Making martyrs
by digby
This isn’t the first time the analogy between Che Guevara and bin Laden has come up, obviously, but it’s interesting in light of the “burial at sea” issue:
It took twenty-eight years for the truth to come out. In 1995, during my research for a biography I was writing about Che, a retired Bolivian army general broke the silence and told me about the secret burial in the airstrip. Che’s body was eventually found, exhumed, and repatriated to Cuba, where it was reburied with full state honors in 1997, provoking a great deal of acrimony among Cuban exiles, who saw it as a propaganda coup for the Castro regime—which it was. Every year, tens of thousands of Cubans and foreign tourists visit the Che mausoleum in Cuba, just as others visit the schoolhouse in Bolivia where he was killed, which has become a museum-shrine. Meanwhile, in spite of published DNA evidence and the testimony of forensic experts who examined Che’s remains, there are those who persist, vainly, in denying that it was really Che’s body that was found—as if that alone would somehow diminish the power of his legacy, which remains, for all the silly T-shirts, uniquely potent.
With their “sea burial” of Osama bin Laden, the United States has presumably sought to forestall a similarly long, drawn-out “where is he buried?” saga. As for the possibility that the place where he was killed might become a shrine, that is not in American hands, of course, but in the Pakistani military’s. They may find it awkward if their exclusive Abbottabad enclave—populated, as it is said to be, by senior Pakistani military officers and their families—becomes a pilgrimage site for bin Laden’s extremist followers. Presumably, Pakistan will destroy the house he lived in, but what will they do about the ground it stood on? Like the Bolivians, they can always resort to military secrecy and build a wall, but this one will have to be physical as well as figurative. This, too, will be awkward, because the walled vacant lot will be a permanent reminder that Osama bin Laden lived out his days in their midst. But maybe not. Who’s talking?
I’m fairly sure that if someone wants to build a “shrine” they will find a way to do it. I had not recalled the exhumation of Che’s remains and repatriation to Cuba back in the 90s but I can imagine that there are those who did think of it and wanted to ensure that there was nothing left to repatriate down the road so they could build the shrine in Pakistan. But as the author says, regardless of what they do his “compound” will likely be a little bit of a problem for Pakistan (at least until it is taken over completely by the fundamentalists) because it’s so conspicuously obvious.
But seriously, none of that makes any difference. If bin Laden achieves martyr status there will be “shrines” with or without his body. It’s not like Che was forgotten until they brought his bones back. The reason these guys become martyrs is that they are iconic leaders who were assassinated by their enemies — enemies who go to great lengths to take credit for having assassinated them. Bones or no bones, if there’s an appetite for his martyrdom it will happen one way or the other.
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