Monday, May 9, 2011

Bin Laden, or the vanity of evil

In addition to valuable information on the operation of Al Qaeda and plans for future terrorist attacks, the material seized at the residence of Bin Laden is a curious testimony on the psychology of the leader of Al Qaeda, the terrorist most legendary of decades. The video made public by the Pentagon on Saturday offered an image of bin Laden as an old man obsessed with his public image, a portrait very different to the young charismatic leader who launched defiant messages to the West with a Kalashnikov rifle at his side in the recordings a decade ago.

In one of the videos, perhaps the power has a debunker, a gray-bearded bin Laden appears to see a recording by one of his messages to the world. Wrapped in a blanket, and a cap on his head, the leader of Al Qaeda holds a remote control channel is continuously changing, and swings while watching your own images discussed in several television channels.

[View video] While the video is only a fleeting and partial view of life that had the famous terrorist in hiding in Pakistan, its contents suggest a conclusion not unlike that of the book 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' Hanna Arendt, dedicated to exploring the psychology of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann.

The book's subtitle, the banality of evil, reflected one of the main ideas of the work: the nature completely ordinary character of war criminal, which contradicted the widespread belief that the Nazi criminals were just psychopaths. In this sense, the burden of vanity that reflects the attitude Bin Laden, his concern for his image and his delight at his own fame, could not be more everyday, and therefore farther from the myth.

Another of the four videos aired by the Pentagon shows bin Laden preparing a speech to the American people. Unlike the previous video and also the time when he was killed, the terrorist's beard is very black, which means that it had to make their messages in order to look younger. [View video] Although the Pentagon has removed the sound recordings made public, Obama administration sources leaked to the U.S.

press that one of them contained a message condemning U.S. and global capitalism. In it, bin Laden appears dressed in an elegant white and gold robe and a traditional white hat, and looks several years younger. The publication of these five videos by the White House has two objectives. First, provide evidence that the person executed in the mansion of Abottabad was Bin Laden, a fact questioned in some Islamist websites to the U.S.

government's refusal to show a picture of the corpse of Bin Laden. Moreover, its publication would seek also to help demystify the figure of Bin Laden, at the risk of death end magnifying his legend among a section of the Muslim world. The first video is a recorded message to the American people from 9 October to 5 November 2010.

In it, sits on the floor with a gold dress, beard dyed black and blue. Although no audio, reportedly condemned the U.S. policy and capitalism.

No comments:

Post a Comment