Should one be happy at the death of an enemy?

When the Indian army killed the leader of Hizbul Mujahideen in 2019, I received a text message from a friend saying, “today is our Diwali at the office.” I confusingly asked why she texted back, saying, “the army killed the terrorist in Kashmir.” Celebrating the death of an enemy has been very common among the warring tribes in history, such as a special dance, the Attan, performed after the enemy’s defeat among the Pashtun communities. Attan has found its way into modern wedding ceremonies and other joyous occasions. In 2011, when announcing the death of Osama bin Laden President Obama was able to contain his happiness. But Donald Trump’s announcement of the end of al Baghdadi accompanied his excessive joy and use of derogatory words like “he died like a dog.” In both cases, many Americans celebrated the death of the US’s top enemies with wine and dance outside the White House.

We might feel happy at the death of an enemy, but what it says about human civilization and human nature. For one thing, we as humans have a celebratory view of ourselves. We think we are good, and the enemy is evil. Sometimes we do not understand the reason behind hostilities, but even in those times, the death of the enemy, who we do not know very well, becomes a joyous occasion. President George W. Bush, puzzlingly once had asked about Muslims, “why do they hate us?”. Bush, a devout evangelist, once revealed his messianic zeal to Jacques Chirac, the French president, to save the sons of Israel from the evil forces of Gog and Magog, alluding to a biblical prophecy. Perhaps, President Bush would have rethought his characterization of Gog and Magog should he had known that the same biblical passage runs through Quran with a slightly different pronunciation, Yajuj wa Majuj. Typically, a moral epiphany and recharacterization of the supposed enemy should follow if you know that your enemy and you believe in the same old passage.

The US presidents are not particularly well-read about the trajectories of US foreign policies and their consequences on others. Later on, President Trump’s Muslim ban indicated this lack of awareness very well. President Bush did not understand that many political forces worldwide, including the Muslim world, saw the US as a progeny of British colonialism. British colonialism ended Muslim prominence in the Indian subcontinent and ended the Uthman empire during the First World War. The memory of British colonialism might not be fresh among the Brits or Americans. However, it is ingrained and remains vivid in the collective memories of many Muslims and other descendants of colonized subjects of the West. It is always easy for the dominant people not to retain any memories of their atrocities or feel no empathy for the victims. But the victims will never forget those atrocities and will continue to live with them through generations. Extremist groups will revive those wounds and exploit them for their political purposes.

The killing of Hizbul Mujahideen did not solve the Kashmir problem for India, and the execution of Usama bin Laden and Abubaker al Baghdadi did not end what President Trump called Islamic terrorism. Nevertheless, we might argue they needed to be killed because their hands were stained by the blood of Indian citizens (in the case of Hizbul Mujahideen Leader) and US citizens (in the case of Usama Bin Ladan and Albaghdadi). However, celebrating their death with wine and dances or equating them with a festival such as Diwali might aggravate the followers and sympathizers of the extremist groups; it also tells us a lot about the human capacity for lack of historical awareness. Human collectivities have become more civilized after containing a few harmful characteristics. But they also carry a lot from their tribal past and feed their collective thirst for revenge and the joy of killing our enemy. The histories of impersonal animosities are complicated but relevant to modern conflicts.