My views as a moral theologian and Arabist

Last night President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden, the FBI's most wanted (criminal?) terrorist had been killed in a raid. I was out at the time and only heard the news about an hour after the news broke. My first reaction was, 'Why does this matter?'
In the first place, I think Osama bin Laden has been out of America's popular imagination for quite some time now. With the 9/11 attacks, we promised to "never forget" but the super-patriotism that arose from the death of nearly 3000 American civilians (out of 300,000,000, that is, only .001%), but I would argue that by the 2006 we had, essentially forgotten. By 2003, our attention was completely focused on Iraq, where Osama bin Laden was NOT, and our efforts were focused on fighting the War in Iraq (which, by comparison, resulted in the deaths of 860,000 Iraqi civilians in a country whose population was only 7,000,000, that is, more than 10%). Once Saddam Hussein was tried and executed, the American people, for the most part, began to focus on our exit strategy. We needed to get out of the Middle East. People had forgotten about the War in Afghanistan. To date, that war has been the longest waged war in American history, though with a much smaller casualty rate than most (1,140 American troops, mostly killed by friendly fire).
All this is to say, when did we begin to care about Osama again? The number one thing that affects Americans on any sort of regular basis since September 11, 2001 is increasingly higher security measures at airports due to foiled, poorly planned terrorist plots. I normally only think about 9/11 out of frustration when I have to buy a smaller tube of toothpaste, or have to wait to stand in an x-ray machine, or have my bags "randomly searched" because I put my Arabic-English dictionary in my check-on luggage. As far as I knew, we had given up on bin Laden and were only still in Afghanistan for the same reason we were still in Iraq--we couldn't figure out how to get out correctly.
So it came to me as some surprise to hear about the death of Osama bin Laden. It was first of all a surprise because I did not know we were still actually trying to find him. Moreover, it was also a surprise because of the reaction of many of my friends who were reacting as if they had just found out that everyone was getting a massive tax rebate. Chants of USA!! were the norm, apparently, both at Notre Dame and at Boston College, as if we had won a sporting event and not simply killed a man. The attitude around the country was one of jubilation.
But why?
In the first place, killing Osama bin Laden has likely done nothing to stop the supposed "War on Terror." In the US, aside from some very poorly planned terrorist plots, there has been no terrorism activity since 2001. I have read posts by people mentioning the "climate of fear" that bin Laden has put the country in, but has that really been bin Laden? The TSA's increased security measures were not implemented by al Qaeda insurgents. The phone taps and email scanning of the supposed "Patriot Act" were not lobbied by Afghan anti-American lobbyists. And though, I would agree, the morale of the United States was very much affected by what happened nearly ten years ago, I think that the general feeling of Americans in the last few years has been one of security. I find it difficult to believe that the death of bin Laden was the morale boost that this country needed. Our attention since 2003 has been on Iraq, Katrina, Indonesia, the Recession, the BP oil spill, and lately Japan, Africa and other Western Asian countries and finally the tornadoes in the South. We've moved on, or so I had thought.
But furthermore, I do not see how this will end conflicts in the Middle East. In the first place, Osama bin Laden, and al Qaeda in general, represents a branch of political power in Middle Eastern politics that Westerners often don't understand. He represents the people, largely. He has followers that are very loyal to him because he addresses what they see as real problems. Bin Laden was not fighting "America." He was fighting the materialistic capitalism embodied by the US and other nations. That was his rallying cry. That's what his followers believe. If anything, we did not assassinate Osama bin Laden, we martyred him.
So his followers will rise up against us for what we've done. The war will likely escalate, as new energy has been given to those loyal to bin Laden's ideals. As we use various portions of the Middle East to suit our advantages in various wars (read: WWI, WWII, and most of all various Cold War proxy wars), it's hard to imagine that the peoples of these regions will not resist our efforts. We see them as the aggressors, but to them, we are. They killed 3000 people in 2001 on our soil. We've killed 17,000 Afghans since then on their soil.
Finally, the cheerful reaction of many young people is very inappropriate. In 2001, we were shocked and morally offended that there were people cheering in Afghanistan when the WTC buildings were attacked. We talked about standing up for righteousness and justice and truth. We responded that we were going to fight back for freedom. Instead, our government is responsible for putting the entire country into various states of panic, of making the citizens of both Iraq and Afghanistan constantly in fear of their lives and of killing nearly 900,000 people in Iraq and Afghanistan (in other words, 300 times as many as they killed here).
What with the recent budget crisis and Head Start losing its funding, my only celebration will be that perhaps the United States will now devote much more money to social programs rather than military efforts. I will only take joy if bin Laden's death means we permanently leave Afghanistan. I will rejoice if the supposed assassination of this man means racism against Arabs (who, by the way, are ethnically distinct from Afghans). When the government gives us back our liberty, when ecumenical efforts for Christian-Muslim dialogue become more commonplace, when the blatant militaristic attitude that is synonymous with patriotism is erased from our minds, then I will rejoice. Until then, I shall take the events of yesterday as a sign of how truly we, as a supposedly Christian nation, needs to repent.

Overkill

Today I heard something quite strange on the news. President Obama and Premier Putin are discussing a new START (STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty) in order to improve the general safety of the world. I've been glancing over the treaty, and it really doesn't look all that drastic. It allows both the United States 1550 total nuclear warheads (a piece), 800 ICBM and SLBM launchers, and 700 deployed ICBM and SLBM launchers and bombers. The treaty is also supposed to require both countries to disclose the locations of their nuclear weapons.
This, in and of itself, would not be too noteworthy. Granted, one might comment that the fact that nuclear weapons are still around is scary, but because of the history of the world, I think it is not that interesting.
However, what I do find a bit intimidating is that this is a REDUCTION. Current estimates show that the US has over 10,000 nuclear weapons, and Russia has over 15,000. We may be planning on dropping down to a few thousand, but are we really fixing things?
Consider the following: when the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, it killed about 350,000 people. Bombs today are usually about twenty times as powerful. A bomb dropped on New York City would most likely kill the majority of the 9 million people there, and would cause long term effects (radiation poisoning and cancer) for the rest. Bombs sent to just New York, LA, Chicago, Boston and Washington would kill off about a tenth of the nation (five bombs). Think what 1550 could do.
We've tried to distance ourselves from the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine of the 50s and 60s, but we still cling to it. There is no possibly beneficial reason for having such great stockpiles of such malicious weapons. 1550 nuclear warheads would do just as much damage as 15000 (or, in the 70s, as many as 25000). It seems to me that even possession of nuclear stockpiles is a bad idea. As many satires and social commentaries of the Cold War taught us, the idea of MAD falls apart once situations get heated. Rather than turning to negotiation tactics, the fear is that hot heads and short tempers in moments of crisis would lead to the (rather easy) result of launching a few hundred or thousand nuclear weapons.
Generals and war tacticians told us that the threat of mutual destruction was the deterrent. Of course, this idea of "deterrence" is similar to the half-baked idea that executing criminals deters people from committing heinous crimes. Of course, crime rates have not really dropped since the death penalty was reinstated in 1985, and executions have actually risen. The main point is that the threat of violence does not really deter violence.
Terry Eagleton, a renowned literature critic and defender of theism, said once that if one nation launches weapons against the other, the other one has no duty to launch back, but in fact has an ethical duty to not retaliate. Destruction of all mankind is a dire price to pay in order to "get back." Simply because one country is obliterated, this does not mean that the ethical thing to do is to erradicate the second. Genocide is not an ethically viable option. So the threat of mutual destruction even proves to be a grossly unethical proposition.
But the truly, absolutely scariest thing is that this treaty is facing some controversy in congress. Republicans are loath to ratify the bill because, many of them argue, it will reduce our nuclear capability. It baffles me that we would elect men and women who would take such a position. I find it disconcerting and utterly nauseating that our fears would not be that we have too many nuclear weapons.
And then, many of these representatives have the nerve to call themselves Christians. Jesus, the man who said, "I a man strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the left also," and "Love your enemy. Do good to those who despitefully use you." How can someone claim to follow this teaching but still hold on to the idea of Mutual Assured Destruction? How can we, as American people, settle for such a slap in the face of decency?