Hatfielding & McCoying Osama bin Laden

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—6/29/11—In our more temperate moments, we solemnly claim to be a nation of laws, that justice must run its course, that every man deserves a fair trial. Oftentimes, however, a vast chasm separates our words from our deeds. Instead of looking to the court system for redress, we follow the model of the Hatfields and McCoys, revenge being far sweeter than conviction and sentencing.

In our lawless moments, we could easily pass for vengeful figures in the Old Testament, for some wronged character in an Icelandic saga, for an aspiring member of the Mafia, for a gun-slinging villain of a grade-B Western. The wheels of justice press too slowly to supply the drink sufficient to slack our blood-thirstiness. The Beowulf in us cries out for vengeance. Eyes for eyes, teeth for teeth! Whole man for whole man, whole woman for whole woman!

Of course, much of the preceding paragraph is hyperbolic. Yet, I believe, enough truth resides in my words to make us question, at base, just how much we value the rule of law, just how dedicated we are to seeing that everyone has her and his day in court. The vigilante spirit in us dies hard. Offering up the other cheek, despite teachings that we should, is, for most of us, an abhorrent act.

As trials at Nuremberg of Nazi war criminals, the trial of Slobodan Milosovic, and the upcoming trial of Ratko Mladic show or most likely will show, the rule of law provides a hearing, allows arguments in defense, and is empowered to mete out punishment upon conviction. Clearly, a mechanism exists to see that justice is done. And clearly the Hatfield-McCoy gene in our blood often rides roughshod over any impulse for justice. Further, the example of the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein proved that a law-abiding nation can exact punishment, even if the court’s business is conducted in a kind of circus atmosphere.

Blasting bin Laden’s head and chest with high-powered guns instead of arresting him and taking him prisoner will, I fear, turn horrific when his followers launch their plan to reap eye for eye in revenge. Among his supporters, the Hatfield-McCoy modus operandi has fervent, fanatic backing. Add to that a predilection for martyrdom, and the mixture becomes explosive, extremely so, humans being transformed into wrathful demons deluded into thinking of themselves as avenging angels. No longer will a tooth for a tooth do: annihilation now becoming the goal. Heartless, ruthless, monomaniacal killers are these messengers of destruction and death in the eyes of victims, but heroes in the eyes of avengers.

And, as Kurt Vonnegut would have it: “So it goes!”

As we know from video coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death, he could have easily been handcuffed and shuttled out of his compound, led to a waiting helicopter, and flown back to stand trial. But, no, our Hatfields and McCoys judged, condemned, and executed him in a matter of seconds, blasting to bits in their act all possibility of showing our nation to be champions of the rule of law.

For untold millions among us, their action did not seem but was, indeed, heroic, and cheers and a special medal betokened our approval of their execution. But a few of us hoped for a better resolution of the nation’s relentless hunt for Osama. Let us show the world, we thought, our nation as one fully capable of living by the rule of law, capable of according justice to foe and friend alike . . .

. . . capable of not having blood on our hands, capable of proving that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is barbaric, self-defeating, unneeded in a society that now has a World Court to turn to in order to deal with the lawless and ruthless.

Yet, as a phrase from an old folk song reminds us: “When will we ever learn?”

My sincere hope is that it will be sooner than later. I still like to think of our nation as being a model of a civilized, law-abiding country, one not acting like gun-slingers in the Wild West but like conscientious ladies and gentlemen of the jury. The violence of bin Laden’s death makes it harder to think that way.

There is an anomaly in our national—perhaps international—character that Thomas Wolfe’s “The Child by Tiger” can help us understand. A God-fearing, peace-loving man, Dick Prosser, goes on a shooting rampage, is tracked down, riddled with bullets by a posse, and his body put on display in town, his pursuers proving to be as blood-thirsty as Dick. In building his story, Wolfe explores the “fearful symmetry” existing between Dick and the townsmen.

In mulling over how a religious man could suddenly turn killer and how a town could drop all pretense of living under the rule of law, Wolfe hits upon William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger.” He quotes it in its entirety, including those chilling questions posed by the visionary British poet: “Did he smile his work to see?/Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” Violence conjoined to a love of law and peace—is that our nation? Is that every nation? How long will it take to breed the Hatfields and McCoys out of our gene pool? Out of the international gene pool? Or are we destined to be schizoid? Is our little spaceship earth to be schizoid? In Dick Prosser and the town of Libya Hill, Wolfe offers a challenging case study.