The rhetoric of an assassination

Yeah, osama bin laden is dead. This was my response to the news: "So when my wife told me that bin laden was dead, I assumed his dialysis machine finally gave out, then I read all the statuses today. The cynic in me says, his name wasn't in the news for a while, time to martyr him so a new boogeyman can rise. And congratulations to all the swaggering cowboy chickenhawks who had nothing to do with it celebrating as though their team won the superbowl, this isn't a game." Just for full disclosure, because this is all kabuki theater to begin with. I have doubts as to whether the guy was alive on 9/11/01 in the first place, and all of the last decade was just a lame nightmare. Anyway, I noticed right away another status floating around fb and since I don't get the stupid right wing anonymous emails forwards anymore this is the only connection I still have to that freaky world. This is what was passing around:

"Let's be VERY clear on this: OBAMA did NOT kill Bin Laden. An American service member, who Obama just a few weeks ago was debating on whether or not to PAY, did. Obama just happened to be the one in office when OUR service member found OBL and took him out. This is NOT an Obama victory, but an AMERICAN victory!! REPOST IF YOU AGREE!!!!"

Kind of like a hateful game of telephone right? I wonder where it started. Given the schizophrenic nature of the message, it begins with a partisan attack on the president, then attacks him for supposedly not wanted to pay our servicemembers, then shifts gears to a unifying message. I have to think this piece of demogaugery originated in either a basement cubicle of an Heritage foundation intern, or the feverish mind of an amateur dittohead. Because it can't decide whether to play to the birther crowd that hates the president under all circumstances, or the more moderate crowd that just wants us to all be Americans.  George w. bush played to both crowds pretty well, his actions appealed to the "hate at all costs" crowd that is now the tea party/birthers, while his rhetoric unceasingly insisted on unity.

Here is one representative comment on the original message I'll post, then the president's announcement and I'll let you decide where reality resides.

"The way the guy talked, he repelled from the chopper himself, single-handedly took out OBL's personal guard, and popped that SOB in the head w/ one "surgical" shot... and all while smoking a cigarette."

Did you hear any kind of bragging? What I heard was more like a guy taking responsibility for ordering a murder. But, this is the American business now, we do what we want. After so many years of hearing from "the swaggering cowboy chickenhawks" about how Gore would have surrendered to obl and numerous other eyerolling and baseless allegations, it is ironic that he was caught and killed by a Democratic administration. Hence the "Obama just happened to be the one in office" quip, never admit your enemy did anything worthy. Then the "OUR" servicemember, which sounds innocuous but remember that the conservatives spent the better part of the bush years appropriated the military as their private reserve, so the green beret that actually pulled the trigger was a "real American" who killed obl for all the other real Americans and not the wimpy Democrats. I have no formal rhetorical training, but even I can see the dog whistle appeals in this message, just like walker's shenanigans in WI, this was a poorly constructed piece of propaganda.

It was the republicans in congress, not the administration, that desperately wanted to shut down the government. Now, I don't have the details of the averted shutdown to say but I was in the Army the last time republicans shut down the government and I still got paid, both times. So, alleging first that the essential members of our military wouldn't have gotten paid is ridiculous and doubling down by saying the president, who bent over backwards to prevent a republican-engineered shutdown, would have been responsible for it is beneath contempt. But, this keeps the specter alive and transfers blame from the party that hates government to the party that at least tries to govern.

In that video, I did not see anywhere the president taking credit for the "victory" I saw him accepting responsibility for murder. I can see how the switch can be made by neanderthals though. Nor did I find any commentary claiming partisan victory, it would be interesting to see if anyone posts some in response. But I suspect most liberal commentators would be more aghast at the celebrations following the announcement than trying to take credit for "our guy" getting obl. What I did find was an article lamenting the death worship angle of it all, that Americans no longer stand for freedom and opportunity, but as Buffalo Springfield put it so well "Cheer hooray for our side." Just like the ancient Romans, cheering the spectacle of death in the gladitorial arena. On the flipside, remember the reaction from these very serious people and their very serious leaders when "we" killed saddam hussein's kids? Or "mission accomplished?" If the bush administration hadn't completely called off the search for obl once they got their war in Iraq because keeping the boogeyman alive was more politically advantageous, they would have called a national day of celebration and paraded his body through the streets of Washington. Okay, maybe that's excessive, but rove &co. certainly would have milked the murder for all the political points it was worth.

If this assassination was politically motivated for the 2012 election, don't you think it would have made more sense to announce it... closer to the election? President Obama will gain nothing politically from this event, his "base" would not cheer for death to begin with, nor will this win him back any supporters who based their support on the idea that he wouldn't do this sort of thing. Nor does it really comfort all the people unemployed and thrown out of their homes. The professional conservative movement will come up with spin to dismiss it and reassure the tea baggers and dittoheads. And Democrats never have the courage to bring up anything that might help them win anyway. This will all be forgotten before 2012 even gets here. Just another case of insecure conservative wackos projecting their own actions and desires onto their enemies, reading into the actions of the president what they would have done and celebrated. That which they need to deny at all costs and somehow turn into a failure. This rhetoric is a half-assed attempt to do it.