Osama Bin Laden

All week, I've been troubled by the news that in attempting to kill Gaddafi, Americans instead killed his son and three of his grandchildren. There seemed to be very little discussion, much less abhorrence, of this fact in the news, just a general impression of, oh yeah, bad guy, let's kill him. If innocents get in the way, hey, that's war.

I kept thinking about the fact that Obama's been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a fact that seems more embarrassing and awful the longer various conflicts drag on.

And then there was last night's news regarding Osama Bin Laden.

A great ethical trap which we have not managed to avoid is the danger of becoming what we oppose. I keep thinking of the exchange in The Lord of the Rings between Gandalf and Frodo:

Frodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill him [Gollum] when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.

I don't think that America has much pity any more. Osama Bin Laden didn't, of course. He reveled in the deaths of many. But in answering the threat that he presented and in responding to the actions he set in motion, we have followed the path and the role he deliberately manipulated us into assuming: we have done much to present ourselves to the world as pitiless, cruel and oppressive, and consequently, we are loathed through much of the world. We have rivers of innocent blood on our hands, and the blood of the guilty, even those as guilty as Osama Bin Laden does not wash it away.

I am not excusing or minimizing what he did, heaven knows. At the free speech section in the May Day parade yesterday a contingent was marching with signs proclaiming that 9/11 was an inside job of the U.S. government, and I was so angry at such a pack of lies that I left the parade route and didn't watch any further. But I will not gloat or rejoice in Osama Bid Laden's death. I would rather see us turn our efforts to re-finding the country's soul, which we seem to have lost along the way.

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From yuki_onna:

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Follow the signpost.

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May Day

May Day didn't quite feel like May Day.

It really didn't quite work for me. I feel like a traitor to say it, but it's true.

I'd invited Mom and Dad--it would have been their first May Day since they just moved to Minneapolis last fall, and I was so excited to share it with them. The girls had invited their respective boys. But every single person other than me bailed on going, and despite my disappointment, I couldn't blame them in the least. The temperature was in the mid-thirties, and the forecast said heavy winds, and possibly rain or even snow. Obviously, it would have been madness in particular for my very sick Fiona to go. The precipitation held off, but the sun was not spotted all day, and the relentless wind was numbing.

So I went to the parade by myself and even though there was a respectable crowd, I saw no one I know. The parade had some of its usual magical moments, but there were a strong preponderance of crows, which were supposed to be hopeful, but instead kept reminding me, depressingly, of the ravens. The parade started really late, and the ceremony in the park (the raising of the Tree of Life) started even later. The crowd was much smaller, and due to the weather, no one was particularly tempted to wander around and listen to music. The picnic in the park had about a half dozen die-hard loyalists instead of the twenty or thirty or so we usually see, and it was so cold and dreadful that several of those left before the Tree of Life even went up. It ain't a lot of fun to picnic when the temperature's in the 30s. The sight of the Tree didn't lift my heart like it usually does.

Maybe it's just because it's been such a hard year, but this year for the first time ever, it felt as if the cold and the dark still had the park in thrall when I left.

dreamshark's report is here. Like me, she thought there were too many crows.

Fiona

I eyed Fiona at dinner, who was gazing blankly into space like a doe in the headlights.

"You have a tired, honey."

She turned her limpid gaze to me. "I have a tired. It went away for a little while this morning, and I almost felt like a normal person. And then it came back and brought all its friends and neighbors."

Poor kid. I've never seen her so flattened, for so long.