Osama, Obama, and Sam Spade

Astor, Bogart in "The Maltese Falcon"

My friend Rachel, who sees the killing of Bin Laden as more the act of a bully than the sword of justice, has got me thinking. (You can read the post and her reaction here.)  I’m not the leftist that Rachel is—I’m more of an Obama moderate–so I don’t entirely agree with what she has to say.  But there’s something about celebrating the killing of someone, even a mass murderer, that leaves me queasy.  Exploring the parallel I drew Monday between America and Sam Spade helps me get a better grip on the issue.

In Spade Dashiell Hammett created an early existential hero. Living in a universe that is meaningless, where people kill each other for a worthless statue, Spade follows a code that gives his life meaning: when a man’s partner dies, he’s got to do something about it.  In this case, doing something means sending the woman he loves to the gallows.  When he is emotionally confused, this is the principle that guides him.

Bridget O’Shaughnessy deserves, if not death, then at least prison.  After all, she has killed Spade’s partner in cold blood.  It therefore doesn’t matter whether Spade loves her or not.  His code provides him with a foundation for action.

But (and this is where Rachel is on to something), there is something not quite right about his reasons for doing so.  He is not pursuing justice or giving Bridget a tough love lesson about consequences.  The bottom line for him is not justice but the fear of appearing weak.  He is terrified of being played for a sap.  Here’s the entire passage:

Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: “Listen. This isn’t a damned bit of good. You’ll never understand me, but I’ll try once more and then we’ll give it up. Listen. When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. It’s bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I’m a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it’s not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I’ve no reason in God’s world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you’d have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That’s five of them. The sixth would be that, since I’ve got something on you, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don’t even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you’d played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that’s enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won’t argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we’ve got what? All we’ve got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you.”

And then, when Bridget says that he knows he loves her, he continues on:

“But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won’t. I’ve been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I’ll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I’d be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I’ll be sorry as hell – I’ll have some rotten nights – but that’ll pass. Listen.” He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. “If that doesn’t mean anything to you forget it and we’ll make it this: I won’t because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it — and because – God damn you – you’ve counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales.” … Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: “I won’t play the sap for you.”

American presidents have engaged in dubious actions to show that they weren’t saps.  Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada on the most flimsy of pretexts to erase the stigma of Vietnam.  Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, sent a mentally deficient man to the electric chair so that he could refute the notion that Democrats were soft on criminals.  George W. Bush invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was thumbing his nose at the U.S.  Looking at U.S. policy in terms of Hammett’s existential hero helps us figure out if we are motivated by transcendental justice or just a desire to appear tough.

I am not saying that Barack Obama took out Bin Laden just so he wouldn’t seem like Jimmy Carter II, even though the operation may have that as a political dividend.  I, like the president, see the raid as justice being done.  But fear of appearing the sap has led to a lot of death and destruction in the world.  When America unleashes its considerable firepower, we had better be damn sure that we aren’t just doing it for political expediency.

Already certain people are proclaiming Bin Laden’s death as a vindication of America’s torture policies at Guantanamo.  This indicates what a slippery slope retributive violence can be.  If we don’t base our actions on higher law, we will all end up in darkness.  Literature helps keep us in touch with our higher selves.

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