Postscript to heroes

LATE LAST week, before Manny Pacquiao demolished all other news along with Shane Mosley, the government urged the Muslim community in this country not to turn Osama Bin Laden into a hero. That was after a group of them tried to stage a rally in front of the US Embassy condemning his killing.

Bin Laden is not a hero, said Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda. “His terrorism affects our country as well and the entire globe. We request our Muslim brothers to look at the consequences of terrorism and not just at the fact that Osama is a Muslim.” He said Bin Laden had committed terrorist acts against America and America had every right to punish him for those acts.

In fairness, the Muslims in Quiapo did not exactly call Bin Laden a hero, they called him a martyr, though arguably the line between those two is pretty thin. What had incensed them, which was what they were protesting, were the brutality of his killing and his burial at sea. The latter was a particularly sticky point, burial at sea for a Muslim other than in the direst circumstances such as a sinking ship transgressing Islamic law. Therefore, the Muslims said, the Americans desecrated Bin Laden’s body.

The Muslims did extol Bin Laden during their service for him. Although many Muslims did not agree with his methods, spiritual leader Alim Jamil Yahya said, they all revered him for fighting for freedom.

I agree with the government’s caution but find it inadequate. The problem is really a complex one and reducing it to black and white doesn’t do anyone a service.

At the very least, one person’s hero is bound to be another person’s heel, and vice versa. It’s tempting in this respect to compare Bin Laden with Che Guevara. Guevara too was a monster in American eyes. He shared one thing with Bin Laden that made him exceptionally so. He directly threatened America. Bin Laden did so by razing the Twin Towers and threatening to commit more mayhem in the American heartland. Guevara did so by helping to liberate Cuba and threatening to turn America’s backdoor, the subcontinent down south, communist. Guevara was an exponent of world revolution, a thing he tried to start with Latin America.

He was captured alive in Bolivia, but was executed shortly afterward. Legend says he raised a fist and spat at his executioners as they shot him to death, an act, testified to by witnesses, which cemented his claim to fame. In death, Guevara did more to fan the flames of revolution than he did in life (he was a poor organizer apparently, alienating allies in Bolivia, but that’s another story). Yet another proof of the immense power of martyrdom.

I do not know how Bin Laden will fare in future. Guevara took on mythic proportions almost immediately after his death. I suspect Bin Laden won’t follow suit, even in the longer term, and not just for reasons that owe to his demonization by Washington. Those reasons owe more obdurately to a world still able to distinguish between terrorism and revolution. Methods do count for something. The means do matter in the end. It is one thing to exhort, or cajole, or even coerce a people to overthrow their government, and even commit mayhem in the heat of battle or the pit of war, it is another to raze a building in another country, whether that is America or not.

Telling people, Muslims or not, not to turn Bin Laden into a hero is perfectly justified, but it carries with it a lot of nuances. The Muslims can always turn Lacierda’s statement around and say, “We ask you as well to look at the consequences of state terrorism and not just at the fact that you are proto-American.”

The demonization of Bin Laden doesn’t just carry with it a condemnation of terrorism, it carries with it a not very subtle justification of American aggression. Not least the invasion of Iraq, which is passed off as part of the all-encompassing and all-exonerating, “war against terror.” Of course that action had the approval of Congress and the endorsement of the American people. That doesn’t make it better, that makes it worse. That only makes the American Congress just as indictable as the ones who deliberately lied about the weapons of mass destruction to whip up popular support, or indeed hysteria, for the invasion. Not least for cowardice in the face of jingoistic support for it, and opting to go along rather than defend the institutions of democracy as the Founding Fathers saw it.

True enough, none of this calls for turning Bin Laden into a hero. Whatever cause you are fighting for, whatever flag you are waving, whatever good you are advancing, killing innocents does not make for heroism. But all of this calls for indicting as well the American officials who wreaked, and continue to wreak, terror upon the world. Yes, terror. The obliteration of the innocents, particularly children, by smart bombs is no less terroristic because their faces, unlike those who died in 9/11, have never been seen, their names never been uttered, their memories never been kept other than by their loves ones. Nor may the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq be blithely excused by saying, “Ay mali,” it was an honest mistake, because if it was a mistake at all, it was a most dishonest one. The people who mounted that knew there weren’t any.

By all means urge Muslims, local and foreign, to remember what Bin Laden did to the Twin Towers of New York and refrain from trumpeting his virtues. But by the same token, urge the world as well to remember what George W. Bush and his gang have done to the world and refrain from extolling their cause. The second are no more heroes than the first. The second are no less criminals than the first.

They should be thankful they are not being hunted down like one.