Myth and Osama bin Laden

Before the Pentagon released footage culled from a video that was reportedly recovered from Osama bin Laden’s foxhole on the night of his killing, few in the Western world outside of the CIA would have cared to envision the Al Qaeda chief in any kind of personal circumstance. Did he, for instance, prefer any particular brand of toothpaste? Did he like to pick his nose? Was he or was he not a neat freak? How was he in bed?

The most intriguing of the silent documentary clips being aired features a tired-looking bin Laden in a ski-cap, wrapped in a dark shawl instead of the messianic golden robes we were accustomed to seeing in his savvy propaganda releases, the instantly recognizable beard streaked by an unfamiliar gray. Apparently – and we are denied any further explanatory context for this hypothesis – bin Laden liked watching news coverage of himself on Arab television.

Just as it did in the days after Saddam Hussein’s capture, the American broadcast media have sought to unify under the banner of patriotism. It has lately taken to making the point that in addition to being the most hunted man in the world, a mass murderer and all-around fiend, bin Laden was also a narcissist; a man given to dyeing his beard and seeking to project a fake virility in the video messages he recorded for his supporters, a man who got off on the knowledge that he could stop the world press by sending an audio tape to any obscurely local radio station.

Yet, far from confirming bin Laden’s reputation as a murderous megalomaniac, the Pentagon video I cite humanizes him in ways that make me – personally speaking -- uncomfortable. It almost portrays bin Laden as a mere curmudgeon, a misanthropic recluse looking back sentimentally on ‘better’ days, if that is what one calls blowing up planes and warships, and murdering thousands of innocent civilians in the name of some incoherent political project to reshape the world order. The footage makes him look ill and weak from disease, and not unlike my own grandfather whose final days were marked by a courageous battle against both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

You could also turn this argument around and say, narcissism when coupled with power is a far more dangerous beast. If self-reflexive images were sufficient indicators of megalomania, then we need look no further than 82 pictures from the night of the 2008 Presidential election that the Obama White House itself later posted on Flickr. Shorn of its positive context, the image of Obama watching the drama of his accession unfold on television is nothing if not symbolic of grotesque self-love.

How might history, with its distancing perspective, judge this episode? Bin Laden may be dead but it seems inevitable Western culture must relinquish its grasp on the world’s imagination within the next century and begin to decline; and with that, history will change course.

Bin Laden’s legend was burnished by his having evaded detection for nearly a decade. In some ways he was an anachronism, more fit for the Crusades than hyperreal warfare; a throwback to Hannibal, the Carthinagian military leader who fought Rome, or Boadicea, the queen who led her tribe into battle against the forces of Emperor Nero, and other ruthless rebel leaders like these from millennia past when it was far more acceptable to kill non-combatants. And yet, in other ways, he was as invested in the notion of the modern as the most astute propagandist.

Albert Camus predicted that future historians would have two things to say of the modern man – that he fornicated and read the papers. Even if that were to prove true, I like to think they would be prepared to make an exception and say something insightful about complex characters like Osama bin Laden.

Theirs is not an easy job, however. Scholars will need to sift through all the disinformation spread by both sides over a period of three decades before they can address the question, who was bin Laden, really? It is fascinating to think that in this age of information surplus, we might never learn the answer.

A national conceit

Of all the conceits perpetrated by this country's media, the term 'the American people' infuriates me the most.

I am not certain if Barack Obama contrived to use it when he visited India a few weeks ago. I do know however that the phrase slips by most people I know, both here in the United States and back home. It does not bother them at all. The phrase is after all in common circulation, employed by affiliates of every political persuasion. At the end of the recent election cycle, combatants as always made nice and humbly accepted that the American people had spoken, and that their verdict would be respected. The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg criticized the selective usage of the phrase to depict the will of what he branded, "in practical terms, the slice of the scaled-down midterm electorate that went one way in 2008 and the other in 2010".

I am more struck by the remarkable arrogance in the implied assertion that "the American people" are worthy of a collective title -- a cynical ideology that, by promising the mythical prize of inclusion, ingeniously transcends racial and socio-economic divides. My outsider status within this country no doubt impacts my response, seeing that I am constantly made aware of my visa status. At the same time I am not alone in my otherness within this historically troubled society. Minority groups constantly negotiate their position relative to each other and to whites in what is arguably the most powerful nation in history.

Any casual student of the rise and fall of empires would estimate that the mean period of complete domination once used to be around a few hundred years. Given the extent of its cross-cultural influence, it is difficult to predict how long America might continue to remain a serious force.

England is the other recent colonial power that persists in glorifying its nationhood, except newspapers like The Sun are usually given to moaning about the good old days. As a future political giant India has shoved the propaganda of patriotism down its citizens' throats with a remarkable degree of efficiency, given the disparate conditions of language and religion. God knows, the mainstream Hindi film industry makes enough 'wholesome' movies. Yet, next to the United States, countries like India and Brazil seem emasculated. Much has been made of the economic rise of these two countries but at the risk of oversimplifying, for all practical purposes China is the new windmill that cannot be conquered whereas India is merely Sancho Panza to America's Don Quixote. New Delhi Television's 'We The People' seems comically inadequate when you compare it to the perpetual construction of American greatness.

Smooth transfers of power serve as a reminder of the moral superiority of civilized discourse, and as an opportunity to convince skeptical American voters of the noble intentions behind drilling democratic values into strategically crucial regions. Regrettably, in the twisted conception of contemporary conservatism true patriots support unpopular wars; the Left prolongs those wars for fear of being labeled elitist pussies. It would be naive to make an issue out of the hypocrisy of America's lack of interest in politically irrelevant regions like Burma or Sri Lanka. Nevertheless there is injustice, even irony, in the circumstance of a nation that routinely subjects racially-charged slurs to self-censorship, yet is inclined to wield a phrase that is equally inappropriate like a gleeful phallus.