every smith
  • MS: Max Smith's blog
  • History to the Defeated
  • every smith: independent creative consultants
  • Words: Max - a brief bio
  • Sites to see

For whom the bell tolls

3/5/2011

1 Comment

 
I have never agreed with John Donne that "any man's death diminishes me".

I am in no sense diminished by the death of Osama bin Laden. Rather the reverse. My life - and, more importantly, those of my children and grand-child - will be made more secure by his death.

But, as a "piece of the continent", I do feel diminished by the triumphalism which has followed his assassination by the US.

It is not clear to me that he has been brought to justice. He may have got his just deserts; but that is not the same thing at all. And I think that the deliberate obsfucation of the two concepts is wrong.

So, too, are the overt celebrations of his death. They are understandable, especially amongst New Yorkers and those who lost family and friends in the attacks. But they are wrong.

What diminishes us, because we are "involved in mankind", is the sense of pleasure we take in any man's death.

Yes, even bin Laden's.

Today's listening: People's Persons, Simple Shapes. I missed them in Wilde's on Easter Sunday because I was watching the Sox, and I'm not sure that was the right decision. (That's high praise!)


1 Comment
Sean
3/5/2011 12:21:47

all a bit distasteful wasn't it? how much nobler if those people in NYC and elsewhere had held up pictures of the victims perhaps. Whether it involves burning a flag and firing AK's into the air or whooping and hollering in Times Square I can't help feeling the human race has learnt nothing from this. We are truly comdenmed to repeat history.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Baseball
    Books
    Film
    Food + Drink
    French Letters
    Leamington Letters
    Media
    Music
    People
    Personal
    Politics
    Sport