There were an awful lot of Westerns on TV when I was a kid (and I watched nearly as much television as the Bill Murray character in
Scrooged) --
Maverick,
Have Gun Will Travel,
Gunsmoke,
The Rifleman,
Bonanza.... There were a lot of old Western movies on TV, too -- with John Wayne, of course, but also Alan Ladd or Randolph Scott; Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were always singing on one channel or another.
So I imbibed a heady draught of what I'll call the Western Ethos. Among these principles is that, sometimes, a man is so evil or so corrupt, and the law is so weak or unavailable, the bad guy simply can't be arrested and brought to justice. The hero is forced to take the law into his own hands, and he does what needs doin'.
The important thing is that the hero is
not happy about it. It's the grizzled prospector or the comely schoolmarm who tries to offer comfort, if not absolution, just before the end credits roll: "If ever a man needed killin', that one did."
Maybe the hero can stay on as Sheriff, or become Sheriff -- but not to start his own reign of terror, but rather to bring law and order and schools and churches and marriageable ladies into town, to bring the blessings of civilization and the Rule of Law to the hitherto untamed frontier. Maybe, like Gary Cooper in
High Noon, he's so disgusted, not just by what his alleged friends and neighbors didn't do, but by what he himself had to do, that he takes off the badge forever and goes off to start a ranch someplace.
Everyone thinks that Jimmy Stewart's character, in
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, is the man who rid Shinbone of its most feared outlaw. The naive lawyer rises rapidly in politics after the showdown, eventually becoming senator from the new state that he helped to hew from the wilderness.
Only he's not the man everyone thinks he is. He knew what really happened, and so did his wife (played by Vera Miles), and so (of course) did John Wayne. Towards the end of Stewart's career, the Stewart and Miles characters come back to Shinbone for Wayne's funeral, and Stewart tries to set the record straight. But, as the newspaperman tells him at the end, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." The point is that Stewart neither wanted nor deserved the accolades heaped on him as a result of the death of Liberty Valance; he took no satisfaction from it.
This brings us to Osama bin Laden. It is an article of faith for me, as an American lawyer, that "justice" can not be meted out with helicopters and Navy SEALs and firefights. Yet, as an American realist, steeped in the cultural values I absorbed through a small-screen black and white TV, I can't help but agree that, "If ever a man needed killin', that one did."
It's just not a cause for celebration. And the man who did what needed doin' should never, ever be perceived as gloating about it. For that reason, surely, President Obama is ill-served by some supporters who recently 'questioned' whether Gov. Romney would have given the order to 'take out' Osama.
In one clip I heard, Gov. Romney was 'accused' of expressing concern (back in 2007) about violating Pakistani sovereignty in pursuit of bin Laden, and that he should be made to 'explain' himself. Well, no explanation is required.
In 2007 most of us thought bin Laden might be hiding in caves on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border; we had no idea that he had built himself a compound for himself in the shadow of a Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad, a city of about 500,000 just 60 miles or so away from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. Jane Perlez, in an article posted on the
New York Times website one year ago today,
reported that, "In an ironic twist, the academy [next door to the bin Laden compound] was visited just last month by the Pakistani military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, where he proclaimed that Pakistan had 'cracked' the forces of terrorism, an assessment that was greeted with skepticism in Washington."
Until we knew that the Pakistani government was either deliberately covering up bin Laden's presence or so incompetent that it could not find him in plain sight,
everyone was right to be concerned about possibly violating an ally's sovereign territory. Once we knew bin Laden's whereabouts, however, we also knew that we could not inform our gallant Pakistani ally in advance of any raid. Prior notice would almost guarantee bin Laden's successful escape. Nevertheless, sending troops across a national border without permission is called an
invasion; it is an
act of war. There was, accordingly, even at that late stage, extremely good reason to be concerned about sending in SEAL Team Six. Fortunately, it was in the best interests of both the United States and Pakistan to make nice with each other after the fact -- President Obama, according to an AP account by Kimberly Dozier and David Espo, was careful to stress that he called Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari after the raid to brief him on what had already happened. Pakistan accepted the President's explanation, at least to the extent that we are not now in a state of war with that nation.
In the western movies, the good guy who is forced to take out the bad guy is scarred by his act, not enthused. He knows he's done something to prevent greater wrongs in the future, but only by committing a wrong himself. The townspeople may be grateful, but the hero can not fully accept their cheers. He must live with what he has done. So too must President Obama. I am certain that the President must have agonized about authorizing the mission. He did what he did with resolve, yes, but also with regret -- and any man or woman worthy of the title of President of the United States would have been similarly stressed in those same circumstances. The President's more bloodthirsty supporters need to be reined in; their misguided enthusiasm diminishes all of us.
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