Do You Remember That Time John Cena Announced the Execution of Bin Laden?

There’re quite a few cool, noteworthy anniversaries coming up this year. Forty years ago, Iron Maiden unleashed ‘The Trooper’ on the world with their ‘Piece of Mind’ album. Thirty years ago, we were blessed with the release of both ‘Enter the Wu-tang (36 Chambers)’ and Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday. Twenty years ago, cinema was in an interesting place, with the likes of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Lost in Translation, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… And Spring, all hitting the big screen in the space of twelve months.

But amidst all those happy anniversaries, there’s a particularly bleak one also coming this year. This month, as a matter of fact. Though a small group of CIA operatives initially slipped into the country in the summer of 2002, it wasn’t until March 20th, 2003, that the full-scale invasion of Iraq began. It’s difficult to overstate the magnitude of the crime against humanity that George W. Bush, alongside his lapdog Tony Blair, inflicted upon a country that they used as a scapegoat for an attack it had nothing to do with—and the precedent it set for America’s imperial maneuverings in the region. The destruction of Iraq has been called the supreme crime of the modern era, and the defining moment of twenty-first-century geopolitics.

It also led to some truly grim moments in popular culture, with rah-rah jingoism amped up to eleven for years to come. That jingoism wasn’t linked to just the invasion of Iraq, of course. It spread everywhere, and, as always, found ways of manifesting itself in response to just about any military occasion that the powers-that-be in the United States needed to manufacture consent for. All that is to say, I happened upon this video again after a very long time: John Cena announcing the execution of Osama Bin Laden. And it really is such a strange, revealing spectacle. If you were to describe this scene in a dystopian sci-fi novel, critics would call it too on the nose, too cartoonishly unsubtle. But there we were, and here we are.