Roger Cohen on Death of Osama Bin Laden
Excellent words from one of this year's special guests, Roger Cohen, on the death of Osama Bin Laden.
From The New York Times:
I am grateful for something else: that Bin Laden has been humanized. He thought he carried the Prophet’s message and was able, through a charisma pornographic in its worship of death, to channel an immense Muslim frustration. In taking on America, and staging his own mega-production one September day, he turned himself into myth.
Yet, here he is, hunched, gray-bearded, channel surfing with his remote in search of images of himself. And here he is, with his beard dyed black, betraying the very vanity of the black-haired Arab gerontocracy he professed to loath. Bin Laden is very human here — in his boredom, his ego, his foibles and his weariness.
That is an important reminder. Bin Laden was not the devil. He was a human being. What happened to him, this gentle-eyed killer, can happen: His transformation into a demon is banal. That is why all of our collective vigilance is needed.
