What about the post-Bin Laden America?

Media focused on the emotive and visceral yesterday in re-telling the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Is he  really dead?  The humiliating burial at sea?  Will he be a martyr? Who gets credit President Obama or, believe it or not, former President George W. Bush?  Really, that’s what the court jesters on the right are saying... Then there were the political oddsmakers: Will this make it more difficult to defeat President Obama in 2012? There’s even a poll.

And then finally, there was the unbelievably daft vindication of torture. 

In the words of my alter ego Mushmouth: “The American media could fuck up a wet dream.”

But in this insanity there were the words of NYT’s Roger Cohen that really got me. In an op-ed entitled “The Post-Bin Laden World,” Cohen posed an important question: What will the world look like in this Post-Bin Laden world? Does Bin Laden’s death along with the successful people-driven uprising in Egypt signal a significant shift in the Arab world? He makes the very important point that for many in the Arab world, Bin Laden’s death was less relevant than the plight of a budding Democracy in Egypt and Tunisia or the fate of the Libyan resistance.

Cohen writes: 
“He died a marginal figure to the transformation fast-forwarding the Arab world toward pluralism and self-expression...

His death comes as post-Islamist revolutions from Tunis to Cairo topple despotism in the name of democratic values long denied Arabs, who, in their vast majority, now seek a reasonable balance between modernity and their faith. Arab pride has disentangled itself from the complex of the West. Bin Laden’s Holy War drew sustenance from “Westoxification” — the sense of humiliation among Arabs at perceived Western dominance and aggression. Bin Laden whipped that resentment into Al Qaeda’s capacity for nihilistic mass murder.

He died as Arabs en masse move away from the politics of rage and revenge, directed mainly outward, toward a new politics of responsibility and representative government, directed mainly inward.”

Cohen makes an interesting point: “Inward-looking.” But he stops short of demanding that we as Americans do the same. Even now, neocons and pundits are turning their righteous indignation to Pakistan, working themselves into a fervor to fight another war we can’t afford... It seems ironic that Bin Laden’s death somehow means more to us Americans than it does to the floundering movement he once spearheaded...

Cohen goes on to say:

“An era has passed. It was a painful decade of disorientation and American whiplash. The mass murder so agonizing it had to be distilled to three digits — 9/11 — poisoned a new century at its outset. Bin Laden was that poison’s slow drip.”

“How then to complete the work and make a corpse not only of Bin Laden but his movement? Oust Gaddafi with ruthlessness and in short order. Steer the Arab revolutions into port with consistent political support and funding. Arab democracy must also mean Arab opportunity. End the war in Afghanistan as soon as America’s basic security requirements are met. Make America’s closest regional ally, Israel, understand that a changed Middle East cannot be met with unchanging Israeli policies. Palestine, like Israel, must rise to the region’s dawning post-Osama era of responsibility and representation.”

In summary, Cohen does slip in the real point here. Sure, it’s important what the people of the Arab world do. It’s important that they continue to move towards these Democratic principles and find a way to balance their faith and the modern world. But what we do, from now on, is equally important. It’s just as important to envision a post-Bin Laden America as it is to preach about and hope for a post-Bin Laden Arab world. We should re-evaluate U.S. foreign policy from that same vantage point, appreciating the wave of Democratic uprisings in the Arab world for what it is.

Sure, we picked the winning side in Egypt. But we were helping the people of Egypt depose a tyrant we picked in the first place. And I wonder, somewhat cynically, if our actions in Libya would be so altruistic if Moammar Gaddafi wasn’t such an insufferable pain in our and Israel’s ass.

The point is the people of the Arab world are moving, whether we like it or not, towards Democracy. It would be a huge mistake if we as a country did not take the opportunity to be at least somewhat introspective.