The U.S. used drones and manned aircraft…to drop bombs and missiles on Somalia, ending the lives of at least 150 people. As it virtually always does, the Obama administration instantly claimed that the people killed were “terrorists” and militants — members of the Somali group al Shabaab — but provided no evidence to support that assertion. Nonetheless, most U.S. media reports contained nothing more than quotes from U.S. officials about what happened, conveyed uncritically and with no skepticism of their accuracy: The dead “fighters … were assembled for what American officials believe was a graduation ceremony and prelude to an imminent attack against American troops,” pronounced the New York Times. So, the official story goes, The Terrorists were that very moment “graduating” — receiving their Terrorist degrees — and about to attack U.S. troops when the U.S. killed them.
While you were sleeping, playing World of Warcraft on your Xbox, or watching Duck Dynasty reruns, your government slaughtered 150 people whose names we will probably never know…not that we’d likely care, anyway. Perhaps the most significant and distressing outcome of our now 15-year-old never-ending war against terrorism is that we’ve learned to devalue human life. Some lives- American- are worth more than others- specifically, Muslim. We’ve accepted the reality that we shouldn’t question the killing of those who are “less than” and “not like us” in order that we may continue to lead lives bathed in safety and security. When others die, we get to continue to live. It’s a simplistic calculus, but it’s what we’ve implicitly determined we can live with.
We’ve been taught (more cynically, propagandized into believing) that a life is of no value to us once the word “terrorist” is attached to it. A “terrorist” has made their bed; it’s America’s solemn obligation to force them to sleep in it- permanently. Left unspoken, perhaps because it’s largely considered unnecessary, is any definition of what a “terrorist” actually is or the criteria used to facilitate such a definition.
By accepting the implicit devaluation of human life, we shield ourselves from asking uncomfortable moral questions- “How do we know they were terrorists?” “Did their involvement- however significant or tangential- warrant their execution at the hands of our military?” “What checks and balances are in place to ensure that innocent civilians aren’t killed, either directly or as ‘collateral damage’?”
We don’t ask these questions because we don’t want to have to do the heavy lifting of addressing the morality (or lack of same) raised by our self-ascribed role as the world’s judge, jury, and executioner. We don’t want to think about those killed in the name of our safety and security, so we blithely accept our government’s explanation that those killed were “bad people.” Case closed.
With that boilerplate set of claims in place, huge numbers of people today who have absolutely no idea who was killed are certain that they all deserved it. As my colleague Murtaza Hussain said of the 150 dead people: “We don’t know who they are, but luckily they were all bad.” For mindless authoritarians, the words “terrorist” and “militant” have no meaning other than: anyone who dies when my government drops bombs, or, at best, a “terrorist” is anyone my government tells me is a terrorist. Watch how many people today are defending this strike by claiming “terrorists” and “militants” were killed using those definitions even though they have literally no idea who was killed.
Collectively we accept, even celebrate the targeting and mass killings of those our government has labeled “terrorists.” Beyond blind, unquestioning acceptance of this narrative, how are we to know that those killed in the name of our safety and security actually posed a clear and present danger to the Homeland? How do we know- outside of accepting our government’s assurances- that those killed were, in fact, terrorists?
I’m not necessarily disputing that the 150 people killed in Somalia weren’t in fact evil, nasty, very bad people eminently worthy of being dispatched to the Afterlife. They may well have been the worst sort of America-hating Islamofascists imaginable (some people need to be killed, amiright?)…but we’re left to accept our government’s assessment in that regard. I realize that there are processes and procedures in place to ensure that the people we kill are in fact “worthy” of being obliterated, but when we’re expected to accept the government’s word, it can make for a pretty uncomfortable moral dilemma.
By merely labeling someone a “terrorist,” a person becomes in our eyes less worthy of continuing their mortal existence. By seeing them as a terrorist first and foremost, we’re no longer burdened with the need to recognize their humanity. If we’re going to grant carte blanche to execute terrorists in our name, shouldn’t we understand the criteria used to define terrorism and to determine that killing them is an appropriate and moral to take? Can we honestly say that we do?
This particular mass killing is unlikely to get much attention in the U.S. due to (1) the election-season obsession with horse-race analysis and pressing matters such as the size of Donald Trump’s hands; (2) widespread Democratic indifference to the killing of foreigners where there’s no partisan advantage to be had against the GOP from pretending to care; (3) the invisibility of places like Somalia and the implicit devaluing of lives there; and (4) the complete normalization of the model whereby the U.S. president kills whomever he wants, wherever he wants, without regard for any semblance of law, process, accountability, or evidence.
I don’t necessarily accept Glenn Greenwald’s cynical disdain regarding President Obama’s decisions in the war on terrorism…but he does ask some very sound and uncomfortable questions which never quite seem to get answered. The fact we’ve largely stopped asking questions says a lot about the diminished state of our collective morality.
When we cease seeing the taking of human life as anything but tragic, our claim to humanity and to being moral beings should rightly be called into question.
First they came for the terrorists, but I said nothing because I wasn’t a terrorist (apologies to Reinhold Niebuhr)….
