Reflections on the Killing of Osama bin Ladn

On the evening of Sunday, May 1, 2011, we received the news that an American Special Forces unit had found and killed Osama bin Ladn.  As more details of the operation were released we learned that a unit of Navy SEALs had flown two helicopters deep into Pakistan, apparently from Navy ships stationed in the Indian Ocean.  They had landed inside a large walled compound that Osama had had built in 2005.  There, after what we were originally told was a forty minute firefight, they shot and killed bin Ladn, who we have now learned was not armed although we are also told that he somehow resisted.  Several other people were killed as well, and the Obama administration has now revealed that only one of them was armed and fired on the attacking Americans.  The SEALs took bin Ladn’s body with them and flew back to their ship.  We are assured that DNA testing proved with absolute certainty that the man killed and whose body they had taken was in fact Osama bin Ladn.  The Navy promptly buried his body at sea, presumably so that no burial site could become a shrine.  As the news spread Americans, many of them young, gathered outside the White House and at “Ground Zero” in New York to celebrate.  They waved American flags and sang patriotic songs.  They waved their arms and danced in the streets.  Congratulations poured in to the White House.  The mainstream news media treated the killing of bin Ladn as a major accomplishment of the Obama Administration and as a great feat of bravery and skill by the military unit that conducted the raid.  It was, we were told, a great day for America.

Now, before I say anything else, let me make it perfectly clear that I do not mourn the death of Osama bin Ladn.  Because he was a human being he was a beloved child of God, but that he was a man living in the grasp of great evil there is no doubt.  His perception of the injustice of the way the United States and other western nations had treated the Arab people and the Muslim religion for centuries, a perception that was surely extreme and one-sided but that was not made up out of whole cloth, engendered in him a hatred that warped his personality and led him to commit atrocious acts of violence against innocent people in the United States and elsewhere.  His distorted view of Islam, a view he got growing up in Saudi Arabia, a land dominated by the extremist Wahabist sect of Islam, engendered in him a hatred of Shiite Muslims that led him to commit acts of violence against innocent Muslims who happened to understand Islam differently than he did.  In pursuit of his extremist ideology, an ideology that betrayed Islam at nearly every turn, he and his followers induced desperate young Muslim men and women to kill and to throw their precious lives away as suicide bombers with specious promises of rewards in paradise and the glorious name of martyr here on earth.  Osama bin Ladn was responsible for a great deal of evil in the world, and I do not mourn his passing.

That being said, neither do I celebrate the fact that representatives of my nation, operating with tax dollars some of which I paid, killed him and that they did so even though he was unarmed.  Readers of this blog know that I am a disciple of Jesus Christ.  You know specifically that I have committed myself to Jesus’ way of nonviolence.  Jesus’ way of nonviolence dictates that we do not use violence even against our enemies, even against human beings who are responsible for great evil in the world.  Jesus said love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  Matthew 5:44  A bumper sticker put out by the Church of the Brethren, one of the historic Christian peace churches, says “When Jesus said love your enemies, I think he probably meant don’t kill them.”  Obviously, he meant at least that.  The line that first went through my head when I heard the news of the killing of bin Ladn was “those who live by the sword die by the sword,” a paraphrase of Matthew 26:52.  Jesus says it to a person who has struck with the sword in an effort to save Jesus from arrest.  We learn that Jesus’ commitment to nonviolence was so complete that he would not let his followers use violence even to defend Jesus’ own life.  Bin Ladn of course lived by the sword, and he died by the sword; but he wasn’t the one of whom I was thinking when that line went through my head.  I was thinking of us, of us Americans, who had decided once again that living by the sword—or by the rifle—is a way to effect justice and peace. 

It isn’t.  History and human experience prove beyond doubt that violence only begets more violence.  Hate only begets more hate.  As he so often did, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Christian who truly understood, preached, and lived Jesus’ way of nonviolence, put it brilliantly.  He said:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, 
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. 
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar, 
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. 
Through violence you may murder the hater, 
but you do not murder hate. 
In fact, violence merely increases hate. 
So it goes. 
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, 
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. 
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: 
only light can do that. 
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

This is of course a truth that many of the world’s saints of different faith traditions have known.  Most importantly for us Christians, Jesus knew it.  Jesus knew that the reason we must follow the way of nonviolence is not because it works as a tactic, not because it is safer than violence, which it usually is not, but simply because it is God’s way.  Jesus was nonviolent and preached nonviolence because he knew that God is nonviolent.  That’s why the Kingdom of God must not and cannot be established on earth through violence.  I do not doubt that there is no place in the Kingdom of God for Osama bin Ladn, at least not until he has repented, until he has had a radical change of heart, a real conversion from the way of violence and terror to God’s way of nonviolence and love.  That does not mean, however, that from a Christian perspective it was appropriate or even permissible to murder him, which is precisely what we did.

Osama bin Ladn cannot now himself inflict more death and destruction upon innocent people.  That much is certain, and we can take some comfort in it; but his followers can still inflict death and destruction upon innocent people, and they almost certainly will.  Many in the Muslim world will see our killing of bin Ladn as just another act of violence by the West against Islam.  We of course don’t understand it that way, but we don’t see things from any of the many different Muslim perspectives.  We don’t see things from the perspective of people who perceive that the West oppresses and disrespects them and their religion and that it has done so for a long, long time.  Our violence, even when it is directed against the likes of Osama bin Ladn, cannot change that perspective.  It can only reinforce it.  It can only produce more extremists, more terrorists, more violence.  Violence is always an expression of hatred, and, as Dr. King said, hatred cannot drive out hatred.  Until we understand that basic truth we will never have much success in ending extremist violence against us. 

It is not surprising that the United States government killed Osama bin Ladn and that it did so without even the pretext of due process.  It is not even surprising that our troops killed several unarmed persons, that they went to the compound in Pakistan simply to kill with no intention of capturing anyone and bringing them to trial, as is now clearly the truth of what happened.  Violence and death are the way of empire; and the United States is still today the world empire par excellence.  In taking the action he did President Obama acted in perfect accordance with the wisdom of the world, with the wisdom of empire.  That wisdom is however not the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of Jesus Christ.  It must not be the wisdom of the Christian.  To quote once again the great Pete Seeger:  “When will they ever learn?”