Invasion, 1983 (we're still here and you're not)

Another image from a series I shot in 1983 or 1984 at Liberty Park in Jersey City early on a Sunday upon discovering a large invasion of Airstream trailers on a caravan.

This series of images has been haunting me especially this week for reasons that will need no explanation.

I hope that in the post-Bin Laden world, America recaptures some of the values that we seem to have shelved in the aftermath of 9/11. We have spent the last decade bankrupting the country while fighting foreign wars (one almost certainly justified when it began, but that that justification may be long over; the other never justified), creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust of the "other," and often simply abandoning all that we are supposed to stand for (Abu Ghraib, for example emblematic of this).

America was created, in part, based an idealism (ideals we haven't always or perhaps ever lived up to fully, but isn't that what idealism is about: the striving for being better?), but we seem to have lost our way in many realms over the past ten years.

Can we do better than we have of late? The disappointed idealist in me (the skeptical, cynical part of me) wonders.

Perhaps this cover story from The Economist capsulizes a small part of my thinking this topic:
"Osama bin Laden: NOW KILL HIS DREAM"

Quoting from the article:

"A FEW bullets were enough. But the shots that killed Osama bin Laden in the dead of night on May 2nd in a fortified compound not far from Islamabad came after 15 years of dogged pursuit, two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well over $1 trillion of spending and around 150,000 deaths. It is a heavy reckoning for one man’s life."

*   *   *

"And last there are the Arab countries. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians would help (see article); but more vital is Western support for the aspirations of the Arab spring. When Mr bin Laden struck on 9/11 the West had few means of defending itself but by attacking him directly and by striking a Faustian bargain with the Arab world’s oppressive rulers. His death comes when Arab opinion is at last flowing in a new direction. It is too good a chance to waste."

It is a good thing that he is dead. It is good that President Obama didn't thump his chest and proclaim in arrogance anything like "mission accomplished;" that he was sober and serious in announcing the mission well done by our brave forces to end this one part of this one chapter. But, the story isn't over, is it?

It's not about killing people, or shouldn't be. It should be about what comes next. Setting examples for what is possible with open society, with democracy, with a free press, with a responsive government, etc. Things we aspire to, but do rather imperfectly ourselves. We need to render bin Laden irrelevant. To lead by example.

The popular uprisings sweeping parts of the Arab world of late seem to be about a yearning more than anything else for dignity, freedom, self-determination. Lofty things. But what comes next? How do we help people without dictating their choices and setting their agenda. How do we show people that more important than US forces killing bin Laden is everything we do after. Do we set a good example by having a political arena dominated by big-moneyed special interests (read: the post-Citizens United world)? Isn't that one of those things the citizens in other countries are protesting against?

This rambling rant will continue later. I don't know the answers, but I am certain we need to ask more and better questions.