5/11

Unless you are like the poor woman in my office who went to bed before 11 p.m. Sunday night and managed not to see a newspaper before lunchtime Monday, you know that U.S. forces finally located Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on Sunday (EST). During the raid, bin Laden and some of his crew were killed.

My first reaction was shock, only a happy kind of shock – pretty much the inverse of what I felt sitting in the library at Forsyth Tech on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I called and texted several people to make sure they were watching the news, too, and I got pretty emotional during President Obama’s speech announcing the raid. And I’ll admit, I did get a little “Team America: World Police” in those first moments. For me, it was a natural reaction to finally – after almost a decade after 9/11 – seeing some justice for all of the innocent people bin Laden and Al-Qaeda spent much of the last 20 years terrorizing. I probably would not have been as magnanimous as our professional military was, which is why I’m glad they were there and I wasn’t.

I’ve spent much of today thinking about that reaction, and the reaction to the reaction in some of the media. For instance, it pissed me off as a proud leftie that the majority of the OBL-related posts that Salon.com put up today seemed to be less about the operation and its impact, and more about how gross it is that people got shot and stuff. (This is why we don’t let Internet columnists of any political stripe fight our wars.)

In particular, this piece entitled “USA! USA! Is the wrong response” missed the mark for me. I can understand why the writer found the impromptu demonstrations at the White House and Ground Zero distasteful, but I disagree with him. I don’t think I get to judge how other people respond to such a tremendously emotional moment. Some of us cried, some of us prayed, some of us posted gallows humor on Facebook, or all the above and more. It’s completely unfair to characterize the people singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of the White House “blood-thirsty” or to suggest that they’re no different than the terrorist sympathizers who cheered in the streets after 9/11.

For starters, as should be obvious, the people whose murders bin Laden plotted, funded and inspired were by and large ordinary citizens at embassies, on vacation, on the way to work or working in their offices when they were attacked. Celebrating their deaths, as bin Laden did in video after video, is very different from celebrating his death.

Should his death be “celebrated”? As a Christian, I’m not supposed to relish the thought of a life ending. I’m supposed to have compassion for my enemy. And as someone taught to think critically, I absolutely believe that citizens should ask what will be different now in the “war on terror” – are we still doing warrantless wiretapping, for instance?

I don’t know what the word is to describe what I feel – satisfied? Relieved? It isn’t a negative emotion, I know that much. Osama bin Laden wasn’t some freedom fighter striking a blow against power on behalf of the powerless. This isn’t someone about whom anyone could say, “I disapprove of his methods, but he has a point.” He was a mass murderer who gleefully went after easy targets like civilians instead of actual decision makers, and who sent others to die and take as many others with them as possible.

His actions – which had him on the FBI’s Most Wanted List well before 9/11 – led directly to U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, where thousands of Americans and Afghans have died. He supported a repressive regime in the Taliban, whose government destroyed religious icons and stripped human rights from women and girls. He almost single-handedly destabilized an entire region.

So, no, I don’t feel like I’m wrong to feel good that he’s gone. And I don’t feel that the people gathering last night in the very places Al-Qaeda tried to destroy were wrong, either. Some have said that last night was totally different than, say, V-E Day (anniversary was Sunday, by the way), because one marked the end of a criminal and the other the end of a war. Well, this is likely the only “end” to this war that we’re going to get. There’s no Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan to sign terms of surrender, there’s no Berlin Wall to knock down. This is it.

Of course it isn’t the end. Terrorism existed long before bin Laden, and it will still exist after him. Maybe killing him was totally symbolic, but in my opinion it’s a symbol our country – and the world – desperately needed. I can understand the nuances surrounding the situation and still be happy that Osama bin Laden no longer occupies the same planet as other human beings.