The Parliament of Ghosts

At the end of The Bridge on the River Kwai, there’s a moment where Col. Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness, realizes the enormity of what his obsession has done to him. The bridge to which he has devoted so much is, as it has always been, a tool of the enemy. By protecting it, he has betrayed his allies. His singular focus has blinded him to the larger world, and the ramifications for that become clear as he hears the whistle of the approaching train. “What have I done?” he asks.

* * * * *

Our response, as Americans, to the death of Osama Bin Laden, is saddening but not entirely unexpected. The action movie mentality that has pervaded our entire War on Terror demands a climax in which the villain is made to pay for his crimes. That’s what we’ve gotten now, after ten long years, and it’s even been delivered like a true action movie climax, with Navy SEALS storming a terrorist compound and killing the leader in a firefight. The problem is, the denouement is indefinite, and the results of our actions over the past 10 years will not disappear as the end credits roll.

* * * * *

Obama’s announcement was a political speech. It wasn’t an address to the nation about the accomplishment of a long-held security goal, it was the launch of his 2012 re-election campaign. That’s why he spent so much time telling us how much we have lost, and how much we have sacrificed in the name of this war. He made it about our sacrifices, how great we are as a nation, and how just. Clearly, if Bin Laden was the bad guy, whoever kills him must be the good guy, right?

The whole speech was patronizing, and only compounded by the reactions to it. When a shot of the crowd gathered outside of the White House briefly showed two stereotypical “bros” chest bumping and high-fiving one another, I immediately thought of Obama’s words about how “Americans understand the costs of war.” Do we really? Some of us do, certainly, but overall the vast majority of us have been insulated from these costs. Would the people out on the streets be celebrating this event like a sports victory if they actually did know the costs of war?

Of course, it’s not entirely our fault. The costs have been hidden from us, intentionally, or levied against the vulnerable and defenseless of our nation. The caskets of returning soldiers were not allowed to be seen. The responsibility for our national debt was laid at the feet of the working class. The deaths of civilians in other nations were intentionally muddied so that when the truth finally came out, the news cycle had moved on, if it had even bothered to pay attention in the first place.

* * * * *

8,813 – That’s a conservative estimate of how many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan since September 11. The final death toll for September 11 was 2,997. We’ve almost revisited threefold upon the population of Afghanistan what was visited upon us on that awful day. We don’t have to worry about that, though, because our cause was right. We know what sacrifice is, because that’s what we’re told.

Sacrifice is something we do to other people.

* * * * *

That figure doesn’t even include civilian casualties in Pakistan. Or Iraq. Or Yemen. Our actions over the past decade have cost nearly one million civilian lives in the Middle East. Imagine what you would do to somebody responsible for the death of your mother or father, your wife or your husband, your daughter or son. If every single innocent who has died in the Middle East has just one person who cares for them the way you care for your loved ones, consider how many potential terrorists we have created. Consider how much they would hate us, and consider if you could even blame them for it.

In the process of hunting down and killing Bin Laden, our various detours have undoubtedly caused more people to hate us than the insane rantings of that fundamentalist lunatic ever could. No wonder he had a mansion in Pakistan. He could retire, because we were doing his work for him.

* * * * *

Omar Khadr turns 25 in September.  It will be his 9th birthday spent in Guantanamo bay—over a third of his life. When he is finally released, over half of his life will have been spent imprisoned by the United States, by us.

When Khadr was 15 years old, he was involved in a firefight between American troops and Afghani militants. He is alleged to have thrown a grenade that killed one of those soldiers.  Being blinded by shrapnel and shot twice would seem to be more punishment than any 15-year-old would deserve for an act of debatable criminality—the U.S. was an invading force, after all—but it seems that’s not nearly enough punishment for us.

First, he was taken to Bagram Air Force base and in all likelihood tortured. It is alleged that he was denied pain medication for his gunshot wounds, and even that he was intentionally denied surgery that could have prevented the loss of sight in his left eye. From Bagram, he was taken to Guantanamo Bay and likely tortured again.  He participated in hunger strikes as the government worked on their case against him, the first trial of a child soldier in the modern era, for the crime of throwing a grenade on a battlefield.

Khadr recently plead guilty to the charges against him in exchange for an eight year prison sentence. But when the government has made it clear they believe you can be detained indefinitely, can any plea bargain that results in less than life imprisonment be genuine?

How sick and twisted must a society be when it looks at someone like Omar Khadr and sees not someone who needs help, but someone who deserves punishment?

* * * * *

This, of course, changes nothing.  It’s been a consistent refrain in the discussions of Bin Laden’s death but never followed up on with the obvious question: if this changes nothing, why did we do it? The only answers that make any sense are the least flattering. We did it for revenge, for pride, maybe even for politics. We didn’t do it to make ourselves or the world safer.

* * * * *

So, we see the death of Bin Laden and we celebrate, because we cannot see the death and destruction our obsession has wrought. It is kept far from us, away from our sight, and what little does make it to us is hidden or obfuscated. The sacrifices we do encounter are ephemeral concepts like liberty and justice, things we don’t realize the value of until we need them—and by then it’s too late. We’ve also made it possible, and even easy to ignore the chaos and destruction we’ve created.

We need to stop ignoring it. We need to ask ourselves, “What have we done?”

We won’t like the answer, but what we learn will be worth it.