No Laughing Matter

War is God's way of
teaching Americans geography
--Ambrose Bierce

Don't hang back with the brutes!
--A Streetcar Named Desire,
Tennessee Williams

Why did you have to act so mean?
Don't you know you're a human being?
--Bad Boys, Bob Marley
_________________

Ranger feels confident announcing, ahead of his class, that the U.S. has officially lost the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©).

We don't know exactly when the fateful moment occurred, but watching David Letterman's monolog last night confirmed it. The host and his audience were larfing it up over the murder of Libyan leader Moammer Qadhafi. Not one audience member protested, "That is not funny". We are sure the other humorists pandering to the lowest common denominator -- like Colbert et. al. -- also joined in the fun.

We publish photos of dead and broken bodies for the entertainment value, and then call them brutal and savage. Is it possible that people like Lettermen and audience must make all of this death into a joke because they find it so incomprehensible?

Secretary of State Clinton is seen laughing after receiving the news with a CBS correspondent HERE. "We came, we saw, he died" she declared, like a great Roman emperor (or more at Bill Murray.) Can you picture Henry Kissinger or Warren Christopher laughing at anyone's -- let alone, a head of state's -- murder? A somber, regal pose is expected by government leaders in the public eye. What hath Survivor and Co. wrought in this nation?

The health of a nation can be gauged by many things, but the level of it's public discourse and sentiment is a strong indicator of its humanity. We howled when evil incarnate Saddam Hussein was dragged from his "hidey hole", only to by lynched by a rowdy mob. We are fascinated by images of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek in a cage.

Now, we celebrate along with Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama the macabre spectacle of Qadhafi's brutal murder and the "freedom" gained by the murderous thugs who committed this atrocity, delivered to them by the beneficent largesse of the U.S. Nato bombing campaign. We print dehumanizing and humiliating photos as if to cement the former leaders' image as demons somehow worthy of this brutality. Brutality against even a brute is still brutality.

The violence done to our collective humanity is inexpressible. If Manuel Noriega was a Prisoner of War, then Saddam and Qadhafi should have been afforded the protection of a POW. According to the Geneva Conventions, abuse of prisoners under any circumstance is not permissible; yet Qadhafi was murdered and tortured in cold blood. Global Post released shocking video of a wounded Qadhafi being sodomized by the gleeful mob (Qadhafi Sodomized).

Ranger recalls the night Saddam was executed: he (Ranger) was in a redneck shit-kicking bar and they erupted in cheers at the murder, exactly the same glee in which Letterman was wallowing last night. Laughing at the dead is not Christian; it is not even human. No Enlightenment value is seen in such emotion.

Letterman went on to joke about the lack of trial in Qadhafi's case. Why do we laugh at the trashing of due process of law? Has that concept been so thoroughly trounced that we figure only rubes cleave to it? Far less funny is the reality that no progress has occurred; in fact, this is a regressive step. At the very minimum, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Why is the image of Qadhafi lying bullet-ridden in a meat locker for general photo ops, funny?

The pressing question is: Are we Christian, or a nation of morals? Do we have human empathy? What does it mean to be "human"? Are Enlightenment ideals quaint notions past their due date? Is killing a joke or a sport? If we do believe in a Creator, is he laughing, too?

Moammer Qadafhi is dead and we find fit to rejoice, but have the deaths of all the "bad guys" thus far done us any good? Two weeks ago a tidy U.S. drone killed 16-year-old U.S. citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki in Yemen, damage collateral to a supposed kill of a "top al-Qaeda official". (Cute terminology, no? -- al-Qaeda now has officials, just the the NRA, we guess.) It is difficult to say we are winning something when we are killing children and calling it a necessity. When did we last kill a 16-year-old without a trial; for that matter, a 46-year-old?

The War on Terror is having a reverse, unintended effect upon the U.S. The world is not rising to our level, but rather, we are descending to theirs. We now laugh at death as entertainment. The Romans cheered when the Christians were martyred.

Yes, it is a very unfunny coda -- we have lost the war on terror. John McCain can have the final word when he spoke on the death of Osama bin Laden earlier this year. Though he got it wrong when he stated the much-vaunted Arab Spring was a "complete repudiation of [OBL's] violent ideology", he was correct in the following:

As we debate how the United States can best influence the course of the Arab Spring, can’t we all agree that the most obvious thing we can do is stand as an example of a nation that holds an individual’s human rights as superior to the will of the majority or the wishes of government? Individuals might forfeit their life as punishment for breaking laws, but even then, as recognized in our Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, they are still entitled to respect for their basic human dignity, even if they have denied that respect to others.

When we find mirth in brutality we are on par with the brutes.

--By Jim & Lisa