Death of Bin Laden

The U.S. celebrates a successful operation in the death of Bin Laden. Obama gave a speech recalling the exchanges between U.S. and the Middle East post-9/11. He reminded Americans why they cared at all about military presence in Afghanistan (if they had forgotten). The controllers of the American nation-state have delivered their promise, and the individual's emotional conflict, along with the national tragedy, reaches what resembles a resolution. The relief and satisfaction apparently gives many Americans (but also those across the globe) reason to rejoice.

However, many have voiced concern over the mass celebration. First, they are concerned with the celebration of death in general; for them it is miserable, something to flee from. They express this impulse in terms of their morality, which gives the argument some complexity. After all, what generated America's lust for vengeance was not the so-called War on Terror, but rather a domestic tragedy. The story is as follows: destruction of highly valuable property (valuable in the traditional economic sense, also valuable as cultural symbolism) provoked the controllers of the American nation-state (the owners of the property), and they demand justice. Justice, like the term nation-state, is ambiguous and requires explanation though here is not the place for it. Let it suffice to say that justice is, for the controllers of the U.S., a means of rationalizing their vengeance. They represent their constituents of course, so public media must transmit this rationality of vengeance, the story of injustice which demands blood, to the masses. So people come the be enchanted by the images presented by the media, the prescriptive rhetoric of the nation-state. Their battle is depicted before us as if it is ours. What did the wars in the Middle East really mean for the people of the U.S., or to the controllers of the nation-state for that matter? In this interpretation, any reliably certain answer for this question is lost.