Patrick McDermott

If any of you are Facebook or Twitter users, you might have noticed a flurry of activity last night about a man named Troy Anthony Davis. Troy was an inmate on death row in Georgia for more than 20 years for the crime of killing a police officer in cold blood. I said Troy WAS an inmate because at 11:08pm last night, he was executed after US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas denied Troy’s last chance application for a stay of execution. Troy had submitted appeal after appeal, proclaiming his innocence even up until his final moments while on the gurney, about to be injected with the poison that would finally kill him. In that time, he also wished mercy would be given to his executioners and hoped that the real killer of the police officer he was convicted of murdering would be found. The state of Georgia believed they had found that man, and decided that justice would be best served by executing him. However, tonight was not an example of this. If justice is a product of equitability, then the conviction and now murder of Troy Davis was anything but equitable.

Troy was convicted through, frankly, a sham trial. If you hadn’t known, Troy was black and the cop he was convicted of killing was white, and no matter what some may say, racism has not disappeared from America. Throughout the course of the trial, there wasn’t a single piece of physical evidence that could connect Troy to the murder. All that the trial was based upon was eyewitness testimony, which is suspected to had been fabricated due to police pressure and coercion. As of yesterday, 7 of the 9 original eyewitnesses recanted or changed their testimony, and believe it or not, one of the two remaining witnesses to not change their story was the other main suspect in the case. However, despite all of this, and the doubt that it would naturally illicit in anyone, the various appeals courts and boards did not grant clemency or at the very least another trial. And Justice Clarence Thomas ultimately was Troy’s last hope. A hope that he, and the millions of others around the world who were struggling for justice in Troy’s name, did not attain when it was needed most.

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When I was in high school, I loved wood shop class. I found something so comforting in the focus you had to have on the work you were doing. The attention to detail was not just a desirable quality, it was in fact a necessity when dealing with tools that could easily cause severe injury. I was often in my own little world in that class, completely cut off from everything going on outside of it. That was of course until the bell rang, and you had to head to 20th Century History.

However, one beautiful morning in September of 2001 provided a different kind of wake up call for me. My classmates and I were cleaning up our workspaces, getting ready for the bell to ring to go to our next class, when the metal shop teacher came into our class. He told my teacher to turn on the TV. And right before he left the room, he said “It’s horrible, just horrible!” Needless to say, my teacher turned on the TV and my classmates and I immediately knew why the other teacher said what he said. Both towers of the WTC had already been struck by the planes, but neither had fallen yet. We were transfixed, unable to process the magnitude of what we were seeing. Oddly enough, my first thought was to think about the 1993 bombing of the WTC by Osama bin Laden. I was only 7 years old at the time of that bombing, but in high school, I was a political junkie already and had read and heard about that bombing not that long before 9/11.

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Let me set the scene for you. I take the Metro in DC every night to get home from work. Last night, I was heading to an event after work. On my way to the Metro, right outside the escalator to head down to the platform, there were a bunch of protestors putting on what’s commonly referred to as a “stunt.” What they were protesting is US militarism in Honduras and they chose to display their, let’s call it displeasure, by having two protestors lie on the ground, with red paint on their white shirts, with another protestor standing over them holding a mock gun. Obviously, what they were simulating is that the US has, in essence, enabled the killing of these people through US military support of an oppressive regime in Honduras. Meanwhile, they had other protestors constantly shout to people walking by that “nothing is wrong…keep walking…nothing to see here!”

Let me state from the outset that I’m with them on the issues. US military aggression is as commonplace as apple pie, or at least it has been in roughly the past 60 or so years of American history. I personally find it disgusting how much we emphasize the tenets of death instead of the tenets of life throughout our policies, in particular our foreign policy. And I am currently dedicating much of my waking hours to get young people to not only feel the same way, but to do something about it.

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News of Osama bin Laden’s death came as no relief to me. First off, I would have been much happier if he was captured and brought to true justice through a public trial here in the United States. I would have loved to see him stand trial for the murder of thousands of American citizens, and be held accountable based on the values and principles we have chosen to live by and that which are ideals that we and others should aspire to. Granted, we don’t always live up to these ideals ourselves, and I’m also a realist in that I know a trial would have probably not come to pass given the enormous controversy that was generated around a public trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. Nevertheless, I would have preferred to have seen him captured. However, given the reports that have been released today with regard to the operation itself, there was little chance bin Laden would have been able to be captured, and so when in the middle of a firefight, there is not much flexibility. I understand that and cannot fault the military at all for doing what they had to do.

Osama bin Laden’s death did not bring about relief to me for another reason. I do not believe that cutting off the “head of the snake” will irrevocably harm Al-Qaeda. I believe far too many people are buying into the false idea that terrorist networks such as Al-Qaeda operate in the same fashion as countries and monarchs of centuries past, whereby if you cut off the head, the body would die; the army would be leaderless and would simply dissipate without their orders. A network, especially a terrorist network, is a wholly different animal. Cells are stationed across the globe and they work independent of one another. Strategy may come from the top, but from what I have read, the leadership of Al-Qaeda has spread beyond Osama bin Laden. In fact, bin Laden was seen as more of an inspirational figurehead in recent years rather than an operational strategist. And don’t forget, he was in constant hiding for nearly 10 years and required dialysis treatments consistently. I think it is more than fair to say that Al-Qaeda had already prepared for the eventuality that bin Laden would die (either of natural causes, or by force). Therefore, bin Laden’s death, although symbolic, is in my view nothing more than that. And I see people rejoicing and celebrating this as some sort of great achievement that will help make America safer, which leads me to my third and last reason as to why his death brings me no relief.

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As I am sure most of you have heard, President Obama today held a press conference to show to the world his long-form birth certificate, which many conspiracy theorists and outright racists have been clamoring for for what seems now like an eternity. Most recently, Donald Trump, possible Republican Presidential candidate and shameless self-promoter, has been constantly talking throughout the media about his doubts with regard to the President’s native birth.

When I first heard of the President’s announcement, my first thought was actually of relief. I thought the President was doing this for political reasons in light of his recently launched reelection campaign. I thought that he was doing this to show to the rest of the electorate how “crazy” the right-wing of this country has become, and might cast doubt in their eyes of electing one of them as President. It surely must not be to convince Republicans and conservatives who originally called into question his birthplace origin, because from my perspective, those people were never going to support him anyway. The birth certificate controversy is just a sign of a much deeper rooted problem, which I’ll get to in a second. In any event, this was my initial reaction to this news, and who knows, I may be right or wrong on the President’s calculus for doing what he did.

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