night was an opportunity to live up to that ideal, to let the world know that we are powerful but we’re not drunk with power. Instead, we got wasted and said we wanted to rub our balls on Osama’s dead face, belying American exceptionalism by not acting exceptional, but entirely common.
I also went back to a piece I wrote almost three years ago as President Obama accepted the Democratic nomination. It seems naive now, but in America 2.0, what I talked about more than anything was the idea of America. The reality is, most of the time, far from where we wish it was, but I still long for the country America is capable of being.
As do, as far as I can see, a lot of Americans.
