I've got a lot of thoughts on this, the morning after Barack Obama's big announcement that the U.S. military has found and killed Osama Bin Laden. I'm having a lot of trouble organizing them and processing them, but I have them.
When 9/11 happened, it was a huge blow to the American psyche. Never had we experienced such a devastating act of random terrorism on our soil. We were angry and confused and saddened, and looking for someone to blame. Fortunately, Al Qaeda had a mastermind, Osama Bin Laden, and he became the face of evil for most Americans. I think any American citizen who was alive and cognizant on 9/11 would agree that Osama was evil and needed to be stopped, though we may have disagreed about the best way to go about that. As such, I think every American citizen is thankful today that Osama Bin Laden is no longer in the picture, that that particular act of violence has been in some way avenged.
But I'm conflicted, for so many reasons. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I remember watching news programs and listening to pundits and journalists and President Bush spit angrily into the cameras and swear that we would find and kill Osama Bin Laden and end this terrorism - we would fight a war against terror. And I thought, "How do you DO that? How do you fight a war against an intangible concept like terrorism?" I don't think, in the past ten years, a true and clear victory has been made in "the war against terrorism." Terror, by its very nature, is random and unpredictable. Therefore, you cannot fight it. You can avenge previous acts of terror. You can protect yourself as much as possible on your own soil. But you can't fight a war against it, because it's not a physical object you can blow up. There will always be evil people in the world who want to destroy one another, or us. To think anything else is naive, in my opinion.
So here we are in 2011 after searching for OBL for ten years - and President Obama, in the midst of a very rocky term and with the help of U.S. military and intelligence, was able to find and eliminate him. My first reaction was, "GO BARRY!" Because really, this is a good thing for him as president. All the people who've said "What has Barack Obama done in this term?" will have less ability to say that now. He stopped Osama Bin Laden. Kudos. I'd argue he's done quite a lot of other things in the past few years as well, though not as many as we may have liked - but I blame Congress and the Senate for that in many ways, and it's an entirely different post for a different rainy day. Today, no one can say Barack Obama is all talk and no action. And I'm thankful for that. And today, an evil man has been stopped. I'm thankful for that too.
But do I think the war on terror has been won? No. No, I do not. Because just as I thought in 2001, I still don't think you can fight terror with guns. I don't think eliminating Osama Bin Laden makes us safer than we were two weeks or two months or two years ago. Right now, somewhere in the world, some other evil mastermind is hatching a plan to hurt us, along with probably hundreds of other evil masterminds hatching plots to hurt other people around the planet. I'm not trying to be depressing or cynical, it's just LIFE. Good and evil, yin and yang. It's out there. I also don't much like dwelling on that, or living my life in fear, so I don't. I haven't been afraid since 9/11 and I don't intend to start any time soon.
And the false patriotism on display last night outside the White House and today on the cover of countless newspapers and magazines? It upsets me. Though I am glad that OBL is gone, I never like to see people celebrating the death of another human being. It just feels funny. Shouldn't it be more reverent, somehow? Should we really be waving flags, singing the national anthem, setting off fireworks and partying in the streets because we killed a man? Should we be buying copies of magazines or checking out websites with photos of his corpse? Maybe we should...but something about it turns my stomach. I think back to 9/11, when we saw footage of people celebrating in the streets of Afghanistan and Iraq as our twin towers burned to the ground, and thousands of Americans were shocked and outraged that anyone could celebrate in that way. I wonder, today, how the people of Afghanistan and Iraq felt watching the coverage of us dancing in the streets last night, or at various points throughout the past ten years as we've celebrated our "victories" in Iraq and Afghanistan. It all seems so senseless, and I don't feel any safer today than I did ten years ago. It feels like nothing has changed, except I can't hang out with family at their gate before a flight anymore. I wish we could have brought Osama to justice through a fair trial, rather than just by killing him.
So I'm conflicted today. I am proud of our president, and I'm happy the world is rid of an evil man. I'm thankful for our military and all the men and women who fight every day to keep our country safe. But I'm not happy to see my fellow Americans celebrate in the way they're celebrating, or hear commentary about how we've emerged victorious in our war against terror or the Taliban. I'm interested in how this will play out politically, and what it means for our country going forward in our dealings with the Taliban and other terror organizations and in Pakistan. There's so much mess still to clean up, so much work to be done...I just don't know how much celebration I can muster.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject.
