A Necessary Argument — Disputing John Feffer’s Criticism of the United States’ Allegedly Counterproductive Martyrdom of Osama bin Laden

© 2011 Peter Free

 

03 May 2011

 

 

John Feffer’s criticism of the execution and sea burial of Osama bin Laden misses Reality’s most important points

 

Intelligent strategic planning and execution are difficult at the best of times.  The world, predominantly gray, offers us no obvious standard for perfection against which to evaluate our schemes.  Balancing risks necessarily makes a mess of the ideal.

 

With regard to American geopolitical strategies that have been so blatantly counterproductive for decades, it is unreasonable to criticize an instance in which American policy actually effectuated a necessary goal in a way in which a better course of action was (and remains) unclear.

 

John Feffer’s criticism of President Obama’s handling of the execution and sea burial of Osama bin Laden misses these points.

 

 

Details of what John Feffer said

 

Feffer, writing in the Huffington Post, argued that the United States “played right into Osama bin Laden’s hands.” Martyrdom is the weapon of the weak.  President Obama gave bin Laden martyrdom via execution by Navy SEALs:

 

No doubt it would have been extremely difficult to thwart his desire for martyrdom, bring him back alive, and pump him for information. Still, the value of subjecting bin Laden to the rule of law would have been incalculable.

 

Instead, bin Laden will enter history as a legend, not as a man. His quick burial at sea may well generate a wave of conspiracy theories . . . .

 

His assassination calls into question the adherence of the West to its vaunted principles of justice, much as the support for Hosni Mubarak and other Arab dictators called into question the West's commitment to democracy.

 

Bin Laden's death sends a particular message about the abuses of state authority -- why is the United States in the business of targeted assassination?

 

© 2011 John Feffer, The Tools of bin Laden, Huffington Post (03 May 2011) (paragraph split)

 

Mr. Feffer made two additional points:

 

First, the President’s invocation of God in his sign-offs implies holy war, especially so when the U.S. military sees its missions as deity-driven.

 

Second, bin Laden understood that he could drain American strength by forcing it into profligate spending on the war on terror.

 

 

“Why do we care what an apparently Liberal Panty-Waist Doofus thinks?”

 

We should care what Feffer thinks because his analysis is correct — insofar as it goes.  The problem is that it does not go far enough.

 

Our problem in responding to him is that we are probably going to be tempted into an emotional outburst that ignores the merit of his analysis.

 

Ignoring what is correct in his thinking means that our future strategy will be less thought out, less rational, and therefore weaker than it should be.

 

Given that stupidity is why we are in the messes we are in today, we should strive to avoid brainlessness in the future.  That’s why Feffer’s criticism matters.  It forces us to think about whether what we have done or will be doing is the best way to proceed.

 

 

Arguing with Feffer’s points

 

Feffer’s analysis does not take Reality into account.  Therefore it is rationally flawed.

 

(1) Taking bin Laden alive and transporting him successfully to the United States would have been far more difficult than it sounds.

 

The only people who can fully understand that are people accustomed to violent confrontations and to the prolonged maintenance of secrecy and security.

 

I assume from his comments that Feffer is not experienced with either.

 

(2) Burying bin Laden at sea was arguably a strategic mistake, given Islamic customs.  But —

 

Handing him over to people who would have buried him on land, head toward Mecca, in a martyr’s shrine, would have been at least as strategically troublesome.

 

Disposing of bin Laden’s corpse was, in essence, a conundrum that has no correct answer.  Criticizing it beyond the point of pondering alternatives is a mostly meritless exercise.

 

(3) The worth of a bin Laden show trial is overblown.

 

Given the unreasoned contempt that Islamic terrorists have for the United States, there is no reason to think that a trial would miraculously make them see the light of American reason and justice.

 

The cost of such a trial would have been enormous, and its security aspects far more expensive than any benefit would be worth.

 

(4) Assassinating people of Obama’s ilk is hardly the unalloyed evil that Feffer makes it out to be.

 

Had we murdered Saddam Hussein early on, it might have prevented thousands upon thousands of deaths.

 

It is difficult to see the evil of assassination as being obviously worse than letting a Saddam-like maniac run loose and subsequently having to destroy a nation and kill thousands of American service people and Iraqis in remedying the error of not ridding the world of his presence in the first place.

 

Anybody, for example, who makes a moral argument against murdering Hitler, believing that argument to be religiously and ethically unassailable, is a moral idiot.

 

(5) Criticizing President Obama and the military for believing themselves to be acting in accordance with God’s will, under circumstances in which that terminology can be easily misinterpreted as an attack on Islam, is valid.  But —

 

Feffer overlooks the reality that the United States is still a predominantly Christian nation, and its public is still predominantly blind to the nuances of other human cultures.

 

Feffer’s criticism is, therefore, somewhat like saying that people should be better than we are.  Obama would not be president were he not Christian.  The public would not be the American public were it not culturally ignorant and often intolerant.

 

We might wish that our nation would do less to provoke other peoples with our arrogant ignorance.  But if we look around, we see that other peoples are guilty of the same thing.  Islamic terrorists particularly.  I see little point in trying to placate that group of unreasoned, irremediably violent, insanity-fomenters by demeaning our President and our public.

 

(6) It is true that the United States is egregiously weakening itself with its poorly thought-out war on terror, as bin Laden planned.  But —

 

That aspect of our self-destruction has nothing to do with the Navy SEALs’ raid on bin Laden’s compound, which was essentially a law enforcement operation aimed at apprehending an inordinately skilled terrorist and murder of thousands.

 

Feffer’s economic argument is therefore logically irrelevant to bin Laden’s capture and execution.

 

 

Conclusion — there will be terrorist reprisals for bin Laden’s death, but there would have been any way

 

Some situations cannot be won.  This one will probably prove to be strategically such, given the many blunders we have made in getting to this point.

 

What is clear is that there was no obviously better alternative to the President Obama’s solution to the bin Laden situation.

 

Osama bin Laden’s execution will not bring back the thousands upon thousands of victims of the man’s distorted sense of values.  But it will serve as a reminder that Great Powers have a long reach.  In the geopolitical balance, that is often what one has to settle for.

 

John Feffer misses the ultimate point.  There is no perfection.  Avoiding provably obvious mistakes is the name of the survival game.

 

When one can avoid obvious strategic errors with honor — as the Commander-in-Chief and his military and intelligence services did in terminating Osama bin Laden’s personal contribution to pointless death and destruction — one can tack up a point in one’s own humble favor, regardless of History and Fate’s eventual muddying of the record.