Osama Bin Laden Is Dead: Now What?

"In front of the death of man, a Christian never rejoices but rather reflects on the grave responsibility of each one in front of God and men, and hopes and commits himself so that every moment not be an occasion for hatred to grow but for peace." -Father Federico Lombardi, The Vatican spokesperson on Osama Bin Laden's death.

I woke up last night and saw a text from my Dad. I figured it was an update on the health of my Aunt Sis, who is fighting bone cancer and has been in and out of the hospital over the last couple of months. My Dad sends me daily updates on her progress. Since I thought it was another health update, I chose to not read the message until getting up to go to the bathroom at 6:30am this morning. When I opened it, it was a simple message, "They finally got Bin Laden's ass."

That's my dad, an ex-military man not prone to mincing words.

I quickly clicked open the Huffington Post on my iPhone to confirm my dad's text message. Indeed, I found, Osama Bin Laden was killed last night by the United States. The cryptic news alert I'd gotten from HuffPost just before going to bed announcing that President Obama would be holding a news conference was made clear. Osama Bin Laden is dead. I logged into Facebook next to see what brief reactions I could take in before starting to write the blog entry that I knew was inevitable.'

There was a note from my friend Alyssa saying, "Look at all those New Yorkers celebrating in the streets, are you out there?"

There was a statement in my Facebook from Muslims for Progressive Values:

Press Release
Statement on News of Death of Osama Bin Laden
May 1, 2011

Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV) expresses great relief at the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden as President Obama announced in a special report. Osama Bin Laden has singularly disgraced Islam and dragged our faith through the mud with his promotion of terrorism throughout the world from Indonesia, the Middle East, Africa and here in the United States

MPV applauds the resolve and dedication of President Obama in pursuing Osama Bin Laden. As Muslims, we hope this will forever quench the flame of terrorism and that with the rise of democracy throughout the Middle East we can all finally begin to heal. Our condolences continue to go out to the families of those who perished on September 11, 2001 as well as all the victims of terrorism committed in the name of Al Qaeda throughout the world.

My first response on the topic, which is echoed by the statement from the Vatican (lord knows I never thought I would be using a statement from the Vatican for anything but blog fodder) is that I do not celebrate the death of any man. Osama Bin Laden earned his death. I do not regret the actions of the U.S. military and covert operations. I do not believe his death was undeserved or unearned by his own terrible and horrific actions, but I do not celebrate his death. His death is too linked to failed U.S. military and political policies of the past. His death is too connected to our own quest for power. Osama Bin Laden made his own terrible, terrible choices, but just like a serial killer whose mind was bent and broken by an abusive father, Osama bin Laden is a part of the U.S.'s shame. The U.S is not responsible for Bin Laden's choice to turn to terrorism and the murder of innocents, but we are responsible for creating the global circumstances, particularly in the Muslim world, where the twisted and hateful ideology espoused by Bin Laden was able to take root and grow tall enough that men and women across the region have been willing to give their own lives, killing innocents, in a quest to lash out against an enemy that is so inimically tied to their own poverty, suffering, and privation: U.S. economic and foreign policy and the global financial and economic machine propping it up.

I am sad that the circumstances ever existed to create an Osama Bin Laden. I find some comfort in the fact that, like Hitler, a crazy man that was able to inspire individuals to commit acts of atrocity is no longer in the world. But, the circumstances which created Osama Bin Laden still exist. The poverty, privation, and degradation of the developing world have not been alleviated. The under education and religious extremists willing to exploit ignorance for personal gain (in the name of God) still exist (and, to be clear, that particular issue is not unique to Islam...Christian fundamentalist leaders in this country have and still do use reactionary religious views to marshall the undereducated to act against their own best self interest).

While I understand that many in the world are breathing a sigh of relief today, I find it telling that while Western and developed nations are "celebrating," a Yemeni official stated:

"We welcome the news ... millions of people will sleep in peace tonight," the official said. "Osama bin Laden was more of a symbolic figure, a spiritual leader for al Qaeda."
The official said it is too early to determine how his death will affect the war against terror.
"But this is definitely a strong blow to the organization," said the official, who did not want to be named because he is not authorized to talk to the media.

"

It is my fear that we have cut the head off of the hydra. It was a head that needed to be removed, but we have left the body intact, wounded, but when it heals it will have two heads instead of one. As Congress continues to balk at providing reconstruction aid to Afghanistan in any amount that is meaningful, as we continue to prosecute wars in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, as we continue to provide the world, through our own internal political processes, with live examples of how to use divisive and ignorance politics to build fanatical power bases, we are lancing Al Qaeda's wound just after we've given it. Our justification for war in Afghanistan was the prosecution of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden is dead. Does this mean we will end the war?

No. We did not end the war in Iraq when we caught and executed (under the guise of the Iraqi judiciary) Saddam Hussein, we will not be pulling out of Afghanistan anytime soon. This means that our soldiers, my brother and sister, will continue to be put in harms way in order to shore up a dying U.S. empire.

If there is a true silver lining in this narrative, it is that this pretty much makes certain that Obama (not Osama) will be elected to a second term. To many of the Tea Bagger and more conservative set (and many Lefties as well), this will make him an instant hero. He took decisive military action which resulted in the death of global enemy number one. Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and the rest of the Republican presidential hopefuls let out a collective, "OH FUCK," last night when this story broke. I am sure that they will give out begrudging kudos today (well maybe not Bachmann, she lives so far down the rabbit hole that she will find a way to say something completely inane and stupid instead).

This event doesn't change my opinion of Obama. He is a flawed man in a flawed institution doing his best within the parameters and constraints of the U.S. political and economic system to make sense out of the world, our diminishing role in it, while doing what he can to try and lift up the people of the United States (without stepping too hard on the toes of the corporate oligarchy that runs the country). The fact of the matter is that the limits of the president are defined in direct relationship to the sacrifices the progressive community are willing to make to help him push against the corporate alliance that runs the U.S. Frankly, he's done a bang up job, and I will put him back in office for another four years. He's done more good than harm and much more good in three and a half years than Bush did in eight.

But I digress. Back to the topic du jour.

Osama Bin Laden is dead. The boogeyman has been taken out. God help us all, because we've all seen horror movies, and we all know this plot. The boogeyman that is taken down is never as terrifying as the one that we don't even know exists yet. I am content that Osama Bin Laden is no longer a threat. I understand that it will take time for a new Al Qaeda mastermind to appear. Perhaps, in fact, Al Qaeda has received a death blow. The truth remains, though, that from El Shabaab to Hamas there is no lack of organizations willing to use terrorist strategies to achieve their personal ends. And as long as we in the developing world continue to support global economic policies that keep 90% of the world in the poverty and circumstances which make these organizations possible, any future attacks and innocent blood shed is as much on our hands as it is on the hands of the murderers that will make them happen.

I pray to God that Obama realizes this as well and implements healing strategies to change what feels like the course of inevitability. I am a person of faith, and I still have some of that hope that Obama talked about almost four years ago.

Risk and Death

One year ago today, I lost my cousin to leukemia. In less than three months, my little sister will be shipped back to Iraq for her fourth tour of duty. Last spring, I lost a friend and mentor, Mona Harris, to cancer. My little brother recently returned from Afghanistan, and with that war showing no signs of ending, it is almost a surety that he will also be sent back into harms way.

I am sick and tired of death and the risk of death.

At the age of 32, I should rarely have to think of death. If I do, it should come in the form of elders that have lived long and fulfilled lives, individuals that die surrounded by the people that love them knowing that they are loved.

How fucking naive is that statement.

Unfortunately, I know that because I am not white and most of the people around me are not white, they will die younger than they should. I know because I have had one family member die from cancer that now it is more likely that others will also pass along.

And then there is war.

When a country enters into a war it enters into a compact with death. It promises to the Reaper the certainty of soul collection in order to achieve some goal. Some wars are fought because they must be fought. Though the impetus for the United States to enter the Second World War had little to do with justice and everything to do with empire, entering World War II was just. Hitler was an evil man with evil ambitions that caused great and destructive harm.

No war since then that has been fought by the United States has been right or just, they have simply been the United States trying to protect or enforce a particular corporatized political ideology or protect our own selfish and self-destructive political and economic interests.

The rest of the world and the families that sacrifice their children on the altar of false patriotism be damned.

The death of my cousin and Mrs. Harris and the risk of death of my little brother and sister are connected.

We spend BILLIONS of dollars each month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Forget Korea, forget Vietnam, forget the silent invasions of Grenada, Panama, Somalia and the first Gulf War. Just calculate the amount of money that we have spent in the last six years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now imagine if even ten percent of that money had been spent on cancer research and treatment.

My cousin almost survived leukemia.

He had an experimental bone marrow transplant, and for months the doctors at the University of Illinois-Chicago were calling him the miracle guy. Except the cancer came back and took him down quickly.

Afterwards they examined the data and thought perhaps they had done the transplant to soon, too quickly, they hadn't given his own immune system enough time to resist the cancerous blood cells. What if they had been granted a billion dollars to do their research? One billion dollars is LESS than we spend on war in one month. YET imagine what it would mean to research labs across the country. A year ago, perhaps the researchers would have known what they WILL know five years from now. If only they had the staff, equipment, lab space, and materials to move forward. If ONLY Bush hadn't restricted stem cell research during his eight years in office. If only we cared more about preserving life than we did about preserving the bottom line of corporations and shareholder profits.

If only.

But we don't. Instead, I am sitting here nearly a year after my cousin's death. I am remembering that I couldn't afford to fly from California to Minnesota to be with my family. To this day the guilt of that sits in my stomach. I saw my Aunt in June for the first time since my cousins death. All I could think of was that I was my cousin's closest family member outside of his Mom, Dad, and two brothers. I WAS the cousin that made sure to see him when he was in the hospital. I was the cousin that his wife loved. I was the cousin that went to see him when he got back from Korea. I was his friend.

And there is a good chance that if we spent more on life than on death that he would still be alive today, and I would still get to see him at family reunions and on holidays. I would have gotten to be at his wedding, and I would, perhaps, be with him right now.

Instead I am wondering how his nephew, the son of his twin brother, will ever know how amazing his uncle was. Instead, I wonder if my Aunty Susie, a woman that treated me like one of her own children, a woman that I love and look up to, a woman that understood me when I didn't really understand myself...I wonder if she will ever be the same aunty that I have known and loved my entire life.

And all because of a stupid disease that we could cure, except that we are too busy spending our money on war. And I am too busy worrying if I am going to lose my brother and sister too soon as well.

Fading Hope or Reality Check?

So, I read today that in an Associate Press-Gfk Poll the general fountain of hope that Obama inspired has turned from a gusher to a sprinkler. His approval rating is still 55%, which is very good, but in many areas the euphoria has worn off and he has seen double digit drops in various confidence ratings in various areas. Though, in my most cases, a majority of Americans still believe that he is doing the right thing in the right way.

Basically, I want to go out and find those folks that truly believed that Obama was somehow going to magically with a wave of his Presidential dick make everything all better, and smack them in the face. Instead of electing a President, they thought they were electing a Fairy Godfather who could kiss the booboos of the Regan/Clinton/Bush years...the trickle down economics...the Bush trillion dollar tax cuts...the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq...the decline in American prestige...the global economic meltdown...the health care system...the education gap...the housing market...and the credit market...and make them all better. Whip out a bottle of neosporin and a great big old band-aid and in seven days it will heal right up.

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

Since stepping into the White House, Obama has done something that the last four presidents have not done. He has told the damn truth. He has said...look people...this shit is going to be tough...it is going to be rough...and if you all really want it to be fixed...you are going to have to dig deep into your pockets and your privilege and make it better. Those that have immense wealth that THEY DID NOT EARN...are going to have to pay a share relational to their income to help make things work again in this country (and P.S. no one and I mean no one does any level of labor that is equal in value to a million dollars a year...NO ONE). He said that to fix health care, we are going to have to do something radically different than has ever been done before. He said to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to restore confidence in America, we are going to have to close Guantanamo, end torture, and start valuing civilian lives overseas. He said in order to get the economy back on track, we are going to have to get real hands on. A free market without oversight and without regulation is exactly what got us into the mess we are in...and so it is going to take money to fix a money problem and regulation to fix a regulation problem and not a wishin' and a prayin' and magic bean buyin'.

But time and time and time again it is a Republican and conservative lobby and coalition of regressive wealthy ignoranmi that are hell bent at protecting their own asses and fighting to regain political power at the cost of AMERICAN lives, AMERICAN health, AMERICAN prosperity, and on the backs of the working poor. Ain't not a damn thing changed on the right. So it is time for the left to step the fuck up and be unafraid to confront the bullshit head on.

It is time for the majority in Congress to use the damn nuclear options. Shut out the voices of Deep South Senators that openly engaged in acts of White Supremacy and yet have the nerve to accuse Judge Sotomayor of playing racial politics when all she did was speak the damn truth. It is time, right now, for Obama to be brave. He needs to pull a Lyndon B. Johnson and hold his party's ass to the flame. He needs to make it clear to any Blue Dog Democrat that breaks ranks that he will, without question, use his position and popularity on behalf of a primary challenger to replace their fucked up asses come the mid-term elections next year. It is TIME that those that believed there was an easy solution to decades of excess, waste, unchecked capitalism, and unregulated corporate greed and community rape to wake the fuck up and become part of the solution instead sucking on the rotted tit of media spawned regressive hype and fear mongering by the GOP and its minority conservative core in America.

Obama will fail if we haven't matured enough as a nation to realize that the people out of power want to get back into power no matter the cost even if the cost is YOUR health insurance, the life of YOUR child sent to the desert or the mountains to die, YOUR job because deregulation and the maiming of unions has led to massive outsourcing, and your home because a lack of oversight allowed mega banks to gobble up bad assets knowingly and use outright deception to make a quick buck on your back.

Wake the hell up America. Obama is NOT our hope. WE are our HOPE, and if we HOPE to not slide back down the Regan-Clinton-Bush I and II road...then it is high time that we step up, let Obama know we are here and ready to do the work, make the sacrifice, and BACK HIM THE HELL UP, so he can get our nation and its people...meaning ALL OF ITS PEOPLE FROM THE HOMELESS TO THE KARDASHIANS back on its feet.

Faith without works and hope without courage are empty words and empty minds fill able by those willing to lay you down to build their own foundation.

My Brother Is My Keeper: A Soldier Speaks

My little brother Julius posted this as a response to my blog yesterday about PTSD and the tragedy at Camp Liberty. I love my brother. And this should be read by the entire damn world.

Hey Billy,

I'm glad you're getting the help you need to deal with your PTSD. It is indeed a known fact that PTSD doesn't just come from war. For example, a rape victim could have PTSD far worse than any soldier whose been to combat. it's just the God awful honest truth. So once again, i'm happy you're doing what you need to to help yourself.

..At first, I didn't want to admit it. when i came back from Afghanistan, I thought after a couple of months I'd be fine. I went to mental health and was told to come back. I have what they call 'survivors guilt', a form of PTSD. I did return for two sessions, but later quit. I was scared. Everyone else wasn't going, so i felt weak. I didn't wake up in cold sweats, or wake up screaming. It was more subtle than that. I didn't realize how bad I was until I went to Disneyland a month later. The fireworks started going off and I panicked. In a crowd full of happy tourists and families, I broke down and started crying. My friend grabbed me and ran me to the restroom. I'd never felt so embarrassed. I could hear the fireworks still going off. I could picture the rockets incoming. The bullets hitting all my friends except me. I felt helpless and weak.. I just wanted to die and join my brothers in arms that had fallen. I felt I didn't deserve life. Why should I get to live when so many great young men had died, some with families and unborn children they'd never see. I felt I cheated death, and I wanted to meet up with him and pay him what was owed.

I still have flashbacks every now and again. When I'm driving sometimes, I see myself on the roads of Afghanistan, keeping an eye out for IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices). I get ancy when I'm in big crowds. My finger gets itchy, I need to shoot. I yell when there's no need, I freak out when I feel something's not right. I try to get help, but I keep putting it off.

Anyway, I just wanted to say, I appreciate you brother. Sometimes I get soo angry, because I feel no one cares. The world keeps spinning. But in war, time stops. You're ripped out of society and tossed in a life or death situation. Contact with the outside world is limited. All you can do is sit and count the days. Pray America still hopes for your safety. You say prayers, hoping everyone appreciates what you do. The 1-2 meals a day, 3 if you're lucky. The hiking up the mountains with 80-120 lbs. worth of gear. Not showering for weeks even months at a time. Sweating under the Middle Eastern sun. Watching your friends die and wondering when you'll be next. Bullets flying in the middle of the night. Looking out for Taliban trying to sneak into your base. Rockets and mortars hitting where you live. Taliban toying with you with harassing gun fire. trying to draw you out so their snipers can pick you off. Wishing, that you can make it back for 1 day to be with the one you love. The soldiers on the front lines experience this and I have not forgot. The taliban grow stronger and gain ground. It's hard for me to focus on my current course of life. If I let my guard down, my enemy will become stronger and better than me.

Take it easy Billy. I'll ttyl.

Love,
Julius

Obama and Gay Marriage or Shut the Hell Up and Let the Man Run the Country

So, I have seen numerous articles lately yellin' and screamin' and lambastin' Obama for not speaking out on the subject of gay marriage. Though President Obama has made his support for civil rights clear, and though he has made mention in the past that he supports civil unions, and though every indicator shows that if the Democrats in Congress got their thumbs out of their asses and passed a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act he would sign it, still, certain, largely privileged white middle class gays, seem to think that Obama should stop his work on the economy, health care, two wars, and poverty in order to take up arms on the gay marriage front. Get a damn life people.

Obama is doing EXACTLY the right thing by NOT raising the queer marriage issue back into the national spotlight. The Republicans used, quite effectively, the spectre of gays getting married as a successful wedge issue for...well, almost fifteen years. Clinton, bowing to pressure from the right, signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law instantly catapulting the marriage issue onto the national stage. Marriage, in general, is a state's rights issue. Obama, who, I will remind everyone, was a constitutional law professor, is being extremely savvy right now. Since he has taken office three states, and a fourth one soon, have instituted the right to marry for same sex couples. Our constitution has a little itty bitty clause in Section Four part II called the Full Faith and Credit Clause, which reads:

Full faith and credit ought to be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings, of every other state; and the legislature shall, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings, shall be proved, and the effect which judgments, obtained in one state, shall have in another.

That means if you get married in Vermont then Minnesota must recognize that legal union. Since the U.S. Constitution requires full faith and credit, and since the U.S. constitution supercedes state constitutions, it doesn't matter if Minnesota has a constitutional amendment banning same sex unions (it doesn't actually)...once a nice quiet lesbian couple in New Hampshire decides to move to Utah...and is denied recognition of their marriage...they appeal..until they get to the highest courtin the land, and .a ruling by the Supreme Court will quickly annihilate those pesky state constitutional bans on same sex marriage. Sort of like Lawrence versus Texas. Remember that one people? With a quick little vote of the Supreme Court, anti-sodomy laws were invalidated across the country (and, ps, it was this court...with this composition...that struck down the anti-sodomy laws...all indicators are that Obama will be selecting three new justices sometime in the next few years...shift of balance of power...duh).

Of course, raising the issue of same sex marriage to the federal level again will rally the Republican base, create an INSTANT wedge issue between certain elements of people of color communities and the Democratic Party (which, of course, will split Obama's base), and it will raise again the spectre of a U.S. Constitutional ban on same sex marriage. It has been made clear that such a ban will never pass, but siphoning off precious political capital right now to fight off a re-energized Republican base and a split Democrat base on this issue will make it nigh on impossible for Obama to push the Republicans out of the way on the health care reforms we need, social security, social safety network issues, immigration and the border, and a whole host of other social justice issues that DESERVE and WARRANT immediate attention.

Obama knows that it is only a matter of time before a critical mass of U.S. states have approved queer marriage, and that, by such approval, will trigger a series of judicial events that will result in the extension of marriage rights to all queer folks in every state. At that point, the Defense of Marriage Act, if it has not been repealed, will be low hanging fruit and easily plucked off. How the hell would members of Congress justify “protecting” federal marriage rights when the Supreme Court has closed the case on the states rights side of the issue.

I am so damn frustrated with these half baked queer pundits that can't see past the ends of their own wedding rings to see the big picture. Obama is NOT standing in the way of queer marriage. He is keeping his party in check around the issue by NOT creating a situation where he has to worry about legislators turning their attention away from the issues that we NEED to address. It would be foolish, stupid, and untimely for Obama to stop what he is doing to focus on marriage when the fantastic efforts of local and state organizers are doing the work, swiftly, and with much success.

The road isn't easy towards justice, and, unfortuantely, in the system under which we labor there are times when STRATEGY dictates form (which it ALWAYS should). Folks that are running around pissed off because Obama hasn't hosted a mass queer wedding in the Rose Garden are demanding form without any strategy or strategic thought behind it.

Let's be clear: Obama is not perfect, but he is working on the bigger picture...which, right now, means getting the almost 10% of people in this country that are unemployed back to work. That means ending two wars that are draining tens of billions of dollars a month out of our economy and killing innocent soliders and innocent Iraqis and Afghanis. That means changing our health care system so that it makes sense and the 40 million uninsured in this nation have access to health care. THOSE are the issues that Obama should be focused on. THOSE are the issues that he is focused on. And the largely white gay men that are attempting to UNSTRATEGICALLY force his hand are going to do nothing but lay the groundwork for a base splitting circus that will, in the long term, hurt the queer movement and result in a retardation of the amazing work around marriage equality that has already been done.

Back off.