If anybody knows the perils of “tweeting,” you can bet Rashard Mendenhall does. Mendenhall is a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, so he wouldn’t be getting much love in these parts even on his better days. This is Baltimore Ravens country to the north, and Washington Redskins country down here. But Mendenhall made the news recently for reasons having nothing to do with football.
In the pre-Twitter days, people couldn’t just put any puddin’-headed notion that popped into their heads out into the marketplace of ideas. Now, anyone can say anything and have millions read it. And this is the message Mendenhall sent via Twitter regarding the death of Osama bin Laden, and the joy many Americans felt in reaction to it:
“What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can hate a man they’ve never even heard speak.”
Had Mendenhall ended his tweet with that first sentence, he’d have been on solid ground. I’ve wrestled with feeling way too much joy at bin Laden’s death myself. I even went to Mass as penance. In the bulletin for St. Bernardine’s Catholic Church that Sunday was a reprint of the Rev. James Martin’s comments entitled “What is a Christian Response to Bin Laden’s Death?” Father Martin concluded that, for all the celebration, at some point Christians have a duty to pray for and forgive bin Laden.
Too bad Mendenhall didn’t get some advice from Father Martin before popping off about bin Laden’s death. Mendenhall started his descent in his second sentence, with his claim that we’ve never heard bin Laden speak.
Not true. Bin Laden’s put out numerous recordings in which he made clear that Americans were his enemies and that he intended to kill as many of us as we could. Mendenhall continued his slide with his third sentence.
“We’ve only heard one side.”
Again, not true. We’ve heard plenty from bin Laden and his al Qaeda minions. Mendenhall just wasn’t paying attention, probably because he was too busy nursing his own conspiracy theories about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001.
“We’ll never know what really happened,” Mendenhall tweeted. “I just have a hard time believing a plane could take down a skyscraper demolition style.”
Mendenhall also has a hard time believing his own eyes, because that’s exactly what happened. And he got his degree in structural engineering from what university?
A few days after his tweet, Mendenhall did himself even more damage when he tried to “clarify” his remarks.
“This controversial statement was something I said in response to the amount of joy I saw in the event of a murder,” Mendenhall said in a blog entry.
Murder? Before Mendenhall made his blog entry, he would have done well to visit one of the numerous online dictionary sites to get a definition of the word “murder.” Merriam-Webster’s definition is “the crime of unlawfully killing a person with malice aforethought.” The online Free Dictionary defines murder as “the unlawful killing of another human being without justification or excuse.”
America’s killing of Osama bin Laden was justified, and fits neither definition. Bin Laden made it clear he was at war with the United States. In war, the goal is to kill your enemies. Using Mendenhall’s bizarre logic, Isoroku Yamamoto was “murdered” too.
Yamamoto was an admiral in the Japanese navy during the days before and during World War II. He led the attack on Pearl Harbor. After Americans cracked the Japanese code, our flyers were able to shoot down his plane in 1943, killing him.
Bin Laden’s death was no more “murder” than Yamamoto’s.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
