Reading The New Yorker “Erasing bin Laden” Cover: A Process, Not an Act

Fill in the next face. I remember someone saying once, there is no evil only a stories that haven’t been heard. When I look at this I think that unless we try to understand what wrong bin laden was trying to right another face will fill in the empty hydra….

The term “rubout” makes explicit the Chicago gangland style of killing increasingly favored by our military in Afghanistan and Iraq. Legalities are irrelevant even as an afterthought. Vengeance is a blood sport, far more entertaining than the dreary pace of a courtroom trial.

Sending out hit squads was something I expected from Bush, who liked to personalize his role as the nation’s chief executive. One rationale offered for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam tried to kill Jr.’s father. It reads like something out of The Godfather.

We have progressed from demanding that our news shows be entertaining to demanding that the political events themselves be entertaining as well. Why are we still in Iraq and Afghanistan? Nobody’re really sure, but how ’bout them SEALs, ain’t they something!

It works for everybody, especially the dull old New York Times. The Osama hit inspired some of the purplest prose ever found on its pages. It reads like something out of a ten-cent western paperback. Yippee!

magister eckhart: ‘only the hand that erases can write the true thing.’