Hate

Let’s talk about hatred. How often do you remember being told as a child not to use the word “hate.” “Hate is a very strong word…” the chant usually began. And then we were told that we didn’t really mean it.

In the case of Osama bin Laden, I mean it. I mean it without apology. I’m not even sorry about that, although I suspect the pre-9/11 me would have been horrified at the very thought.

I keep this hatred focused, even now, on bin Laden, himself. The lower level idiots who served his vision don’t deserve hatred, to my mind. They were deluded, pathetic cult followers who believed that their leader would save them from their own petty demons, as followers always are. Bin Laden’s immediate lieutenants who assisted with the planning don’t need to be hated — condemnation, certainly, but nothing particularly emotional.

But the man himself conceived of this, thought of and approved the idea of murdering thousands of people, of turning mechanisms of peaceful travel into massive weapons, and of making sure death came in the most horrifying package and form possible. He claimed to see himself as being at war with the US, as if that would justify his actions.

But not only was there no war, this attack was designed very carefully to be the opposite of strategic (in the sense of all those “surgical” attacks which are so carefully designed to take out only the most limited targets possible.) It was meant to be as unclean and horrifying as possible; it was meant, as we all know, to terrorize and to feed the massive twisted ego of its originator rather than to achieve any real political change. Its means and style were all about cruelty and torture: burning non-combatants alive in their offices; forcing victims to flee through windows hundreds of feet up in the air; entombing people in an inescapable skyscraper so that they would have to anticipate their own horrible death for moments or hours.

There is no justification for any of this in any religion (certainly not Islam, which has historically been marked for its pacifism), political theory, or sane mindset. The attack on the World Trade Center was an exercise in pure monster-hood.

And for that, I judge and hate Osama bin Laden. I used to pray, in the fall of 2011, that he would be captured quickly and that the US would reinstate public stoning for him alone. That probably sounds funny, but it isn’t meant to. I literally wish this man could have been executed in public, by the public. It would have been fitting, considering what he did to us.

Meanwhile, I cursed him. And I mean that literally, too. I’m not a religious believer, but I like all the Old Testament stories about people blessing and cursing each other. In blessings, they call out the attributes they see or want to encourage, they make what sound like prophecies but are really meant to be affirmations.

And in cursing, they call down all the fury of the heavens on their enemies. This is what I did, as a private expression of my own hatred when it boiled over to the point that I couldn’t contain it. I would declare, as if bin Laden could hear me, that God, humanity, and the heavens hated him. That the earth wept to feel his feet upon her. That the very air in his lungs burned with shame to be sustaining his life. That history, humanity, and the spiritual world would reject and spit on him. And that he would die, that he would submit, that he would be crushed like the bug that he was, spiritually.

His actual death, of course, wasn’t nearly as flowery, but it was satisfactory. Mostly, it is finished, and that is a good thing.

I don’t talk about this hatred often, because I expect people to try to talk me out of it, to preach to me about moving on and letting go. I think that’s ridiculous, even though I agree that living in a place of hatred is not the healthiest or most productive thing in the world. It is, however, a statement of what is — I believe my judgment of bin Laden is correct and appropriate, and to try to soften my feelings would betray and undercut that.

And I will say that I don’t trot out this little soapbox speech on hatred, even to myself, very often. And since bin Laden died, it has subsided because the actual feeling of it is no longer needed. It’s more of a memory now, as its object is no longer in the world among us.

But I’m not ashamed of it. I do not want to forget how horrible the man was or how unspeakable, vile, and inhuman the thoughts in his head were. I still wish he could have died publicly. I wish he could have been beaten to death with baseball bats by all the rest of us.