Buried at sea

Osama bin Laden was a thug, and the world is infinitely better off for his death. His existence was a brutish assault on sanity and decency, on the humanness of life. (Austrian philosopher Ludwig) Wittgenstein believed language to be inadequate for the purpose of expressing objective truths, and the famous proposition from his Tractatus is “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”. Osama bin Laden’s death is one of those Wittgensteinein moments, where one feels the insufficiency of language in condemning the beast. The logical and semantic resources of the English language (or any other language, I presume) do not cater to such an abomination. One particularly egregious use of language was done by some of the Urdu media who referred to Osama bin Laden in the third person plural (‘unkee’ etc). Ordinarily, potent words like evil, grotesque and wicked are frustratingly placid and banal for the purposes of describing Osama bin Laden. One is almost tempted to remain silent, albeit jubilantly. Yet, his death is no time for silence.

The death has not been celebrated in Pakistan, at least not with the passion that such an occasion engenders. Instead, questions have been raised regarding the veracity of the claim that he has been killed, the future of the Afghanistan-Pakistan situation and the justification of the continuance of the war on terror. All of these are valid questions, but they deliberately fall in the error of treating the death as a mere instrumentality. The demise of the crook deserves to be viewed as a particular event, almost stripped away from the context, as a triumph. The asking of these questions also allows as a deflection so as to save the askers the trouble of expressing their opinion on the end of Osama. Maybe it is because of our culture of not speaking ill of the dead, especially the bearded amongst the dead. However, the reluctance in unequivocal condemnation is probably because Osama’s death has stumped them. Osama was killed through an American operation in Abbottabad. The politics of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and retired army officers consists entirely of opposing American involvement in Pakistan. Now, the killing of Osama finds them in a quandary. They can either condone the action, which would mean they also tacitly approve of selective engagement of the United States in Pakistan. Or they can condemn the death of the brute, which I suspect some might want to, but are restrained by the sheer inhumanity of such a denunciation. They, instead, chose to obfuscate, and do pathetically at that. It is similar to the drone attack that killed Baitullah Mehsud, only this time around the lunatic killed is bigger. One of the many purposes that Osama’s death serves is that it exposes hypocrites as, well, hypocrites. One cannot help but be amused at the predicament of the apologists, but this cowardice is no laughing matter.

Many people are certainly poorer for Osama’s death. The suicidal fanatics are the most obvious, but by no means the exclusive, group dented by his departure. The local imam spewing sectarian venom appeared less murderous because of the presence of the evil fiend, in comparison to whose bloodlust the local imam’s ignorant provocation seemed tranquil, almost acceptable. Now that the common man’s villain has been eliminated, the vile apologists are on their own, with no defence of being the lesser evil. Talking about the wickedness and lunacy of a man who believed that the mass murder of innocent civilians will lead to virgins in heaven is superfluous. Yet he had an uncanny ability of making his adversaries look sanguine. George W Bush Jr was as dim-witted a statesman as is possible. But it was hard to disagree with the substance of whatever he said about Osama.

Osama bin Laden was what made drone attacks not only justified, but necessary. He effectively made the world bipolar, a division between those for and against civilisation. The disagreements within the respective camps pale into insignificance when compared to the vicious singularity of the challenge faced from the outside. Ironically, Osama reinforced one of the core values of the very system he set out to sadistically fight. The world probably owes as much ‘globalisation’ to Osama as it does to Facebook. He globalised terror and madness while illustrating the cliche that tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere. He made fear cheap and ubiquitous. And now that he is gone, the justifications will still hold true.

He blurred the traditional ideological frontiers, with the originally anti-imperialist being pro-US, because he was anti-Osama. Being anti-imperialist and anti-Osama is complementary and by no means mutually exclusive, but it turned out to be too complex to handle for most. He made hard-core, seasoned intellectuals look like the idiots that they were. The pathology of wanton murder did not originate from Osama, and will certainly not cease with him. However, he remained the most notorious poster boy that these maniacs have ever found. Hence he needs to be attacked, disparaged and defiled as a matter of principle.

A relevant but somewhat hollow phrase originally associated with the Holocaust is ‘never again’. Osama bin Laden should never be forgotten. The diseased and disgusting man and his perverse world view and barbarism needs to be internalised, and fought consistently. The picture of the demented man needs to be imprinted on the moral consciousness of our society, so that we are cautious and hopefully this time around ensure, ‘never again’.

Osama bin Laden was buried at sea. At some level this is a poetically befitting end to the rascal. No country willing to taint its soil with the corpse. At the same time, he should have been buried at the high seas because he was a man of the world, symbolising ignorance knowing no frontiers. My only caveat with his burial at sea is that it pollutes marine life and denies me the opportunity of physically trampling upon his grave, which should have had the tombstone ‘never again’.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2011.