Habemus Corpus

[Plaid Adder]

When we heard about the announcement we were sure that it wasn't going to be good news. My partner's first speculation was that maybe poor Joe Biden had had a heart attack. I'm glad it was leaked early, because if I'd had to sit and watch the NBC News crew blather and speculate for an hour the stress might have made my head explode.

So. We have Osama Bin Laden's body.

It is kind of hard to believe; it's also kind of hard to feel. The jubilation with which the news has been greeted is not something resounding in our household, where we are more worried about what to do if PJ winds up hearing about this. She's only 3, and we haven't told her yet about 9/11. But mainly what impresses me as I sit here trying to write about this is: This is not really the news that I have been waiting for, these past 10 years.

What I have been waiting for is the news that the war is over. By "the war" I mean the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the war on terror, the war, the war, the war that George W. Bush announced in his first address to Congress after 9/11, the war that has become so much a part of American life that we have forgotten what it was like before.

It is possible that now that we have our corpse and our trophy and our bragging rights and all the rest of it, it will be politically easier to end the war in Afghanistan. About that, I would be glad. About this...well, after all that's been destroyed in the past ten years in the name of getting Bin Laden, just about anything would be an anticlimax.

Obviously it's good for our side that it was Obama who made that announcement and not George W. Bush or, God help us all, President Trump. I would feel more joy about that if I felt better about "our side" these days. Nevertheless, I will say that it's quite possible that the reason this happened on Obama's watch and not Bush's is that Obama actually thought getting Bin Laden was important, whereas for Bush's team and their priorities it was really better if Bin Laden was at large, because that gave them the excuse they needed to get their war on.

The NBC talking heads seem very convinced that Bin Laden's death marks the end of an era, even as they reassure us that the war on terror will continue. I hope it does mean the end of an era--an era that I have to say, I could barely stand living through. I hope that symbolically this will make some things possible that were not considered possible up to now. I hope that maybe we will actually see the war end now.

I have not much more to say about it, really, except that I'm glad to be still here to post about it on DU, which sustained me through the worst of the post-9/11 years. I hope that good will come of this. We'll see what happens.

The Plaid Adder

[MedleyMisty]

1. Exactly my feelings

End the "war on terror". Close Gitmo. Stop torturing people. Dissolve Homeland Security. Repeal the Patriot Act. Stop the sexual abuse at the airport. Then I'll celebrate.

[texpatriot2004]

2. Hey Plaid, thanks for your post. I too relied on DU during those

years after 9/11 and BushCo insanity. Glad DU is still here and glad we're here too.

[leftstreet]

3. K&R

[LongTomH]

4. Yesterday, I was talking to a Jewish friend about the death of Qaddafi's son

and the jubilation about it in some quarters. She maintains that it's against Judaism to ever celebrate the death of an enemy. My reply was that's against Christianity as well. Actually, it's against any religion I've ever encountered.

[themadstork]

5. yeah

I have no problem admitting that he was scum and that this is a military/intelligence victory, but I just can't get psyched up to celebrate a death. Feels like dancing around a corpse.

[Joe the Revelator]

10. Groucho Marx did a solemn Charelston on Hitler's grave.....

True story.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. Or it would be, if Hitler had a grave. nt

[Joe the Revelator]

15. He went to sight of Hitlers bunker, climbed up the rubble, and danced there.....

http://www.neatorama.com/2010/07/13/dancing-on-hitlers-grave/

[RaleighNCDUer]

18. Not quite the same thing, but it will do.

Ya work with what ya got.

[Leopolds Ghost]

34. In the new order, there is no moral prohibition on such things, thats for newspaper-reading eggheads

Not 17-year old video game addicts longing for their first headshot,

in between placing ads in the paper for a cushy job and blaming American government when they don't get it.

[scarletwoman]

6. Thank you for an excellent post. I feel the same.

I don't feel any particular sense of jubilation, either, beyond an appreciation for seeing this one loose end tied up.

I'll save my jubilation for an end to the National Security State and U.S. militarism, should those unlikely events ever occur in what remains of my lifetime.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Very well said

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

8. You've eloquently expressed what I wish I could have - OBL death supposedly vindicates the War(s)

I am so mad that people are celebrating as if this is what we've been waiting for.

All these wars, all these deaths, maimings, torture, rape, displacements?
All of this evil and we are supposed to say its ok, lookie we got him?

Thank you Plaid Adder.

[Leopolds Ghost]

33. Actually, it raises a huge problem for the War. It means this whole time we've been chasing shadows

While Bin Laden was living in comparative luxury in a wealthy military suburb of Pakistan's capital city.

I suppose it could have been worse -- he could have been in SA the whole time. :( I am glad he is caught and gone though. :) But I want us all to know what he knew, and apparently the US officials didn't.

[readmoreoften]

39. +1

[bullwinkle428]

9. Beautiful post, K&R, and don't be such a stranger around here!

;)

[Warren DeMontague]

12. Maybe it means that god-damn decade is finally fucking over.

Whatever it's gonna end up being called. Maybe we should just call it 'that god-damn decade'.

[jus_the_facts]

13. But...it's such a marvelous night for a grave dance...the Patriot Act Shuffle anyone?

....amazes me that any questioning of 9/11 is now wholeheartedly embraced here as conspiracy theory.... :(

[JVS]

14. Habemas

[Plaid Adder]

17. "Habeas corpus" means "you may have the body. "Habemus corpus" means...

..."we have the body."

See the Latin verb _habere_ conjugated in all its glory here:

http://www.math.osu.edu/~econrad/lang/lv2.html

Romans we go the house,

The Plaid Adder

[JVS]

20. Uffda. I fucked up.

You were right all along, and my memory has earned itself the dreaded scotch torture.

[Jim Lane]

26. So why is it "corpus" instead of "corpum" or "corpem"?

In the sentence "We have the body", the word "body" is the direct object so it would be in the accusative case. According to , it would be "ccrpum" if second or fourth declension, and "corpem" if third.

As for habeas corpus, this usage may indicate that I'm wrong, or it may be that the full version of the writ was interpreted so that the body was the subject -- something like "We command you that the body (i.e. the person) you have be brought before the court...." English isn't nearly as inflected as Latin is, but if you substitute a pronoun then you can see that this would be a nominative ("he" not "him"): "We command you that he be brought before the court...."

Well, professor Plaid Adder?

[Plaid Adder]

42. Corpus is a neuter third-declension noun.

Third declension neuter nouns are the same in the nominative and the accusative.

Thanks to Mrs. Plaidder, my authority on all things Latin. But don't take her word for it!

http://people.hsc.edu/drjclassics/Latin/index_cards/3rd_declension_neuter.shtm

The Plaid Adder

[Jim Lane]

43. My thanks to you and your classical colleague!

I studied Latin back when the Solar System had nine planets. Apparently this is something else that got changed.

Unless, by some chance, my memory is weakening.... Nah, that can't be it.

[WilliamPitt]

16. Good to see you again

:hug:

[LiberalAndProud]

36. We have missed you, Plaid Adder.

So often you say what I want to say but can't find the words. Like here, for instance.

:kick:

[Terry in Austin]

19. Habuimus corpus, apparently

We HAD the body just long enough to bury it at sea, according to the story I saw.

Now all we have is somebody's word.

Either way, I'm glad the bogey man is dead -- ultimately, it doesn't matter if he really exists, as long as people believe he does and commit obnoxious acts based on that belief. Now the belief is gone and, well, yay.

[Plaid Adder]

44. Well, all we've ever got is somebody's word, really.

I've been thinking about this, because when I heard they had buried him at sea, my first thought was, "Oh shit, the birthers will go nuts."

But then I thought, you know what, there is no way for any of us to 'prove' any of this to ourselves. Even if they had put him in a mausoleum, how would we know it wasn't empty? Or say they had him put on display in a glass casket like Lenin, how would anyone who went to see him know that was REALLY him? As for film and video, we all know all of that can be photoshopped. Short of issuing us each individual tissue samples with a home DNA testing kit, I don't know how they could 'prove' to us that they got him.

I have a one-line response for anyone who tries to tell me this didn't really happen: "If all it takes is making shit up, how come the Bush administration never 'killed' Bin Laden?"

The Plaid Adder

[Terry in Austin]

45. The middle road lies somewhere in between...

Yes, ultimately all we have are our beliefs, and the ways in which we support them is an essentially epistemological question -- after all, this whole DU thing could be an elaborate prank somebody is playing on us!

Short of that, I certainly make no claim that the OBL killing didn't really happen. I'm sure they got the sumbitch. I just wish they'd kept the body in evidence. From a law-enforcement point of view, they disposed of the body, and that's not cool. From a traditional wanted-dead-or-alive point of view, it's kind of customary to bring back the head before you get the reward. One way or another, it struck me as kind of shoddy procedure.

Not that big a deal -- just poor form, and all that.

[Demeter]

46. Bin Ladin Was Always Worth More Alive for the BFEE Scion

Rumor of Osama's death to renal failure in 2001 still persist today.

Obama hopes to score re-election on this "death".

[seabeyond]

21. ya. i had to try and explain 911 to my 3 and 5 yr olds. i know how hard it is, you know, over 3000

dead americans, a devastated NY and all. plains flying into buildings. building falling down in destruction and death. was rough explaining that to a child so young. what my boys grew up with.

[Overseas]

22. K&R

Well said.

I'm hoping it will push us to end the wars sooner.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

23. The only "celebrating" I will do -

is when American forces leave Afghanistan and Iraq -- really leave, not some bullshit drawdown or forces left behind. Sadly, I think I will never have the chance for that celebration. :(

[myrna minx]

24. Thank you. K&R n/t

[Kber]

25. If you don't mind advice from a stranger - you don't need to tell your 3 year old about it yet.

I had to, but only because my child was 3 at the time and he had 3 classmates who's parents didn't come home that day.

The day after we launched our campaign in Afghanistan, my son and I were walking through Penn Station and passing by solders if full gear with machine guns.

My son asked me why there were there. "Well," I said, "Remember when those bad guys flew those plans into the World Trade Center buildings where mommy used to work. Well, our solders are going into the country where their leader lives to try to find him. The soldiers are here to protect us."

He was quiet for a bit and then asked "When the plans hit the buildings, that was when Ashley's dad and Matt's mom got deaded, right?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"And the soldiers are here to make sure that won't happen to us, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"So, nothing like that could ever happen to us, then, right?"

"Yeah."

Years later my son asked me if I ever lied to him. Not a silly lie, like about birthday presents, but about something big and I told him that story.

He's 14 now and we've had more mature conversations about the war and its consequences for us and for the people of Afghanistan. But at age 3, I looked right into his baby blue eyes and told him what he needed to hear (and I needed to believe) for us both to sleep that night.

Sometimes as a parent, you do what you have to do, you know?

[Kurovski]

27. K&R. (nt)

[EFerrari]

28. Apparently we don't habemos. n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

32. At first this infuriated me -- why take the body only to dump it at sea and raise the possibility?

But Obama's HS advisor explanation that they wanted to bury the body in accordance with the religion of the family and not mistreat non-combatant members of Osama's own family seemed to satisfy. And apparently they would have even considered taking him alive if no resistance was put up, although that was called a blatant well-intentioned lie by Wolf Blitzer who seemed quite smug that they would lie to everyone not "in the know" about such an important question -- and self-assured that no American would want to see him captured alive and interrogated if not tried.

[EFerrari]

38. I think we will find out that this is a violation of the Geneva Convention

on the burial of the dead. But, when was the last time the US honored that quaint document. :)

[readmoreoften]

40. And why is this different than pics of Saddam hanging? Why did I have to look at the mangled blue

face of one of those Al Qaida #2's back in July 2006 or 2007 plastered all over the news? Why does Osama get the royal treatment? And with no pictures. As if suddenly we're not a bloodthirsty people.

At this point I officially know nothing about Osama's death. I can only take the US government's word for it that this is not a propaganda campaign. Of course I can't see a motive in such a campaign, but then again I didn't see a motive for dropping light bulbs filled with bacteria in the NYC subway in the 1960s during MK Naomi either. So I don't trust the US government. I think it's very possible that he was killed yesterday. I think it's very possible that he died of natural causes and that this is a show to give us closure. I just know this for sure: I don't trust the US government and I don't think this is going to end the wars.

[EFerrari]

41. I literally don't understand why people trust the Pentagon's version

of anything.

lol

:hi:

[Kurovski]

29. Kick. (nt)

[Leopolds Ghost]

30. What are you upset about? Doesn't killing him satisfy?

Yeah, Some of the celebration doesn't seem healthy, it seems like the pre-Old Testament "we killed the Great Enemy, we got souvenirs" -- I for one would have rather seen the US capture Bin Laden if only for a brief period.

Would we have tried to take Hitler alive or burned his body and scattered the remains like Stalin did? Admittedly what Hitler did was even worse, and set the stage for Bin Laden's anti-semitism too. It raises an interesting question in that capturing Bin Laden would be almost more dangerous to the US keeping him alive than killing him with a single bullet. We knew he would put up a fight anyway, so we really were catering to his wish.

I wanted to go down to Dupont Circle to the Newsroom and buy copies of the papers CNN was showing, but I found out the Newsroom has closed -- there is no place in DC I can go to buy newspapers or even metro late editions of the NY dailies (they sell the generic DC editions in local shops). So the people who are promoting and using Twitter have no long term memory of what they want or why we are still in Afghanistan and Iraq -- lacking newspapers or any long-form reading tradition, they aren't shocked by the news that we here have been saying along, that Bin Laden would be found safe in the arms of "US ally" Pakistan while we were chasing shadows in Afghanistan.

It's no wonder I haven't seen footage of US Marines jumping and cheering like the young crowds (unfortunately populated intensely by frat boys) here in the US. They know the implications and they can see the big picture, but I'm sure they're overjoyed inside, they also know what this means for Afghanistan. But the frat boys only know twitter, don't read newspapers and journalism is dying in this country, replaced by 5 channels, all of which will be on a combined TV/Internet service. So they don't know any better, not being old enough to remember why we're in Afghanistan.

[DinahMoeHum]

31. Obama has been far more subtle and discreet about getting OBL. . .

Bush and Cheney had the subtlety of a herd of elephants stomping along a muddy riverbank.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

35. A friend's 15 year old daughter was just saying how she lurrvs boosh

He's her hero....

Her dad can't figure out where she got this crap, but it fits your comment.

The morans can't understand subtlety. They need sophomoric cowboy and indian shows; anything else is over their head. Captain Codpiece was always playing to the dummies.

Obama doesn't do that, and that's part of why the reich and the M$M can't deal with him.

[Godot51]

37. And now what shall become of us?

Waiting for the Barbarians


What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are to arrive today.

Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.

Why did our emperor wake up so early,
and sits at the greatest gate of the city,
on the throne, solemn, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
And the emperor waits to receive
their chief. Indeed he has prepared
to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed
many titles and names of honor.

Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out
today in their red, embroidered togas;
why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets,
and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
why are they carrying costly canes today,
wonderfully carved with silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today,
and such things dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't the worthy orators come as always
to make their speeches, to have their say?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today;
and they get bored with eloquence and orations.

Why all of a sudden this unrest
and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become).
Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
and all return to their homes, so deep in thought?

Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.

And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1904)